Tag Archives: roses
52 Photos – Petals
First things first.
The snow has melted. The geese are honking their way northward. Last night M saw bats, and we heard the songs of foreign birds, traveling through, making joyful trilling melodies we’d never heard before in our little corner of Vermont. The river is riding high on its banks, and with today’s steady rain it might decide to creep over the ledge to see what it’s like to spread out over the fields. I haven’t heard a spring peeper yet, but the vernal ponds are thawed and shimmering. It’s only a matter of moments.
I hear tell of people in other places who’ve seen crocuses and other early bulbs; not just their green pointy fingers thrown up through the soil, but actual blooms, blossoms, petals.
Not here. Not yet.
(Thank goodness, by the way, for trucks and airplanes that transport roses with flame-tipped petals from southern hot houses to the the mud-bound north.)
But yesterday we brought the hibernating garden hose out of the basement, attached it to the the outdoor spigot, and used it to fill the goats’ water tank. If that’s not a sign of spring, I don’t know what is.
This long, lingering winter’s left me fairly brittle. Slow to thaw. But this week I’m starting to unclench just a little, to unfurl. I’m not ready to bloom yet, but I felt the warm sun on my head yesterday, and I felt a softening where the ice has held fast.
The baby apple and pear trees, which were up to their throats in snow just two weeks ago, are covered with brown buds, potential blossoms, but there’s no sign yet of their opening (I check every day). Fairly soon, though, everything will be bursting into spring and we’ll be mowing the lawn and slapping at mosquitoes.
For my birthday this year, M & H gave me a beehive. And 10,000 bees and their queen. We bring the bees home on Saturday. Listen up, buds! You’d better start blooming. We’ve got some pollen and nectar to gather!
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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
52 Photos ~ Bright
This week’s photo theme was “Bright” and, wouldn’t you know it, it was a dark week.
Cloudy, stormy, rainy, with a power outage thrown in for good measure. The night the lights went out, we lit the stove by match, talked by candlelight, and carried battery-powered lanterns up to bed. It was a cozy feeling.
So, yes. A dark week.
But, as you know well, you can still find bright when you look for it, and I was bound to look.
This time of year, when bright appears, it’s slanted, angled, precise. It’s not extravagant the way summer bright is, splashed over everything you see.
The autumn sun is concentrated, rich, specific, like a jam that’s cooked down from watery juice to a sticky, puddle of flavor. You can’t gulp it down. You lick it off the back of a spoon, tasting a handful of fruits in one drop.
You can be walking along under a grey felted sky and then, from under the clouds, a beam streams out, as if pointing a finger: look at that hillside, that specific tree, that mottled leaf-strewn path.
That one-and-only late-budding rose bush.
Today bright Phoebus she smiled down on me for the very first time;
For the very first time she smiled on me.
Today bright Phoebus she smiled down on me for the very first time;
For the very first time she smiled on me.
No more clouds, no more rain, gone the clouds, she smiled again.
Today bright Phoebus she smiled down on me for the very first time;
For the very first time she smiled on me.
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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.
Grongar 