Pansies at the Pond

Playing with the layout... will probably have to edit a couple of times... also playing with a different camera (as mine quit... my new digitial SLR will be here Monday... Yippee!!)

An angle can make a complete difference. Aperture setting.

And then you get a completely different look.

Isn't Photography fun??!!

Enjoy your flowers.

Early Spring Visitors

Like a beautiful pink camellia that's how you appear to me

That bloom in chilly August on it's dark green mother tree

So bright and fresh and pretty in the wintery wind and rain

That's how you've always looked to me and that's how you will remain.

The beautiful camellia flower that blooms fresh and young today

In two or three weeks if that long will have gone into decay

For flowers have such a brief span they quickly fade away

Francis Duggan

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,

Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration

Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among

This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed

About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

D.H. Lawrence (1916)

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!

Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!

The climbing sun with new recovered powers

Does warm thee into being, through the ring

Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling

Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers

Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,

Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing

To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;

To fill the lonely with a joy untold;

Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,

To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold

To stand erect, full in the dazzling play

Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

Amy Lowell

The hens are out enjoying the sun in their favorite dusting hole! Soon there will be scads of fuzzy bundles following their mother around the yard. Baby chicks are indeed a "flower of spring"

And Broosty Roosty is awaiting his chance to nail me when I turn my back and the opportunity arises! He is a sneaky little dickens.

The Birds Are Ready For Spring As Well!

You have to believe in happiness,

Or happiness never comes...

Ah, that's the reason a bird can sing -

On his darkest day he believes in Spring!

~ Douglas Malloch ~

A bird came down the walk;

He did not know I saw;

He bit an angle-worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall

To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all abroad,--

They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, splashless, as they swam.

~ Emily Dickinson ~