The plumeria is blooming, swaying in the breezes,
Pleasing to the eye but prompting volcanic sneezes!
For Cee’s FOTD.
PLUMERIA: FOTD MAY 2, 2020
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Category Archives: Poems about flowers
Bright Raiment: Bougainvillea, FOTD Mar 11, 2020
Shy little bougainvillea blossoms paint their faces white,
then clothe themselves in leaves of colors much more bright.
Day of Flowers: DOD 2019
Day of Flowers: Day of the Dead, Ajijic, Mexico
Click on first photo to enlarge all
On Friday, I went to decorate the burial plot that I adopted three years ago. Earlier, Oscar and Pablo had cleared out the weeds for me and Yolanda and I went Friday with flowers and to clean off the grave stones as well as to shovel out dirt that had fallen down from ground level onto the grave on the right. When we arrived, there were three young Mexican girls looking at our plot. They were very curious about who the people were who were buried there, since they had Anglo names, so I told them as much as forgottenman and I have been able to discover about the three people. Then a man from Guadalajara came and asked more questions.
When I started to go down to see about removing the dirt, (this plot of three graves is actually sunk down below ground level about four feet) one young girl said to wait and came back with a young man with a shovel who said he would clear out the dirt slide for me. He did hard labor in the sun for over a half hour, even removing stones and rocks that seemed impossible to dig up. When he left and I tried to pay him, he refused, even though I offered the money the traditional three times. It seems the boys from his school had come in a group to help out anyone who needed it. What a heartwarming experience.
The gravestones cleaned, the marigolds placed, we left and I returned the next day with Leslie, who had strung the papel picado for me that morning. We strung it around the fence surrounding the graves, then lit candles and arranged the dead bread, wine coolers for the women and a bottle of beer for the man, chocolate and more sprays of cloth flowers. Four musicians played very near by us the entire time. People came strolling by to talk. Scorching in the sun, we climbed up and sought the cooler shade. We walked around a bit and as you can see, there was no lack of flowers wherever we looked.
For Cee’s FOTD
Don’t Pick the Daisies
See poem below flower collage. (All photos by jdb. Please click on first photo to enlarge all.)
Don’t Pick the Daisies
Please leave those daisies in their wrapper.
I find them just too pert and dapper.
I prefer a floral decoration
prone to promote excitation.
I’d choose something a little queer
to be used as a boutonniere.
Yes, I agree, daisies are cute
but aren’t held in good repute
for inclusion in bouquets exotic.
They aren’t sufficiently chaotic.
All their little petals are spread
in order. They are too well-bred.
I like my flowers with frisky sproutings,
curling ‘rounds and sticking-outings––
birds of paradise well hung
with orange feathers and bright blue tongue.
I admit, I am a binger
on passionflower and wild ginger,
on orchid and bromeliad.
Daisies I find a little sad––
too Doris Day and sixtyish.
A bit of odd is what I wish
for when I choose to pick a flower
for an arrangement or a bower.
Give me heliconia,
proteus or begonia.
For an occasion that is formal,
daisies, dear, are just too normal.
For my mother Pat who liked her food plain and her flowers exotic. XOXOXO
https://dutchgoesthephoto.net/2018/02/06/tuesday-photo-challenge-exotic/
This poem and floral collage were prompted by an earlier post in answer to Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
Copa de Oro: Flower of the Day, June 2, 2017
These copa de oro blooms on the right have formed a tight little fist that will spring open to reveal the petals that are shown on the left..
For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
Saying It with Flowers
“Violets contain ionone, which short-circuits our sense of smell. Â The flower continues to exude its fragrance, but we lose the ability to smell it. Â Wait a minute or two, and its smell will blare again. Then it will fade again, and so on.”
                    — Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
“Violets” jdb photo 2017
Saying It with Flowers
A lovely gesture, the violets—
but their scent  vanished
before you walked out the door.
“It will come back,” you promised.
And so it did, that sweet aroma,
radiating from the deep heart of the flowers
for brief moments before
vanishing again—
coming and going with a greater regularity
than your coming and your going.
“There is a scientific cause for this,”
you noted, ” The fragrance is still there,
but we just lose our ability to smell it.
It will come back again.”
And you were right. Â
I could count upon it’s reappearance—
the mystery of its coming
and its going solved,
unlike your final exit
or why, when I requested
forget me nots,
violets are whatÂ
you gave.
“Forget Me Nots” image from internet
The prompt today was “radiate.”
Hen and Chicks Blossoms: Cee’s Flower of the Day, May 17, 2017
jdbphoto
These succulent hen and chick blooms seem to be blushing. Â It is a very hearty and easily transplanted succulent, thus its scientific name “sempervivum,” which means “lives forever.”
Hen and Chicks
If you’re yearning for a flower, do not question picking them,
for their mama is a hen who is forever chicking them!
For Cee’s flower prompt.
Dahliance
Today, instead of posting a photo of a flower, I chose to write a poem about Cee’s flower of the day. If you haven’t seen it already, go have a look but then come back here to see the poem.
“Dahliance”
Your round perfection, minutely curled.
Your ruby lips in rows unfurled.
The dew you cup in early morn
shows the day has been reborn.
Your face, uplifted, requires no word.
To talk to flowers is absurd.
Instead, I choose a focus and
thus pick you, though you still stand
erect and safe as I depart.
I’ve caught you in my camera’s heart
to be released for all to share,
delivered to them through the air.
You join a virtual bouquet
that I’ve assembled day-by-day
just to give away for free
so whole worlds can admire thee.
Sweet Clover
Before our dad told us its real name,
we used to call it wild mustard.
What did we know about sweet clover except for its color
and that summer smell, cloying in its sugared perfume.
It filled the air and smothered the plains—
bright yellow and green where before
brown stubble had peeked through blown snow.
On these dry lands, what flowers there were
tended to be cash crops or cattle feed.
Sweet clover or alfalfa.
The twitching noses of baby rabbits brought home by my dad
as we proffered it to them by the handful.
Fragile chains we draped around our necks and wrists.
Bouquets for our mom
that wilted as fast as we could pick them.
Summers were sweet clover and sweet corn
and first sweethearts parked on country roads,
windows rolled down to the night air,
then quickly closed to the miller moths.
Heady kisses,
whispered confessions, declarations,
unkept promises.
What we found most in these first selfish loves
was ourselves.
The relief of being chosen
and assurance that all our parts worked.
Our lips accepting those pressures unacceptable
just the year before.
Regions we’d never had much congress with before
calling out for company.
That hard flutter
like a large moth determined to get out.
Finding to our surprise,
like the lyrics of a sixties song,
that our hearts could break, too.
Hot summer nights,
“U”ing Main,
cars full of boys honking
at cars full of girls.
Cokes at Mack’s cafe.
And over the whole town
that heavy ache of sweet clover.
Half promise, half memory.
A giant invisible hand
that covered summer.
The Prompt: The Transporter—Tell us about a sensation — a taste, a smell, a piece of music — that transports you back to childhood.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 