Happy first birthday!

It's time to open your gifts.

Then: play with the box!

Shy Violet

Shy Violet was quiet,

more thoughtful than active.

Pale in appearance, her colorful side hidden to most,

The morning sun would show her loveliness

To those privileged to be allowed near.

Shy Violet had

Rainbows on the walls of her small room.

Only those who woke early enough

could enjoy an acquaintance with the inner beauty of

Shy Violet.

When I moved into my final dorm room my senior year in college, I found a small handwritten note in the desk that said "This room painted in Shy Violet." The walls appeared white except in the day time sun, when the violet shade would deepen. This was strongest around noon in winter when the sun would shine through the leafless branches of the trees on the riverbank outside my window. Midday was the only time that my hanging crystal would get enough sun to make rainbows on the light purple walls.

Beauty in simplicity

My garden isn't lovely
in the conventional sense.
It is home to vegetables, not flowers.


Shades of green
With an occasional spot of color:
Golden squash blossom, yellow bean, orange and red tomatoes


But the real beauty
Among the deep green of the spinach or the deep rich brown of the composted soil
Is hearing my kids call out, with complete honesty,

"Mom's playing in the dirt again!"

Spring poems and photography

Please visit Spring, a creation of a fellow gardener and poet.

Blooming Field Drive has neither
Fields
nor blooms.

Foxglove Lane is a lane,
maybe
If a lane leads to a strip of condominiums
where the closest thing to a foxglove
is the digitalis in a medicine cabinet.

Who had the brilliant idea
to replace a Blooming Field,
a thriving prairie
of diverse and beautiful grasses and flowers
with large boxy houses painted gray
and name it after the previous tenant -
the Field,
with its lovely, now deceased,
Blooms.