A trail of petals

When I came home from work Friday, I found someone had left a trail of flower petals all along the block.

There was also evidence of an egg fight, probably inspired by Friday being the last day of school for the year. [Because some readers get queasy at the sight of raw eggs, I didn’t include that photo… :-)]

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It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.
-William Carlos Williams

Love and eggs are best when they are fresh.
- Russian proverb

Poppies

Poppies are ancient and powerful blooms. In Persian literature, red poppies are the "flower of love." In Greek and Roman myths, red poppies were used as offerings to the dead and carved on tombstones as a symbol for eternal sleep. (The Greeks had long been aware of the effects of opium). Red poppies also later symbolized resurrection after death. In The Wizard of Oz, a field of magic poppies causes two of the characters to fall into a deep sleep, putting them in danger.

Red poppies are also associated with those who died in World War I, or the Great War. Poppy seeds grow more abundantly when the soil is disturbed or churned. When the war was over, former battlefields became filled with poppies. John McCrae, who was a battlefield surgeon during the war, wrote the famous poem "In Flanders Fields" as a memorial to those who died. And poppies became a symbol for remembrance.

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.
- John McCrae

That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
- John Berger

Sitting quietly

Reflections on reflections...

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If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water.
-Loren Eisley

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
-Zen proverb

A matter of interpretation

Local sidewalk art -- or symbols from a secret Druid ceremony… :-)

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Some archeologists believe that Stonehenge - the mysterious arrangement of enormous elongated stones in England - is actually a crude effort by the Druids to build a computing device.
-Dave Barry

Releasing radiance

Roses are now blooming, everywhere...

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Stop looking for something out there

And begin seeing within.

Open your arms if you want an embrace.

Break the earthen idols and release the radiance.
—Rumi

Through a window at dusk

Maybe it’s the voyeur in us that impels us to glance into open windows and doors as we pass by. Or perhaps we’re in need of a glimpse of a story to spur our imaginations…

Edward Hopper did a number of paintings where the view point is outside a building, looking in, including; Night Windows, Nighthawks, Apartment Houses, Rooms for Tourists. He also did several paintings of apartment and office buildings, and no two windows are alike. A shade half pulled, glow of a lamp, a curtain billowing, shadow of a person. You become aware that they more than buildings, they are instead like hives where people work, live, and deal with what life has brought them…

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No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

~ Edward Hopper

http://www.mfa.org/hopper/

A single leaf

I was drawn by the single leaf that landed here, in the wet, and remained…

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I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.
~ Walt Whitman

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Entering the silence of iris

Irises are in full bloom now; delicate petals in myriad colors, their gentle scent. This deep red is one of my favorites.

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Since Iris is the Greek goddess for the Messenger of Love, her sacred flower is considered the symbol of communication and messages. Greek men would often plant an iris on the graves of their beloved women as a tribute to the goddess Iris, whose duty it was to take the souls of women to the Elysian fields.

~ Hana No Monogatari: The Stories of Flowers

All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn.
~ Iris Murdoch

Rain song

Sat on the front steps, sketching with a black pen as the storm moved in. Rain peppered the sidewalks, bushes, trees. Amid gentle thunder and occasional flashes of lightning, a Mourning Dove sang.

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The Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) is a member of the dove family Columbidae. The bird is also called the American Mourning Dove (named for its plaintive call) or Rain Dove.
~ Wikipedia

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
~ April Rain Song, Langston Hughes

Stormy weather

We’ve had stormy weather for several days now, usually in the afternoon. Tonight, we finally were able to take a walk.

Everything clean, wet, fragrant. Birds singing. Swallows circling and swooping overhead. Mourning dove’s call echoing through the neighborhood. Mood of spring.

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Can’t go on, ev’ry thing I had is gone
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain’t together,
Keeps rainin’ all the time.
-Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler

Stormy days remind me of this song, which has been performed by so many over the years. Ethel Waters first sang it at the Cotton Club in Harlem in the 1930s. Later, Lena Horne sang it in the movie, "Stormy Weather," which was loosely based on the life of Bill Bojangles Robinson, innovator and supreme master of tap dance. This film has an amazing dance scene by the Nicholas Brothers; also has performances by Cab Calloway and Fats Waller. Fred Astaire later said the dance sequence by the Nicholas Brothers was "the finest piece of tap dancing ever filmed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Weather_(1943_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Robinson

Orange twilight

Another extraordinary sunset to share...

Bright beauty

A bit of bright beauty in a basket to carry us through the summer.

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The temple bell stops

but I still hear the sound coming

out of the flowers.
~Basho

Water art

Do you love waterfalls? This summer, New York City will offer views of waterfalls extraordinaire. Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson will install 4 waterfalls at various sites along the East River, including one at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. The falls will be between 90 to 120 feet high and will be illuminated after sunset.

Check out this site for more details:
http://www.nycwaterfalls.org

Since a trip to NYC is not in my plans this summer, I’ll settle for a smaller version of water art at the Nature Center…

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Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.
- Fulton J. Sheen

Underlying definitions

A quirky find while taking a walk after a storm.

I’ve worn culottes, but don’t think of them as "briefs", which are defined as:

++ Short, tight-fitting underpants; men's or women's underpants without legs.

So, I looked up "culottes":

++ A woman's full trousers cut to resemble a skirt. Often used in the plural. [French, breeches, diminutive of cul, rump or backside, from Latin cūlus.]

And "sans-culottes" also came up:

++ Literally, ‘without breeches’. A term loosely applied to the lower classes in France during the French Revolution. The name was derived from the fact that these people wore long trousers instead of the knee breeches worn by the upper classes.

When I looked up ropa interior, (Spanish translation: underclothes), links for Victoria’s Secret and other similar stores popped up. Olé!

But what’s really impressive is that this underwear features "the NEW AZS (Advanced Zoning System) for maximum targeted absorption."

I guess it was only a matter of time before underwear, too, went hi-tech… :-)

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Politicians, like underwear, should be changed often, and for the same reasons.
-P.J. O’Rourke

I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
-Woody Allen

The wonder of a sunset

Sunset sweeps over Camel’s Back Park.

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When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Music, water & fish

A Saturday of walks, sitting in a coffee shop and sketching (yes, some chores, too); later doing colored pencil drawings to the music of Fats Waller and Pedro Luis Ferrer (amazing Cuban musician who has been underground all these years because the Castro régime banned his music). Because it was hot today (in the mid-90s), the weather conjured dreams of water and fish…

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Water which is too pure has no fish.
~ Ts'ai Ken T'an

Someone said wisely that "art does not give responses to those who do not ask questions of it." I offer my art to audiences who ask questions of art.
~ Pedro Luis Ferrer

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Pedro-Luis-Ferrer/dp/B000FBFSUG

Squirrel tales

This little guy was so intent on eating and so used to humans I could take photos of him up close. There are a lot of tall, old trees in the neighborhood, which make perfect hang-outs for squirrels. So, we have a lot of them skittering around.

Last October, I put out several miniature pumpkins on our front step to decorate for Halloween. One by one, they began disappearing. Finally I happened to catch a glimpse of the thief, a brazen squirrel, sitting on our porch roof munching away on a pumpkin.

A gal I work with is an animal lover and puts out food for squirrels at her house. One day she’d bought a large bag of peanuts for the squirrels on her way to work and left it on the back seat of her car when she parked in our office lot. She left windows open a crack because it was hot. When she later returned to her car, she found that several squirrels had managed to squeeze in through the windows and had been having a grand feast. It took about 45 minutes to get the squirrels out of the car, not to mention cleaning up the mess.

This same person also trained a squirrel to come into our office, go through a maze, and climb up on a desk to get a peanut. She named the squirrel Gladys. Unfortunately one day Gladys, driven by her mad peanut addiction, sprinted across the street in front of a car. So, she ended up in that big maze in the sky; probably is still sitting and feasting amid a pile of everlasting peanuts.

Here are some unusual video clips of squirrels, including one that features an encounter with a candy machine:
http://www.squirrels.org/video.html

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Squirrels for nuts contend, and, wrong or right,
For the world's empire kings ambitious fight.
What odds?--to us 'tis all the self-same thing,
A nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king.
-Charles Churchill

Too much even of food most squirrels enjoy can be bad for them. For example, many wildlife rehabilitators agree that over-indulging on peanuts or walnuts can cause some squirrels to have elevated levels of phosphorus, and therefore to become over-excitable.

[Just look at what happened to Gladys…]
-JustSquirrels.com

Drawing a dream

Streak across the twilight sky
drawing a dream

where would you go
if you could
– at that moment –
fly?

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You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky.
~Amelia Earhart

O! for a horse with wings!
~William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

Opening windows

Love how sunlight

slants

through windows

of late afternoon

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To me the world of poetry is a house with thousands of glittering windows. Our words and images, land to land, era to era, shed light on one another.
-Naomi Shihab Nye

The windows of my soul I throw

Wide open to the sun.

~John Greenleaf Whittier

Blossoms for the soul

Into full blossom…

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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
-Marcel Proust

The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into luster.
-D.H. Lawrence

Spiral cloud?

An unusual cloud hovering above Boise recently…

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This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.
-Frances E. Willard

Outsider art?

Drawings on a public art wall at the May Day fest last weekend.
"Outsider art", outside…

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Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.
-Thaddeus Golas

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
-Carl Jung

If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.
-Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

Make a wish

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
-George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

Tulip in red

Tulips marked our path as we walked tonight -- yellow, pink, orange, purple – and red.

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Red is the ultimate cure for sadness.
-Bill Blass

He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.
-Ayn Rand

A celebration of May

During a walk today, we came across a May Day celebration in a park.

The scene could have been in Berkeley in the 1960s.

But then, so many things are retro now...




We watched as some adults led kids in a dance around the Maypole. It was a bit like herding cats, but they did manage to braid the pole without anyone becoming too entangled. And they had a lot of fun.

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A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
- Emily Dickinson

The world's favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.
- Edwin Way Teale

Of water and reflection

This looks more like fall than spring. But it will change as the weather warms. The composition and the reflections are what called to me the most.

Of course, my favorite images of water lilies are the paintings by Claude Monet. Seeing his canvases of shimmering colors and light is breathtaking. Wikipedia has a gallery of some of his paintings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Lilies

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I've caught this magical landscape and it's the enchantment of it that I'm so keen to render. Of course lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal, but that's just too bad.

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

--Claude Monet

The green glove

The Green Glove: A movie set after World War II, starring Glenn Ford as Michael Blake, an ex-soldier hired by a church to find a valuable relic (a bejeweled green glove) stolen years earlier by an ex-Nazi thief. Blake is shadowed by others who are trying to kill him, and is aided by an attractive tour guide, Christine (Geraldine Brooks), who joins him as they travel across Europe in search of the glove.

What they didn’t know is that it’s been here, in Boise, all along. Right in plain sight (although it looks like the jewels were torn off and sold long ago, probably to a pawn shop).

Of course, it wouldn’t have been nearly as romantic or suspenseful to travel across Idaho, Utah and Nevada in search of religious relic, so Europe won out. What a shame.

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The cat with gloves catches no mice.

-Navjot Singh Sidhu

Being still

As she sat by the pool
she hummed
sang a soft, slow music
that danced with the trickling water

Her audience
skimmed the surface like tiny skaters,
meandered fishily between lily pads,
crouched in reeds, like a carving
of the darkest wood

No sound, no applause,
just being
still

Potential

More blooms on a sunny Sunday…

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If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
-George Bernard Shaw

We are born believing. A man [and woman] bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ready to bloom

Taken at sunset a week ago.
Now, all the trees are in bloom.

A good day for blooming -- for plants and people...

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Remember, only the buds that are ready will bloom. The rest have to wait patiently.
-unknown

A Play on "Art"

Three guys who have been friends for years. One abstract painting, bought by one of the three, which sets off a chain of emotional events. Questions about what constitutes "good" art. But, under that, questions about the depths of relationships, and how they play out when secret feelings are revealed.

A brief description of a play we saw tonight, "Art" (by Yasmina Reza), which was performed at the Boise Art Museum (the first time I can recall a play being performed at the museum).

The play is funny, yet intensely serious as it examines what holds friendships together – and can break them apart. Expertly acted by Richard Klautsch, Phil Atlakson, and Gordon Reinhart, and creatively directed by Lynn Allison, the play presents us with characters we’ve all met before (or could be parts of ourselves): Serge, fan of the modern and a seeker of the next cool trend (the one who buys the painting); Marc, a dogmatist who favors the traditional (he hates the painting); and Yvan, the "pleaser" and peace-maker, who is caught in the middle.
We came away very thoughtful and enriched by the experience. And hope there will be more plays performed at the museum. "Art" runs through the April 26th.

http://www.boiseartmuseum.org/

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I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.
-Mark Rothko

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
-Tennessee Williams

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

-Michelangelo

Words and music

Have you ever wondered what words would sound like if translated directly into music? Now you can find out, through the P22 Music Text Generator. You type in your copy and click on "Generate your music!" Your new composition will begin playing, for your listening pleasure. It’s created as a midi file which you can save on your computer. It also notates your piece, so you can print out sheet music and create a lasting legacy of sound (for your personal archives when you become a rich and famous composer) :-).

I tried some short poems and the results were amazing…

http://p22.com/musicfont/

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Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.
-E.Y. Harburg

For me, music is always the language which permits one to converse with the Beyond.
-Robert Schumann

Blossoms and art

I’m not sure what kind of tree this is, but the blossoms are rich and beautiful. Nice to see them finally opening for spring. Other trees are blossoming now, too. Some of them remind me of objects of Impressionist painters, like Monet or Van Gogh.

And speaking of art: oil paintings have been found in caves in Afghanistan that date from the 5th through 9th centuries. They are murals of Buddha, nature, and mythical creatures, and were done using an oil painting technique believed not to exist until the 15th century in Europe. Researchers think they may have been created by Asians traveling along the Silk Road. These murals were found in the caves that were behind the giant statues of Buddha that the Taliban destroyed in 2001.

Sometimes beauty can come out of destruction.

Zoos and fools

It’s been one of those long weeks – see, we’re all escaping the zoo, hoping for a fast getaway into the weekend...

The Idaho Secretary of State’s office didn’t have such a great week either. They (and Idaho) made the national news, because they somehow allowed the name of an inmate who is incarcerated in a Texas prison to be on the ballot for May’s primary election as a Democratic presidential candidate. So, the few Democrats in Idaho will be able to vote for Hillary, Obama, -- or Keith Judd.

Judd apparently sent checks to 14 states to pay registration fees so he could "run" for presidential office. Most of the states sent the checks back, but not Idaho, which is the only state where he will be listed on the ballot.

"We got conned," said Secretary of State Ben Ysursa.

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You don’t have to fool all the people all of the time; you just have to fool enough to get elected.
-Gerald Barzan

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee...that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again.
-George W. Bush

Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
-Evan Esar

In three movements...

Are we treading water? Lost in the woods? Walking a shadowed path? What is that haze on the horizon? What day is it, Tuesday or Monday?

Confusion in three movements: Presto, Andante, Adagio.

That was today.

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Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
-William Shakespeare

Colors and spring

Actually had some warm spring weather this weekend; flowers, plants, animals, people all woke up from winter snooze. And C is playing tango and I filled sheets with colors and colors of water, gardens and spring. The night is warm; too bad it’s not a full moon. Then we’d be drunk on spring and moonlight.

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Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
~William Shakespeare

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"
~Robin Williams

Politics, pranks, and flamingos

Even though it’s the second week of April, it’s still colder than usual. We even awoke to snow one morning this week. A late April Fool’s joke. Definitely not flamingo weather! And it seems to have brought out the "best" of some of our residents:

The day after the local paper became a finalist for a Pulitzer for its story about Senator Craig’s bathroom antics, the senator released a statement saying that his decision not to run for another term of office "pre-dated" the bathroom sting.

Right. As Groucho Marx once said: Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.

There is a property in the Boise foothills where a mansion sits on a large hill. It was owned by one of Idaho’s richest residents, who donated it to the city last year. This year, as the spring grass began to grow, a huge phallic symbol gradually appeared on the hillside. Landscapers tried to cosmetically repair it – but instead accidentally emphasized its shape even more. This evening, the local paper ran this item under breaking news: "Obscene Prank Erased from Boise’s S____ Hill," and the article goes on to say that the area has now been replanted and is covered with a bed of straw.

Next thing you know, it’ll be covered with mating flamingos…

Chasing the wind

When the wind blows, this is one busy cat. I’m not sure if this is a windmill or a lawn ornament. When I researched online I found pictures of "mole chaser windmills" that are built similarly to this one. Mole chasers are supposed to create vibrations in the ground when the wind blows and the vibrations are supposed to make moles crazy and drive them away. But the ones I saw were plain vanilla; not built with character like this one.

When I think about it, I’ve never seen a mole "tunnel" in any Idaho yard. They may not be suited to a high desert climate. So this is probably a "decorative windmill", along the lines of spinners, and wooden ducks with wings that circle in the wind. But if I were buying one of these, I’d choose the cat, of course.

In other news, the daily paper here has been named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for their stories on our infamous toe-tapping Senator Craig – who is still in office and still fighting to have his guilty plea rescinded. Maybe we need a "mole chaser" after all…

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The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

If animals could speak the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow, but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
- Mark Twain

Animal art and reflection

I was originally going to write about an AP article I saw today about zoo animals that paint. [Painting, along with other activities, helps ease boredom and provides a stimulating "task" for animals to do.]

And I was going to write about the Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project in Thailand [they train the elephants they care for to paint, then they sell the paintings to help fund conservation efforts].

But then I was thinking about C’s excellent presentation tonight at the county library about Mambo and Oscar Hijuelos, who wrote "The Mambo Kings."

And got lost in deep of reflection…

Watching a Sunday

A weekend flashes by too quickly – in the blink of a cat’s eye.

But we visited D and heard her story about running out of gas on the freeway and the valiant stranger who stopped to help. And we had afternoon coffee at the local coffee place. Took walks between the rain showers and household chores, had a bit of brie and apple slices during dinner. And now the piano calls, before I call it a day.

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A Sunday well-spent brings a week of content. [one can always hope]
- Proverb

The cat is above all things, a dramatist.
- Margaret Benson

Ready to burst?

More signs of spring; finally warmer after being sooo cold all week.

Shopping at the art supply store (think: candy store), watching storyteller nonpareil Ben K perform at a bookstore, walking with C in the sunshine and taking photos, drawing and blending luscious colors together on smooth bristol to jazz dee-jayed by C, looking up art cards on the internet, reading a great email from my 10 y/o niece and a touching one from a friend.

A superb Saturday.

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One day I shall burst my buds of calm and blossom into hysteria.
~ Barbara Johnson

Golden moment

On a golden spring day…

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Every moment is a golden one for him [or her] who has the vision to recognize it as such.
~ Henry Miller

A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.
~ JRR Tolkien

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
~ Samuel Johnson

Water

While visiting the Paris Daily Photo site, I saw that the theme for April 1st for the Daily Photo group blogs is water. So, I’ll join in the fun – add my interpretation of H2O. If you look closely, you may find a fish in there somewhere. Check out the PDP for an amazing photo, and for links to all the other Daily Photo blogs.
http://www.parisdailyphoto.com/

A few meditations about water…

His laughter, which was never far below the surface of his conversation, now sparkled like a splash of water in sunlight.
~ Joseph Lelyveld

Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
~ Zora Neale Hurston

In Amsterdam the water is the mistress and the land the vassal. Throughout the city there are as many canals and drawbridges as bracelets on a Gypsy's bronzed arms.
~ Felix Marti-Ibanez

If American English could develop a vocabulary and way of thinking like Hopi, there would be one word meaning: "A stone is skimming across the water’s surface, it is approaching dematerialization, there is no longer stone or water, the mind where the stone & water skim dissolves in sunlight, there is only the skimming movement when you’re breathing."
Such a word remains timelessly current.
~ Norman Weinstein

Richly colored

Color – spent part of the weekend with colored pencils and experimenting with dark, light, transparency. Like stained glass on paper. I love color – and always have.

The Museum of Modern Art currently has an exhibition, "Reinventing Color," which shows how modern artists have dealt with color. Some have dealt with it more successfully than others, IMHO. Still, check out the online exhibition – fascinating ideas and work.
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/

And some other views about color:

Orange is the happiest color.
-Frank Sinatra

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.
-Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Pink is the color of romance and a friend tells me that the girl with the pink dress at the party is the one who is selected for each dance.
-Alfred Carl Hottes

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
-Vincent Van Gogh

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.
-Paul Klee

Geese and gaggle

These two were part of a gaggle of geese sunning themselves in a local park. They fly in by the river; some have learned to beg for treats from passers-by. Though some people complain about goose poop, it’s good the geese have made their place here. I love watching the goslings at the Nature Center in spring and hearing their poignant calls as they fly overhead in the fall.

"Gaggle" is an interesting-sounding word. It refers to a group of geese on the ground. A "skein" of geese refers to those in flight. Skein reminds me of yarn, as if they are connected by strands of colorful yarn "knitting" their V in the sky. I wonder why they aren’t called a "Vee" of geese when in flight?

I think gaggle would be an excellent word to describe a group of legislators arguing. Perhaps it could be expanded to include lobbyists, too. Maybe we should introduce a bill to expand the definition of gaggle. But then perhaps it would just be another wild goose chase…

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If you feel the urge, don't be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway?
-Will Rogers

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
-Lao Tzu

Best intentions and gardening

People are coming out of their houses now, digging around in their yards, raking, pulling weeds and brush, trimming bushes and trees.

Gardening can be a good thing - do it enough and you'll develop arms of steel... :-)

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You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt.
~Author Unknown

Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise.
~Michael P. Garafalo

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
~Author Unknown