SymphonyinYellow An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay Are moored against the shadowy wharf, And, like a yellow silken scarf, The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade And flutter from the Temple elms, And at my feet the pale green Thames Lies like a rod of rippled jade. –Oscar Wilde
This Bush Poppy (Dendromecon rigida) is a California native shrub. It’s a tough and beautiful plant but only if planted in the right conditions. The Bush Poppy thrives on rocky clay slopes with excellent draining. If planted in sandier soils, it can handle supplementary water up to once a month. Prefers full sun. Flowers are beautiful, as are the long, thin, blue-green leaves.
Look at this lemony yellow azalea. I didn’t even know they came in yellow until I used the info app on my phone to identify this gorgeous girl. I think it’s actually called Rhododendron ‘Lemon Lights’.
This is the last day of April. Tomorrow we celebrate Beltane and May Day, and while we can weave flowers in our hair and dance around the maypole, it’s also also called Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day, to commemorate the struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement.
May Day is a far cry away from the international call of distress, mayday. I always wondered where that term emanated from. For some reason, SOS didn’t work, so it seems as if mayday was attributed to Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio officer in the RAF. In 1927, the United States formally adopted it as an official radiotelegraph distress signal, explaining that mayday corresponds “to the French pronunciation of the expression m’aider.” It’s simple meaning in English is “help me.”
Beltane is a Celtic annual festival to signify the return of the light.
Whether you light bonfires, decorate your homes with May flowers, or make May bushes, have a Happy Beltane and May Day!
In May Yes, I will spend the livelong day With Nature in this month of May; And sit beneath the trees, and share My bread with birds whose homes are there; While cows lie down to eat, and sheep Stand to their necks in grass so deep; While birds do sing with all their might, As though they felt the earth in flight. This is the hour I dreamed of, when I sat surrounded by poor men; And thought of how the Arab sat Alone at evening, gazing at The stars that bubbled in clear skies;
And of young dreamers, when their eyes Enjoyed methought a precious boon In the adventures of the Moon Whose light, behind the Clouds’ dark bars, Searched for her stolen flocks of stars. When I, hemmed in by wrecks of men, Thought of some lonely cottage then Full of sweet books; and miles of sea, With passing ships, in front of me; And having, on the other hand, A flowery, green, bird-singing land. William Henry Davies 1871–1940
April is almost over and I nearly forgot it was National Poetry Month!
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. Joyce Kilmer
I looked up at this gnarled but lovely twisty eucalyptus tree trunk and ran my fingers down her bark/skin. It was roughly textured but felt solid and safe. Notice all the nooks and crannies to shelter birds and other living creatures.
This intense cosmic energy is not only messing with my sleep, but I was having strange battery issues with my laptop computer so I went back to the Apple store where I had once met Al Gore (yes, VICE PRESIDENT Al Gore) and asked the Genius Bar tech to perform a diagnostic check. The tech didn’t do much but it’s all better, so who really knew what caused the problem, whether it was a hardware glitch or a solar flare, or other planetary influences. The good thing is that it’s back to working perfectly.
There were lots of traffic accidents and horrible drivers everywhere yesterday. The freeway was completely shut down for hours because of an insane situation with a woman who allegedly vandalized a vehicle and carjacked a Lyft. She led the police on a short chase but finally, peacefully, surrendered to police after a prolonged standoff on Interstate 5. It looked like WW3 with all of the military-like Special Weapons and Tactics Team surrounding the vehicle. The woman was taken into custody on suspicion of felony vandalism, brandishing a weapon in a threatening manner, assault with a deadly weapon, carjacking, resisting arrest, and felony evasion of police.
That’s way too much negative energy for ME to deal with and I’m so glad I wasn’t stuck for hours on the freeway. I felt lucky that I had made a spontaneous last minute decision to take an alternate route home. I heard all the sirens though, but had assumed it was simply another accident.
Time to take a deep breath, stay home, work in the garden, listen to the birds, and read a poem or two while cultivating some zen as well as my veggies.
How I Go To The Woods by Mary Oliver
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.
I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
I’m referring to Pride of Madeira, the superstar of my garden!
This plant REALLY loves the environment here at Casa de Enchanted Seashells. I read that it’s becoming invasive in places along the coast and I can see how that could happen as it easily reseeds itself.
Native to Madeira Island, north of the Canary Islands, it’s a tough perennial and can survive all summer with little to no water. Since I think we’ve seen the last of our record-breaking rainfall here in SoCal, that’s exactly what they’ll have to do to survive.
And in a different part of the garden, a slightly different hue…It’s HUGE.
Bees love it too. So do hummingbirds and butterflies.
Pride of Madeira grows to about six feet tall and some of my specimens are twice as wide as they are tall.
I quite literally have dozens of baby Prides if anyone wants to plant them in their garden!
(I know that one is not really supposed to end a sentence with “in”, but the proper way sounded stilted and phony, so I made a decision based on this information: “never ending a sentence with a preposition is a myth. It’s something wrongly attributed to English that is actually a real rule in Latin.”)
So…on a walk a couple years ago, I found this chair with its turquoise-painted partner tossed out on the street. They looked lonely and sad, so I went home to get my car and rescued them both.
I placed the chairs on the side of the house with every intention of brightening them up with a new coat of paint but their weary and worn character grew on me. I’ve left them to naturally weather every storm just as they are — honest and true — with nothing to camouflage their straightforward authenticity.
I like them just the way they are.
Funny enough, I get a lot of compliments from neighbors who walk by and comment about how they love the artful way the flowers seem to embrace this simple old chair.
The Chair That No One Sits In
You see them on porches and on lawns down by the lakeside, usually arranged in pairs implying a couple
who might sit there and look out| at the water or the big shade trees. The trouble is you never see anyone
sitting in these forlorn chairs though at one time it must have seemed a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.
Sometimes there is a little table between the chairs where no one is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.
It might be none of my business, but it might be a good idea one day for everyone who placed those vacant chairs
on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them for the sake of remembering whatever it was they thought deserved
to be viewed from two chairs side by side with a table in between. The clouds are high and massive that day.
The woman looks up from her book. The man takes a sip of his drink. Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,
the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird then another, cries of joy or warning— it passes the time to wonder which.
William James Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.
Scrolling through the vast wasteland of the internet, I discovered this picture and it immediately brought tears to my eyes.
I could actually feel myself as the girl caressing this magnificent humpback whale.
The essential and enduring connection and communion with other creatures is a combination of compassion and empathy and kindness.
I did a little research and learned about the work of Rachel Byler, artist and creator of The Colorful Cat Studio.
🐋It’s on my May Birthday Wish List as I could gaze at this painting forever and ever. It brings a simple yet complex joy.🐋
One of my favorite poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver wrote about humpback whales:
HUMPBACKS
There is, all around us, this country of original fire
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something has to be holding our bodies in its rich and timeless stables or else we would fly away.
Off Stellwagon off the Cape, the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage of barnacles and joy they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it like children at play.
They sing, too. And not for any reason you can’t imagine.
Three of them rise to the surface near the bow of the boat, then dive deeply, their huge scarred flukes tipped to the air.
We wait, not knowing just where it will happen; suddenly they smash through the surface, someone begins shouting for joy and you realize it is yourself as they surge upward and you see for the first time how huge they are, as they breach, and dive, and breach again through the shining blue flowers of the split water and you see them for some unbelievable part of a moment against the sky- like nothing you’ve ever imagined- like the myth of the fifth morning galloping our of darkness, pouring heavenward, spinning; then
they crash back under those black silks and we all fall back together into that wet fire, you know what I mean
I know a captain who has seen them playing with seaweed, tossing the slippery lengths of it into the air.
I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever she can, and nudge it gently along the bow with her long flipper.
I know several lives worth living.
listen, whatever it is you try to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you like the dreams of your body,
its spirit longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything, even the great whale, throbs with song.
This full moon is all about healing, harmony, and balance. Stay grounded and peaceful as we embrace the beautiful energy of this pink moon.
“Always remember we are under the same sky, looking at the same moon.” – Maxine Lee
For some reason, none of the pictures I took of the moon came out great, so I snapped a pic of some of my favorite crystals on a pink heart dish.
I love this poem about the moon, written by Lady Montagu (1689-1762), a truly remarkable woman. In addition to her poetry and writing, she is also celebrated for introducing the smallpox inoculation to Britain, half a century before Edward Jenner developed a vaccine against the disease.
Hymn to the Moon
Thou silver deity of secret night, Direct my footsteps through the woodland shade; Thou conscious witness of unknown delight, The Lover’s guardian, and the Muse’s aid! By thy pale beams I solitary rove, To thee my tender grief confide; Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove, My friend, my goddess, and my guide …
How could this day be halfway over and I forgot to observe National Mermaid Day?
Mermaid Day is observed every year on March 29. It’s for lovers of the fabled creature who appear in literature, mythology, music, films, and pop culture.
Gazing at me while I write…
Maybe mermaids ARE real; at least that’s what I want to believe as I see the world through my rose-colored glasses.
Mermaids Believe in magic. Play in the waves. Know how to weather a storm. See life’s beauty. Dive for their soul. Ride the tides of life. Know there are treasures in the deep. -Unknown
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 