This flower is actually quite small–perhaps an inch or an inch and a half across.
Kalanchoe: FOTD May 5, 2021
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Author Archives: lifelessons
Cee’s Fun Foto: Real vs Fake
Click on photos to enlarge. Especially the first one!
Cee’s prompt was Real Vs. Fake. Hmm..which one is real? Big duck or little duck? Stuffed duck or wood duck? Sometimes it is hard to tell.
Hibiscus: FOTD May 4, 2021
Coronavirus and the Corner Bar
Coronavirus and the Corner Bar
He scrubbed the bar with cleanser and moved apart the chairs
with six feet in between them and just a few in pairs.
He sterilized the counter with that gelatinous goo
that had become ubiquitous, as he was told to do.
He laid off all his servers and bartended well-masked,
ready to do with diligence whatever he was asked.
Yet his barstools sat neglected, for no one came to play
and his profit margin was shrinking every day.
His savings were depleted by rent and overhead
as all his favorite regulars stayed at home in bed.
When he looked at the percentages, he knew he had to act.
In one month he’d be ruined—bankrupted, in fact.
He took a bottle of the gin he’d used to such acclaim,
forgot vermouth and olives, taking careful aim,
to spill it down the counter where it ran down to the rug,
then upset a candle and departed with a shrug.
Carefully he locked the door, got in his car and left.
Basically broken-hearted, feeling gutted and bereft.
He saw flames in his rear-view mirror, his problems rectified
as he took the only out, committing barmecide.
Prompts for today are cleanser, basic, barmecide, acclaim and percentage. Photo by Jack Prichett on Unsplash, used with permission.
P.S. If you wondered, as I did, what “barmecide” really means, as an adjective it means illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing. As a noun, it means a person who offers benefits that are illusory or disappointing. Nope, I just couldn’t inflict that upon you.
Mother: A Photo A Week Challenge
For Nancy Merrill’s special Mother’s Day challenge, we were asked to post a photo of our mother. This is my very favorite photo of my mother and me. My mother lived to be 91 and never really got old. May I inherit that capacity from her. R.I.P. Mother!!!! xooxox
More Fire on the Mountain
Above are photos taken yesterday morning (May 3.) What looks like a bank of clouds is actually smoke from a fire that has been raging for five days on the slopes of Mount Garcia, the extinct volcano across the lake from me.
The grainy shot above (taken with my phone, so not the best photo) was taken at about 1 a.m. this morning, May 4th, from my rooftop terrace. If you want to get a better view of the fire, have a look at the time-lapse video for the past 24 hours on this site: http://www.ajijicweather.com/lakecam.
When Forgottenman suggested I write about the fire, I reminded him that I actually had written about fires on Mount Garcia many years ago, and he further suggested I reblog that blog, so, always willing to please, below is a link. The Maria Phoenix restaurant I mention, which became a favorite of mine after this first visit, has since been sold to new owners, but still, as regular as clockwork, Señor Garcia (as locals fondly call the mountain) continues to wear his yearly sombrero of smoke. Here is the link to my poem about the fires eight years ago:
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2013/04/18/dining-alone-at-the-maria-bonita-restaurant-bar-day-18-of-napowrimo/
“Mentor” for dVerse Poets Quadrille Prompt
Riding around in the back of a jeep with the top off?
Dad, Amana Colony
Mentor
That seed of you planted in me
directs me to turn from daily tasks
to look for lost things.
Then the dust of my past,
brushed from some recess of memory,
mixes with imagination to fabricate
a scrap of art, a poem, a tale.
After I wrote this, I couldn’t decide who to use to illustrate it. Then I noticed the “art, poem and tale” and realized I’d had a mentor in each genre. My mother for poetry, my husband for art and my father as storyteller.
A quadrille is a poem with exactly 44 words. The dVerse poets prompt asks us to write a quadrille that contains the word seed. Here is a link to the dVerse Poets page where you can read other responses to the prompt.
En Mass Transit
En Mass Transit
Traffic comes and traffic goes,
but where they all go, no one knows.
They gun their engine, shift a gear
to be anywhere but here.
North goes south and south goes north,
driving, driving back and forth.
Wearing tires out, burning gas,
changing where they are en masse.
In New York, Paris, Pittsburg, Rome,
Nobody seems to just stay home!
The Word of the Day Prompt today is traffic.,
