Monthly Archives: November 2022

Plumeria: Nov 28, 2022

3 Replies

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Poinsettia: FOTD, Nov 27, 2022

5 Replies

 

Love the variations in color of these poinsettias. They will eventually lose the green cast in these upper bracts.

For Cee’s FOTD

Childhood Games

9 Replies

Childhood Games

Hide-and-seeker, breathing hard, pressed up against the ledge,
her tracker stealing closer around the garden hedge.
“Allie-allie-oxen-all-in-all-in-free”
releases other hiders from behind rock and tree.

Boys and girls together, playing a childhood game.
He tosses up a basketball, showing off his aim.
She braids a dainty daisy chain and lays it on his head.
He shakes it off and tosses it to ring her locks instead.

Each meadow is a jungle, each brook a raging sea
within these childhood cravings, these yearnings to run free.
That house they think is haunted and face with certain dread—
will entry show an empty room or the walking dead?

Some pleading not to open it, others saying, “pull!”
with excitement and with terror, their hearts equally full,
thrilled with excitations or with terrors fraught,
opposite emotions crowd their every thought.

Do you not remember when you felt the same?
How many other childhood games are you able to name?
Red Rover and Parcheesi, Jacks and Kick-the-can—
memories like this reveal the boy within the man.

Prompt words for the Sunday Whirl Wordle # 580 are: ledge dead chain boys doors will crave sea free games steal

Open to Doubt (The Breakfast Caper)

5 Replies
Waffle

Open to Doubt
(The Breakfast Caper)

Your dubitable alibi concerning the French toast
that vanished when I turned my back to play the perfect host
and pour you one more coffee is hard for me to swallow
That the kitten snatched it simply doesn’t follow.

The rhythm of your fingernails moving on the table
betrays your anxiety concerning your small fable.
The kitten looks so innocent and you’re the one that’s doing
all that heavy swallowing and that excessive chewing.

When I served the French toast, I made sure to give you four,
and give myself two slices, because I had no more.
So, to steal my slices was surely in poor taste,
not to mention how you might have choked in all your haste.

So, while I’m cooking me a waffle and pouring me the dregs
of this pot of coffee, please don’t commandeer my eggs!
I find your manners lacking and your ethics purely awful,
but if you lay off my breakfast, I’ll cook you your own waffle!

 

Prompt words today are moving, anxiety, alibi, dubitable, rhythm and French toast. (Images from Unsplash.)

New Secrets Revealed!!!

30 Replies


Have you ever slept on / in a hammock?

Yes, frequently for short naps in my own gazebo.

Do you find it easy to maintain friendship with other people?

Yes, although the older I get, the less time we seem to spend together. It has to do with the amount of things there are to do and the longer time it seems to take to do them. Plus, friends are moving and, sadly, passing away.  I maintain them in my heart and thoughts.

Are you a person of ethics?

I hope so.

If so, how does that impact your daily life?

I think I’m more aware that when things are wrong, I can do something to change them–by volunteering or at the very least by donating.

Are you decisive or indecisive as a person?

Decisive

Why do people hold double standards?

Because it is easier to think something and/or to believe in it than to do it.

Inspired by Kristian and That Really Burns my Biscuits #10
What is your most unhealthiest but guiltiest pleasure and why?

Cheetos Torciditos, because they are practically the only thing that tastes good to me anymore.

What is your process of writing a new post for your blog?

It is the first thing that I do when I wake up, after feeding the dogs and cats. I get back into bed and don’t leave it until I’ve written at least one poem to the prompts and posted a new photo of a flower for Cee’s prompt. I’ve done this every day for nine years now. I usually come back and read and do more blogs as well.

If you were asked to create a Top Fifteen Book List holding books that you felt everyone should read at least once in their life and would never regret reading what titles would you include?

Becoming (Michelle Obama) nonfiction
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah)
The Delight of Being Ordinary: A Road Trip with the Pope and Dalai Lama (Roland Merullo)
The Brain that Changes Itself. (Norman Doidge M.D.). nonfiction
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries (Kory Stamper)  nonfiction
The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely fine: A Novel. (Gail Honeyman)
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (Helen Simonson)
The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Club (Sophie Green)
The Grand Sophy (Georgette Heyer)
Secrets of a Charmed Life (Susan Meissner)
Crazy Salad and Scribble, Scribble (Nora Ephron essays)
The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion (Fannie Flagg)
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (Lisa See)
Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing and Survival (Leslie Johansen Nack)
Anything by Anne Tyler or Barbara Kingsolver
The Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley
Anything by Jane Austen or the Brontes
Logical Family: A Memoir (Armistead Maupin)
Simon the Fiddler (Grover Gardner)

How important is it for you to know a person’s real name? [Be this online, off line, social media or blogging]

I like knowing their real name. I always have this feeling that if I did, I would find some connection between us that otherwise we would never discover.

When at school what were your top five subjects that you were passionate about?

Literature, Composition, Botany, Chorus, Math

Why was this – what did you love about them?

I loved reading literature and creative writing and also studying grammar. I liked Botany because it was a science where we didn’t have to dissect animals and because I love plants. I enjoyed singing in the chorus. I loved the puzzle aspect of math but never really discovered what it was for, short of multiplication, division and addition. I could do the geometry and trig and I actually won the math award in high school without ever actually learning any practical applications!!!

Are those five subjects still present in your life today in any form?

I still write for hours every day and always have a book going, although I now listen to them on Audible as my eyes give out by the end of the day. Luckily Alexa and my phone now help me with math as I’ve lost my facility for doing math in my head. I am still crazy about plants without having to dissect them and have lots of plants and flowers and trees in my garden and I do daily photos of flowers for Cee’s blog. I no longer sing much as I’ve lost my voice but all through school and college I sang in church choirs, duets, girls chorus, mixed choirs and in the chorale in college.

Are you a photogenic person?

No. At least I certainly hope I don’t look like any of the recent photos that have been taken of me.

Are you eager to appear in family of friend snaps?

No. I am always the one taking the photos so I rarely appear in them.

Are there many photos taken of you in the various stages of your life?

Yes. tons of them thanks to my older sister when I was younger and because of friends and family taking them later.

With regard to the paranormal do you choose to not believe because there is nothing to believe or because you feel it is safer to not believe?

I do believe in the paranormal to some extent.

Are you a non-believer or a believer?

Non-believer in organized religion. I do, however, believe in some spiritual element in the world.

How are you with meeting strangers/new people who might or could become new friends?

I have traveled so much that I feel I’m good at meeting and befriending people.

Is there a process you adopt to identify if they are the right fit for you?

If it feels right and easy and fun and natural, we are the right fit.

For: Question Time Over Coffee

Where You May Find Us Napping!!!

6 Replies

 

half-and-half, off-and-on
On the sofa
Up against Mom’s ear
On “our” deck chairs
In our mom’s outdoor “office

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

For the Six Word Saturday prompt

Poinsettias: FOTD, Nov 26, 2022

4 Replies

 

They’re back! Poinsettias outside my bedroom door getting ready for Xmas.

For Cee’s FOTD

Grandpa’s Stories

5 Replies

 

Grandpa’s Stories

She smelled of gin and jasmine and was a lovely sight,
with her intricate maneuvers as she engineered her flight
out the back door of the restaurant and then over the hill
to escape the sure appearance of her dinner bill.
The leadership of angels led me on my quest
to pursue over hill and dale with muffler and with vest,

for it was a winter evening, swathed in ice and frost,
and I feared that she would freeze or at the very least, get lost.
When I found her in the forest, I offered her the garment,
told her that I’d paid her bill and kicked the snarling varmint
that dashed at her from bushes, and therefore saved her life
and that is how I came to meet up with my wife!

I’ve guarded her from varmints and paid her bills since then,
kept her warm and safe and supplied her with her gin.
You know her now as Grannie, old and soft and pale,
but you should know your grandma was not always so frail.
When you go out partying, feeling wild and free,
those are traits you got from her, and certainly not me!!!

Prompt words today are frost, offer, leadership, intricate, bill and jasmine. I never knew either of my grandpas, but if I had, I hope they would have told silly stories like this one!!

Doggie Drama

17 Replies


What are the chances that I would capture this action while I was exercising in the pool? But, I had noticed a large golden-orb weaver spider on my neighbor’s wall and although I knew it was too far away to get a good photo, I was listening to an Audible book and the phone was in reaching distance, so I thought I’d try. Coco and Zoe jogged over to check out my action and this is what resulted. Since i was holding the camera in my hands, I captured most of it, other than the recovery action which meant I had to set the camera down. Please click on photos to enlarge and read the story.

The picture of the spider was barely worth capturing, but I had to try.
Coco and Zoe trotted over together. to see what I was doing,
Zoe was the first to decide to leave the other side of the pool and to come closer.
Coco was a bit slower in the action.
But after Zoe started out,
ChiWeenies
Zoe had a look around
and moved a bit away from Coco,
but Coco soon joined her
and was up to her usual hijinks.
The problem was, they were a bit too close to the edge of the pool for such antics
Zoe, misbalanced by Coco’s head under her tummy, splashed into the pool
And Coco soon followed her. Coco was able to get herself out of the pool,
but after two failed efforts by Zoe, I lifted her out. Good thing I was there. This is the first time this has happened.

 

 

Elefante

1 Reply

Elefante

In spite of the excrescence on my spaniel’s snout,
he seems to have no problem in sniffing danger out.

When he has an inkling that a cougar or a bear
is within a mile of us, his nose extraordinaire

indicates a warning with a sniff and then a snort,
signaling that it would be a good time to abort

previous plans in order for me to begin musing
about a route more suitable for less dangerous cruising.

He’s a canine Dustin Hoffman or a man’s best friend Durante,
so excessive in proboscis that I’ve named him “Elefante.”

A prince of nasal warning, he’s the hero of my life,
so I’d never dream of yielding him to the surgeon’s knife,

for unlike other species, dogs are not subject to vanity—
another indication of the extent of their sanity.

 

Prompt words today are *excrescence, dangerous, musing, inkling, prince and responsible. *An excrescence is a distinct outgrowth on a human or animal body or on a plant, especially one that is the result of disease or abnormality. As you might have guessed, “elefante” is Spanish for elephant. Image from Unsplash.