Sliver

Here's Looking At You...

Frankie the Cat.  Owns the neighbors...drives Gus crazy.

Cherry Blossoms - They're Not Just for DC

Yes, it's more cherry blossom indulgence.  And I have more...

Blooming Anyway

My neighbor planted these trees on the line between us in our front yards.  If good fences make good neighbors, then I'd say this is a pretty nice fence.  She is afraid they are diseased and will need to come down.  But not today.

The dogwood just on my neighbor's side of my backyard fence is 1/3 dead, and still, it produces cascades of blossoms like this.  

I kind of like this message from the trees:  Bloom Anyway.

Sweet Shrub

Spring-ing

Looks like Spring is springing.

Create & Live

From Ann Voscamp - 7 Keys to Creativity:

1. Quit trying to fit. Why try to squeeze all your extraordinary into ordinary?

2. God made woman to be a maker, to open her empty places and let life be knit from within her.

3. Creativity, it’s good theology; it’s what God did in the beginning.

4. When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.

5. Don’t let the sun set till you’ve done one thing that sort of scares you. The only trees that ever grow tall keep relentlessly stretching into unknown territory.

6. Art, it’s the second person present indicative of the verb to be. Art is a way of being and when you make your life art — thou art.

7. Bury your fear in faith. Otherwise you bury your talents.

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See #4?  that's the one that really spoke to me.  Then I re-read it, and it was #3.  And then #5. Oh, #6...#6 is spot on.  

I think these are pretty good keys for living, not just art.  But maybe that's what she meant. 

Wishing

Morning Light

Neighbor's Yard

In This Photo

1. Pink azaleas are already blooming

2. White azaleas are about to burst.

3. Tea olives are blooming and smell heavenly.  Sorry, no smello-vision.

4. Ferns are sending up science fiction looking shoots.

5.  Dogs are looking in opposite directions.

6.  2 of 3 boxwoods show new growth.

7.  There are purple blooms on the periwinkle vine that is taking over the hill.

8.  One very, very large pine tree is dying.

9.  No bats live in the bat box, which means I have to have the yard sprayed for mosquitos.

10.  I need to throw away the battery powered white lights on the deck, but I loved them during the holidays.

11. The monkey grass grows better on one side of the hill than the other.

That is all.

Fast Friends

Faithful, fast friends.  Helps if there's a cookie involved.

Heard It on Creative Live

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott