These innocent-looking flowers actually invade my entire yard! They grow fast and furious and cover everything. Lovely for awhile, but then they totally die back and dry out, the vines have to be pulled off to reveal all the underkill. Pasiano recently removed them from most places but left enough in this spot for the little rascals to come back. I love them, but not their final result.
For Cee’s FOTD
For me, all of these photos depict a sort of finale.
Click on photos to enlarge and on right arrow to advance to next photo.
This will be Cee’s last Black and White Challenge. Thanks, Cee, for all the work you’ve done to maintain this and other challenges. For Cee’s CBWC
Dear Genie (A note Affixed to a Bottle)
Get back into the bottle. You’re doing nothing right.
The Adonis I requested just the other night
turned out to be the plumber. He got here around nine,
but the pipes he chose to work on were not any pipes of mine.
A problem with your hearing is a possibility,
so for now there’s only one more wish that I would ask of thee.
A doctor of ear, nose and throat you need to visit, please,
for when I requested money, you brought me hives of bees.
Now I’ve sufficient honey and beeswax it appears—
almost as much as I imagine you have in your ears.
As it is, each thing I wish for occasions my new fears.
So you’re confined to quarters ’til your hearing reappears!
These huge hibiscus just keep coming along. I love them and there are two or three new ones every day, just demanding attention.
For Cee’s FOTD
MORNING LINES I start again at the break of day to ascertain what I will say. What dreams have taught will have its way. I cannot throw night thoughts away.
The W3 prompt this week was to write a poem incorporating 2 or 3 lines of Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem. The lines I chose are: “At the break of day”and “Start again.” My poem is above. Here are Cohen’s lyrics:
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
To see the W3 Prompt go HERE. To read more poems written to this prompt or to submit your own, go HERE.
So, late last night, ForgottenMan commented on the fact that I was practically blogless for the day. I commented that if he felt the need for a poem that he might furnish some prompts, which he took literally and promptly supplied. They were: effective affective (in)effective elective selective invective.
By the time he had supplied them, I was already asleep, but I awakened at 4:30 AM and after doing Wordle, Quordle, Quordle Sequence and Blossom, I accepted his challenge. Here is my feeble effort in satisfying his prompt:
Prompted
My task is totally elective
and my choice of words selective,
so I will rouse no invective
if I turn out unreflective
concerning words he found effective
but that I brand ineffective
in causing me to be reflective!!!!
Click on image to enlarge.
If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September through May, you may live in South Dakota. If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t even work there, you may live in South Dakota. If you’ve worn shorts and a jacket at the same time, you may live in South Dakota. If you’ve had a lengthy telephone convers……ation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you may live in South Dakota. If “vacation” means going to Sioux Falls for the weekend, you may live in South Dakota. If you measure distance in hours, you may live in South Dakota. If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live in South Dakota. If you have switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ in the same day and back again, you may live in South Dakota. If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you may live in South Dakota. If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both doors unlocked, you may live in South Dakota. If you carry jumpers in your car and your wife knows how to use them, you may live in South Dakota. If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you may live in South Dakota. If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you may live in South Dakota. If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction, you may live in South Dakota. If you have more miles on your snow blower than your car, you may live in South Dakota. If you find 10 degrees “a little chilly”, you may live in South Dakota. If you know how to pronounce Ipswich, Belle Fourche and Pierre you might be South Dakota. If you actually understand these jokes, repost this so all of your South Dakota friends and others can see…. Too true! LOL
And, you might think you pronounced Pierre correctly, but unless you rhymed it with beer, you were wrong.
Thanks to my friend Jim Anshutz for sending this to me, and thanks to Cherie Ramsdell for sending it to Jim!!!
It is only coincidence that my new book on growing up in South Dakota will soon be available on Amazon. I’ll let you know when. It’s titled The China Bulldog and Other Tales of a Small Town Girl.
Image by Alex Person on Unsplash.
For Cee’s FOTD
Prompted
They stand in restless lengthy queues, awaiting their fate.
They’ve gone unused so many months. Perhaps it is too late.
Words that rhyme group up in pairs, trios or quartets.
Words with equal syllables cavort in minuets.
They cannot volunteer themselves but must wait to be chosen.
In lockstep, they march caught in place, thus sentenced to be frozen.
Meanwhile, her muse goes shopping for expressions unexpressed,
hoping that she’ll stumble on unique words lately pressed.
Thus are new poems stymied, waiting for inspiration,
hoping they’ll be given birth before their expiration.
And the poet gazes skyward, waiting for that zen
to deliver the first word to her, so she can begin.
Thanks to Martha Kennedy for pointing out that August 21 is National Poetry Day as well as RDP for inspiring this poem! FOR RDP: Queue
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 