Who Lives Here?

Wallk With Me

The way into the woods . . .

The maples are hazed with red blooms . . .

I'll be back with gloves to pick nettles for nettle soup . . .

Out standing in my field . . .

Mystery trees a-bloom -- haws, maybe?

Since it seems deer don't eat hellebores, I'm going to begin transplanting some to other places.

The blue Lutyens bench John made . . .

Flowering quince . . . another something deer don't seem to bother. And it sends up lots of volunteers. More transplanting in my future . . .

On to the pond . . .

Pear bloom . . .

The gang, enjoying the sun . . .

Pear buds -- I love those pink edges . . .

And another blue bench . . .

Oriental magnolia bud . . .

Red leaf peach in bloom . . .

Oriental magnolia in bloom . . .

Reflections . . .

"That time of year thou mayst behold in me . . ."

Cantankerous Kate

Wind anemone

My escort leading the way . . .

I took 179 pictures . . . you'll likely see more in the coming days. 

Looking East in Cloudy Weather

How Many Springs?

How many springs have passed 
since she watched the first green shoots break from the earth,
 the bright blooms unfurl?

The year they raised the little cabin
she planted a handful of the precious bulbs, 
a neighbor's sharing.
Pushing aside the fallen, crisping leaves,
she buried the papery bulbs
in sure and certain hope
of making a home, a family,
of putting her mark on the land.

Here I am and here I mean to stay
each buried bulb declared.

She cut switches of forsythia,
yellow bells, they called them,
from a neighbor’s plantings,
boxwood too, and rooted them all
in the damp earth beside the spring.

In a few years, heavy with her second child,
she set out the little plants they'd made,
all around the cabin.

Her children dug hidey holes
beneath those boxwood,
and brought her fistfuls of the daffodils
that multiplied and spread with every spring.

Like her own family . . .
they moved off, most of them, in later years.

But they still returned,
sometimes with the daffodils
and sometimes for Decoration Day, 
when the piney flowers lifted their blowsy heads.

Long gone, that woman, those children, that cabin;
but the daffodils return each year,
and her mark remains. 

Another Busy Josie Day