Poinsettias

I love plants.  I love watching them grow.  I love their colors and shapes. And I have collected dozens of them.   Plants in my garden, plants in my house.  But I’m no purist. A butterfly bush plucked from the side of river is as good as a rose bush with no exotic name.  In fact, most of my plants have names I’ve long ago forgotten.

Another confession:   My time is limited and I’m not overly sentimental about any of my plants. So we have an understanding, my plants and I.  I will water them as needed, feed them seldom, and enjoy them always, as long as they can live within my care limitations.  Should they die, well, sorry, but they can be replaced.  This is not to say I’m totally uncaring or incapable of keeping plants alive.  I have plants that have lived with me for over 30 years.  But lived with me is the operative phrase.  They are the ones that can grow and thrive with minimal attention.

And so we arrive at poinsettias.  They are beautiful.  There are red ones and white ones and now there are purple ones and variegated  ones.  Lovely and festive.  And every year, after a wonderful Christmas performance, they die and get tossed on the garbage heap.  Again, I’m not so much sad that they died but I do hate seeing my financial investment thrown out season after season.

So a couple years ago I quit bringing poinsettias home for the holidays.  Instead, I purchased several small Christmas cacti.  After losing one due to its inability to survive me, I now have three pots of them, small, medium, and large.  Last year the largest of the bunch put on a show that lasted for over 4 months.  It bloomed at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and on into March.  (There are probably 2 or 3 plants in that pot, but that’s a technicality.)  It was fabulous.

And today I’m looking at that cactus and it’s full of little flower buds.  It’s going to be a beautiful show and I can hardly wait.

Summer’s end

Summer has ended, fall is making it’s brief lay over, and soon the wet, gray, dreary winter of the Puget Sound will settle in.  It’s a melancholy  time of year.  I don’t like seeing the flowers fade, the vegetables die, the trees drop their leaves. I don’t much like it at all.  “…It’s oh so sad to see the summer end. And though the changing colors are a lovely thing to see, if it were mine to make the change, I think I’d let it be… But I don’t remember hearing anybody asking me.”  John Denver knew what I’m feeling.

But since no one has asked me, either, I will try to revel in the red and orange and yellow leaves, the end of weeding and lawn mowing, and the promise that after the winter’s rest, the trees will again leaf out, the flowers will bud and bloom, and the birds will sing.

Moon Shadows

My neighborhood is  very quiet at 5:00 a.m. Quiet and dark.  But I’m up and out the door for my morning walk.

My route is far from city lights and street lights, with only the occasional house light.  But this week the moon has been up  early, too.  Even with a thin cloud cover, and the moon well past full, my early morning walk has been so well lit that using a flashlight would be foolish.

I love starting my day with a quiet walk. Just me and my dog.  I think and pray and enjoy the quiet and get ready for my day. There’s no one else about, not even a car passes me. Just me and my dog.  Just the two of us out for our morning walk, followed by a moon shadow.

Dad was boldly audacious

I was enjoying a beautiful bouquet my daughter brought me when the word bodacious came to mind.

Back in the late 60’s my dad would drive my brother, myself,  and 2 of our friends to high school, about 2 miles from home.  As we arrived at school he’d say, “Have a bodacious day!”  “What does that mean?”  we’d ask as we exited the car.  “You’ll have to look it up!” he’d say.  And so it went day after day but we didn’t look up the word.  Until many days (years?) later.

I looked it up again, tonight, just for the fun of it and this is what the Urban Dictionary says about bodacious:

Bodacious	424 up, 71 down
	Prodominately used during the 80’s and early 90’s, bodacious is a combination of the words bold and audacious. To be bodacious is to be:impressive, awesome, brave in action, remarkable, prodigious. “Ted, you and I have witnessed many things, but nothing as bodacious as what just happened.”

Used in the 80′ and 90’s?  Dad was using it decades before that.  He was clearly bodacious.

Riotous Wildflowers

I threw out some wildflower seeds this past spring and I was imaging a summer with a riot of colors and shapes and sizes.  Then I pretty much forgot about the poor things until I  noticed the plot filling up with weeds.  Ah well, I had no time to weed or water or anything else so there ended my riotous color dream.

But today while I was out weeding and thinning and trying to get ready for winter,  I took the time to check out my wildflower plot. And I found that those little seeds hadn’t given up as easily as I did. It may not be a riot of color but I’d call it a disorderly assembly of wildflowers.

And there’s always next spring!