A floral tribute to April
As I sit at my desk looking out the window towards the backyard, it is raining. It is a deluge worthy of Noah’s ark days fairly typical of our Gulf Coast weather systems. Toby, our border collie mix, is terrified of loud noises and hid in the bathroom this morning unwilling to go outside. Fitted with a leash, she is undaunted. During the hurricanes and tropical storms of past years, I would take her out on the leash during the few lulls in the rain. Dora, on the other hand, an Aussie Border Collie mix, is not afraid of loud noises but far prefers to be inside even on a good day.
My photo website is somewhat organized and needs some more work and definitely some pruning—who needs ten images of the same thing but just slightly different angle?
I’ve started organizing my flower/botanical images by month. Some months have no images….yet….but given the current political/medical milieu and being a person of moderately high risk and therefore avoiding contact with others….more walks around the neighborhood and more photos and more organizing.
Tomorrow is the last day of April.
While people have been spending far too much time on the internet (in my opinion), some have taken the time to be creative while a few have leaned toward the finger-pointing mode. I can fingerpoint with the best of them or even better, but I am trying hard to use this time productively and positively.
My husband never complained about our telephone bill; I called my parents once a week, usually on Sunday afternoons when I was getting the household ready for a week’s worth of school and work. I would tell her what was blooming–and she would be envious as Wisconsin weather was several months behind. My dad never understood why anyone would mow their lawn in January….his lawn would still be covered with either snow or dead grass with little heaps of dirty snow under the trees.
But I’ve yammered on long enough—rain makes for thoughtful remembrances, books, and lingering over morning coffee.
ornamental pomegranate on the back fence of the McFadden Ward house
one of the roses in the rose garden at the McFadden-Ward museum. The gardener was kind enough to let me walk around the rose garden. Toby was with me and I was not equipped with a pooper scooper baggie; our trip was short but so wonderful.
some grasses gone to seed in the backyard of my ‘playhouse’ out on Highway 90.
primroses or buttercups in the back yard along with a few ragweeds. I pulled them up after this photo was taken. Ragweed is distributed by the wind—and it is a never ending project to pull ragweed. The bees love ragweed as it has a lot of lovely pollen for them to store as food for their babies.
sugar cane from a cutting from our one outing to a local home brew shop the first part of March. I don’t think we’ll be processing the cane for our sugar as we have bees, but this part of the backyard is swampy–part of being an old rice field. The house is the original rice farmer’s house but moved about a half mile or so from its original location.
and finally a magnolia blossom by the side of the McFadden Ward Museum visitor centers. I had to stand on my tippy-toes and hold the camera at arm’s length to get this photo. And yesterday I spied a bloom at the top of my tree in front of my playhouse on Highway 90.
Sylvia Weir Art 