Hibiscus: FOTD Dec 4, 2023

For David. Here’s the flower you couldn’t see over the wall!  Happy rainy day.

For Cee’s FOTD

Show Off

Sadly, I don’t know the source of this photo shared with me by a friend, but had to share it. Please note that I did not take it. If you do, please advise so I can give them credit.

Kalanchoe Blooms for FOTD Dec 3, 2023

Click on photos to enlarge.

The photos of this kalanchoe plant last week depicted wilting flowers and buds. Here are those buds in their full bloom as well as more buds! The third photo is of leaves. As you can see, it has been raining off and on all day. By the time I went out to photograph the leaves, there had been a good deal of rain and it is still raining. About time. Our rainy season seems to be coming on 6 months late this year. I’m guessing that they are the “Beach Bells” variety.

For Cee’s FOTD.

“Unique Creatures” for the Lens Artists Challenge.

For the Lens Artists Challenge: Unique

Update: Tina Schell asked about the caterpillar, which goes through several phases before becoming a hummingbird moth. You can see several the stages in my old blog post HERE.
And HERE is another blog with even more stages of the caterpillar.

Couldn’t Resist

I don’t know the source of this. A friend sent it and I couldn’t resist sharing.

Kalanchoe: FOTD Dec 2, 2023

For Cee’s FOTD

Hibiscus Macro: FOTD Dec 1, 2023

 

I found this photo while cruising through my files. I was sure I must have published it before, but my WP media files have no record of it, so here it is, either finally or again.

For Cee’s FOTD prompt

Sleeping with Dogs (For Last on the Card)

Click on Photos to Enlarge

Can you find three dogs in this jumble of sheets and pillows? Barely room for one human to join them and it takes a bit of pushing and relocating. Now it is 6:30 a.m. and soon they’ll all be off like a shot for a walk with Oscar. It’s the first day of the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, so we’ve all been up since 6 when the cohetes (bottle rockets) started going off. The actual celebration is Dec. 9-12, but San Juan Cosala likes to stretch the occasion out from Dec. 1-12.

There will be shrines set up in front of buildings all over town.  Yolanda will switch my candles to a position in front of the Virgin statue on my divider between the dining room and kitchen and “native sons”—men who have gone to work in the States—will send money for huge displays of flowers in the church. On the 12th, the 92-year-old statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe will be paraded through the streets and there will be a huge procession with many of the people being led blindfolded behind her statue. In former years, many would crawl on their knees in the procession, but I’m not sure if this happens now. Always a celebration being held somewhere in surrounding villages.

Ajijic is still celebrating the San Andreas Festival, with booths and carnival rides being set up all over town. Earlier, San Juan celebrated for San Juan, then Day of the Dead, now the Virgin, then Xmas. In Jan., Tres Reyes and February Candlemas, then Carnival leading up to lent and depictions of the crucifixion. I’ll stop there as I could go on month-by-month throughout the year.

Oscar just arrived and the dogs are off like a shot, my body being no big obstruction—they all just ran over or leaped over.  Coco always returns for one brief cuddle as Oscar puts the leashes on the others, then bounds out a second time when it is her turn. I’ll know they are home when I hear their food dishes rattling as he doles out their breakfast. It is 6:54. So go mornings on M-W-F in this house.

 

For Bushboy’s Last on the Card prompt

Locked Rooms for Thursday Inspirations, Nov 30, 2023

Locked Rooms

My thoughts live in a mansion, restrained to just ten rooms.
When the unused rooms grow cobwebs, they must sweep them out with brooms.
They cannot see their pleasures, for they enter with eyes shut.
Sealed chambers filled with many things, but we do not know what.
It is exhausting just maintaining all these extra spaces.
No wonder that I lose my keys and forget most new faces.

No telling when we’ll let our thoughts roam free in other rooms.
For all these years they’ve been sealed up like dark and unused tombs.
Perhaps we’ll find they’re portals to other times and places.
Perhaps they lead to other worlds in intergalactic spaces.
They might allow a journey into the minds of others.
Would extrasensory perception make us enemies or brothers?

I’m sure the reason that we use small portions of our brain
is because if we knew of them, we’d use them all in vain.
We’d journey through the cosmos to plunder other spheres.
React to them like enemies, guided by our fears.
If there is any entity guiding how things go,
perhaps they recognize that Earth’s evolving sort of slow.

Our energies put into things instead of who we are.
Instead of love? Investments. Instead of aid? A car.
If perhaps we aren’t allowed the full use of our brains,
it is because we have not learned to use them for our gains.
How we look’s important. How much it costs the point.
We’re ruining our planet by cluttering up the joint.

Our brains we use for warfare. Weapons we can’t control.
They wind up in a child’s hands or on a grassy knoll.
They’re used for entertainment on a computer screen
in games that build aggression. We win by being mean.
Shows they call reality prefabricate each role.
The lowest denominator seems to be their goal.

True, other things are in our mind: poems, music, art,
dance and social functions, a few of them with heart.
So we stage elaborate galas to raise the money for
children who are hungry, adults chewed to the core.
And yet some of us still balk at giving health care to the ill.
If they are not wealthy, they must chew the bitter pill.

No doctors and no dental care. No succor for the poor.
If they worked, they’d have health care. Complaints are such a bore!
These things we fill our minds with. There’s no need for more brain space.
In the ten percent of brain we use, new thoughts we cannot face.
This E.S.P. is hogwash, and U.F.O’s are fiction.
Even the thought of universal health care causes friction.

For every room within the mind that’s used, there are nine more
filled with mysteries we won’t know until we try the door.
Some enter and return to tell of wonders they have spied.
Yet unenquiring minds respond by saying they have lied.
We’ll never leave these sealed up rooms unless we learn to dream.
Let creative thoughts flow out in an uncensored stream.

To seep beneath closed doors into our mind’s more spacious realms.
Be adventurous voyagers standing at the helms
of ships of mind that sail the wilder seas of consciousness
regardless of the ones who try to censor and to hush.
Turn off the TV sets and games of war and violence.
Let Honey Boo Boo slip back into former innocence.

Lay Kim Kardashian to rest, pull out your skeleton key
that just might let you in to all the rest that you can be.

For the Thursday Inspiration: Key

“Giving” for dVerse Poets, Nov 30, 2023

IMG_6707

Sacrifice

Some people give their lives to it,
And others never do––
Conditions never calling for
Rash actions to ensue.
I’ve held onto my life because
Fate never asked me to
Immolate myself to save
Child, soldier, Jew,
Ensuring that I remain 
Securely in life’s queue.

I don’t think sacrifice has been anything I’ve had to do much of in my life, short of occasionally knowingly giving someone the last pork chop or the biggest piece of cake.  Perhaps this is because I had no children.

I can think of only one big potential sacrifice I made in my life and that is something I will not speak of–mainly because people it might affect are still alive. So, in lieu of writing a personal essay or poem on this topic, I invite you to read an article about the top ten most inspiring self sacrifices.  You can go  HERE to read it.

 

For dVerse Poets: Giving