Cee is taking off a month for a well-deserved rest, but as I was opening the front gate for my Tuesday English student, Eduardo, to leave, I noticed this interesting bloom at the end of a shoot my echeveria has been sending up for the past week or more. Had to share it. Click on photos to enlarge.
Can’t believe I forgot to post this for the first time in 10 years! Here is my Jan 8 FOTD a day late. Mia Culpa. It’s the huge cactus below the pool, catching the first rays of the morning that have just peekied over the house. These little balls are as close as it ever gets to flowering.
For Cee’s FOTD
Today’s Post is pictures numbered 124. Click on photos to enlarge.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #3.” Today’s number is 124. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below.
Fire & Ice
The fatal flakes of swirling snow
covered everything below,
including picnickers too frail
to withstand the frozen gale.
Framed in words, alas, more gory
than what was the actual story,
the fading flame of their last fire
was said to be their funeral pyre.
But they who replace truth with fable
sometimes choose to turn the table,
feigning facts with spurious lies,
creating fiction in its guise.
The truth is that the icy glaze
that covered lovers was just a phase,
for just before it was too late,
they hopped aboard a passing freight,
then jumped off at a neighboring town
where they flagged a taxi down.
Those bodies reduced to mere ember
scattered under snow-decked timber
were not human, but slabs of veal
placed in the fire form their meal.
But since such legends are mostly truthless,
they fabricate details more ruthless.
And that is why, finding the fire,
they named that hollow “The Lovers’ Pyre.”
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 636 the word prompts are: fatal flakes frame phase feign fable fame favor freight flame frail fade
Seesaw
When folks tell me to just do it,
my first thought is to eschew it.
And though I may change my mind,
I’m really not the doing kind.
On the other hand, if you
reveal something you’re going to do—
something of the crazy kind—
I might see fit to change my mind!
For Stream Of Consciousness Saturday, Jan 6, 2024 the prompt is “just do it.”
Pen & Ink
Guided by a hand like yours,
pens can open many doors.
Unclip it. Uncap its point.
Let paper that pen anoint.
As words somersault and caper,
flowing from your heart to paper,
a simple point, an ink-trailed line
could link your lonely heart with mine.
For Weekend Writing Prompt: Guide
The assignment is to write a piece of exactly 45 words making use of the word “guide.” I snapped this photo in Guanajuato. Never hurts to have a pen handy!
This gorgeous bloom was a surprise popup in a planter near the hot tub and pool. Evidently planted in a past year, it thankfully reemerged this year.
FOR CEE’S FOTD
Penultimate/Ultimatepen
He said they couldn’t fence him for he liked to roam free.
No sty could ever hold him. No captive pig was he.
That he was a wild pig was true without a doubt.
As soon as they would pen him in, in seconds he’d break out.
But the farmer, too, was resolute. As his prize pig departed,
he vowed that he’d contain him. He wouldn’t be outsmarted.
He built a sturdy metal fence, and then he strung it higher—
woven fine and tight of the premium barbed wire.
Then he caught Porky and closed him in, determined that he’d win,
for it wasn’t up to any pig to refuse his fencing-in.
But indeed the pig devised again a means by which he left,
leaving the farmer feeling defeated and bereft.
Once more caught and then re-penned and taking his repast,
the pig had not a clue that this meal would be his last.
This escape his penultimate, now the die was cast.
His days of glorious freedom, alas, were in the past.
Then, his last meal finished, he made his next advance
toward a fence reconstructed, ready to take his chance.
But, alas, he’d met his match. Escape would never be,
for the farmer had infused the fence with electricity.
This time not the penultimate, it was the ultimate pen,
for Porky has been seen, I fear, just one more time since then.
Spread out on a platter, an apple in his jaws,
his final feat a foolish one, bound to give one pause.
When he said they couldn’t pen him in, I fear poor Porky lied,
for when he hit the fence this time, in minutes, he was fried.
Ham that he was, I fear that poor Porky’s lot was cast.
For the pen after the penultimate turned out to be his last.
Probably not the first time a pig who was a sinner
paid the price for it by turning into Easter dinner.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 