The deer misunderstand and think these are hibiscuits, but this one has survived. Taken in my friend Allenda’s hillside stone garden in Huntsville, Alabama.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/09/20/flower-of-the-day-september-21-2016-dahlia/
If you haven’t seen the 2013 documentary “Muscle Shoals,” you should. The studio that spawned a lot of superior music is now closed, and when we passed through today, this is what we saw instead:
Be Here Now
Where once they made music, now buy a gun.
It’s so in style, join in the fun.
Sidearms your pleasure, armed with aplomb.
When you need bolstering, purchase a bomb.
Warfare’s a game. Come join in and play.
You can wage war for real when you grow up some day.
(Click on this Muscle Shoals link to see a trailer for the excellent documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auGUm2r0cLs.) In addition, here is an NPR story about Muscle Shoals Studio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1437161
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/discover-challenges/here-and-now/
The deer had eaten most of the flowers in my friend Allenda’s hillside gardens, but this gardenia and a few mums had escaped a place in their salad table. More flowerless photos will follow in a subsequent post.
April asked if gardenias are edible. Yes, in fact they are said to have a sweet taste when eaten raw. For a recipe for crystallized gardenia petals, go here:
http://simmerandboil.cookinglight.com/2014/10/08/edible-flowers-crystallized-gardenia-petals/
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/09/19/flower-of-the-day-september-20-2016-dahlia/
Silence
What lost sensations do our nightly slumbers bring?
Do colors fade out when we dream? Are scents a former thing?
Does flavor tremble on our tongues in that dreaming land?
Do we hear music in our sleep or feel a lover’s hand?
Let bright colors fill my eyes, let flavors dance my tongue,
and let all those sensations that surged when I was young
once again assault me and guide my sense of touch––
to feel all of life’s textures that once I loved so much.
There will be silence in the future when we’re in the clutch
of that which muffles music, color, flavor, touch.
So let the neighbors party on. Let thunder crash and roll.
Let ravens caw out harshly from each electric pole.
Let babies loudly protest and laughter’s raucous sound
fill my ears like cups and spill out to the ground.
I am sure that one day I will have silence enough
when my final dream guide takes me by the cuff
and leads me off to sleep a final slumber where
supposedly I’ll be removed from every worldly care—
leads me off to dreams where all sensations end
and I shed life’s cacophony as I round the bend.
The prompt word today was “Silence.”
Some people walk the 500-mile Camino de Santiago trail in Spain, but in the heat and humidity, a few hours walking the dirt rock-strewn paths of the yearly Monte Sano Art Show in Huntsville, Alabama were penance enough for me. For some reason, I took very few photos, but we saw some wonderful and whimsical sights, including the pieces and people shown below.
Hiking the Art Fair
Eenie meenie miney moe––
comfie shoes
and baby toe,
Grannies with their walking sticks,
little doggies giving licks.
Pigs to hang upon the wall
that are not really pigs at all.
mobiles made of spoons and kettles,
bottle caps and other metals,
As families start to walk away,
we also plan to end our day.
Eyes grow sleepy,
hairdos frizz.
This is the kind of day it is.
But as we leave the heat and fuss,
tender moments go home with us.
The End
Home for a nice swim and then out to Thai. Perfect day that began with a hike.
Today’s WordPress prompt was Hike.
Ms. Bee, Ms. Bee, how much more lush could a sedum be?
(An interesting fact revealed to me by a bee scholar is that worker bees are females without ovaries, not males, so my former usage of Mr. Bee was incorrect. Now who would know that??? He who knows all: Forgottenman!!!)
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/09/18/flower-of-the-day-september-19-2016-dahlia/
I spotted this magnificent lone tree on the road between Morehouse, Missouri and Huntsville, Alabama.
https://beccagivens.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/sunday-trees-253/16
At First
Days were not over half so soon
when we ate passion with a spoon.
Swirled chocolate at the Frosty Freeze
melting in the prairie breeze
hot and redolent of soil—
chaff of wheat and rattled coil.
Summer days and summer nights,
rolls in grass and water fights
with uncoiled hoses, cooking pans,
rolled up cuffs and soaked white Vans.
Passion then was not so much
a thing of kissing or of touch
as of smells and sights and taste.
Baking beans and paper paste.
Brand new tablets, pencil shavings.
Summer nights, then autumn cravings.
Cattle lowing, school bells,
Cool spring water from deep wells.
Throats that ached from drinking it,
brought to light from ancient pit.
All these simple remembered things
that thinking about passion brings:
spin-overs on the monkey bars,
rides on bikes and naming stars.
It’s true some passion rides on night
with pressing lips and gentle bite,
or trembles on the fingertips
straying over breasts or hips.
Yet simpler loves bring lesser rations
of what adults consider passions.
Words like passion must be allowed
to be unfettered, like a cloud
and not confined in connotation,
dictionary or denotation.
Sometimes passion can be bright—
A meadowlark or soaring kite.
Sun-chapped lips just touched with mist
long before they’re ever kissed.
The prompt word today was “Passionate.”
To my eye, this bedraggled and pockmarked echinacea bloom has a beauty all its own.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/09/16/flower-of-the-day-september-17-2016-dahlia/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 