Thought for the Day - July 7,00

Subject: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Peter T.
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 09:37 AM

The weedy ground near my office is now in high summer. Along the edge, there are deep orange rows of butterfly weed, sometimes called pleurisy root, filled with yellow butterflies like truckers at a favourite roadside cafe, swirling in and out. They are surrounded by mulleins, now in unfurled yellow, covered this morning with delirious ladybugs. Alongside, bladder campions, true to their name, which sounds like a Renaissance poet, are out in their puffed white shirts. Nearby, harebells (with my favourite Latin name, campanula rotundifolia) in blue jostle the yellow black-eyed susans and the slightly less forthright wild sunflowers. Throughout and now beginning to overshadow this riot of colour, every kind of green from the bluestblue green to greenyellow, from graygreen to green tinged with red, proliferates in weed, vine, and thistle. And if you look really closely, as I did this morning, you find sprinkles of tiny purplish red flowers, virtually magenta, as if the painter of it all said, oh, here's a colour I haven't used yet. And the whole panoply of colour -- deft, an accent here, a sprinkle there -- the despair of any artist.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Allan C.
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 09:44 AM

Now, I ask you: what can one say after reading such beautiful descriptions of such beatuty? Peter, you have outdone yourself!!

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Allan C.
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 09:45 AM

beauty

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 09:55 AM

Well I'd say Allan we should all go out and see these beautiful butterflies and ladybugs for ourselves.
Get some good tips from The Great painter's palette and snatch a few sunflower seeds for the road.

Thanks Peter, when I go for my walk today I will take a closer look at what is all around me.

Bonnie

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 10:03 AM

Peter,
I pass a scruffy spot of ground along a commercial road every morning. And every morning I am amazed at what has chosen to survive. Last week there were yellow and white wild flowers. This week purple and blue. I wonder who threw down the original seeds and how long ago. This was all farmland once. I have visions of some calico clad housewife hoping to add a little color to her garden tossing out a few seeds. Wouldn't she be surprised at what she accomplished?
SS

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: black walnut
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 10:08 AM

i just came in from my newly planted garden to read your wondrous delight....

gardening is the height of optimism. i go out many times a day to see what i have planted, each time imagining the colours and foliage and fragrances to come. we have deleted all the grass (no more mowing, no more moaning!), and have initiated in its place a woodland garden.... amongst fairly established serviceberries and dogwoods, and under a towering maple, there are the beginnings of jack-in-the-pulpit, foxglove, wild geranium, creeping jenny, butterfly weed, purple coneflower, barren strawberry, golden wood poppy, virginia creeper, flowering currant, chocolate boneset eupatoriim, mexican hats among oxeydaisy and wild clump grass, white obedient, blue new england aster, creeping lemon thyme, cardinal flower, jackkmanii clematis, sweet woodruff....and i'm not even done the list.

all this in a backyard behind a semi near bayview and eglinton, in the dark urban depths of toronto.

thank you, peter, for giving me further reason to hope for things to come....

~black walnut

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 10:37 AM

Damn!!! I read this thing and immediately hopped in my van and took off. Peter, I must tell you that I was so overcome with excitement that I paid almost no attention to all those damn flowers and weeds you mention which are growing alongside the road. Frankly they are a real mess and the state needs to get the mowing crews out more. But I barely gave them a nod as I zoomed along for I-70 and Rt. 37. When I got there I was once again overcome with the thrill of it all as I drove through the two massive truck stops located there. Now I am simply pissed.

I drove through row upon row of trucks and peered into both restaurants and shower rooms (with some caution) and I couldn't find a single butterfly trucker anywhere. I saw several largish beetles and nasty looking moth of some sort, but none of them were driving trucks and in fact the moth flew into a bug zapper while I watched!

What a crock. Now I'm out time and several gallons of very expensive gas, although I did pick up a nice pair of fuzzy dice in the gift shop.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 11:08 AM

Catspaw it is a good thing you did not pick up one of those sexy girl air fresheners. You could have had a bee fly in your window and try to pollinate with her.
It could have caused a terrible accident.

Bonnie

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: L R Mole
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 11:17 AM

Better than having a fly be in your window.And let me play among tne moths. Tony Benett Cerf's Up

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 11:31 AM

Frankly, I'd worry more about a bee in my fly.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: MMario
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 11:39 AM

*spaw - don't worry, a bee-sting might make you swell up*

My brother-in-law is constantly creating new gardens - but somehow the maintainence of them devolves onto me. Since I went beyond my capacity to maintain them about 10 years ago, many of the gardens have been overun by "weeds" - in our case, beach pea, crown vetch, daisies and indian paintbrush with Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod. As the gardens are all raised in mounds, and surrounded by lawn, they actually end up being more attractive (to me) then when they are weeded. Too bad "da boss" don't agree...

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 12:19 PM

Spaw,
Why is your fly open in the car? God, how I hate asking you questions like this. The answer will only lead down, down, down the road to more questions.
SS

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Mbo
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 12:20 PM

Not just a bee sting, Mario, a bee string, or a g-string, would make it swell up as well.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 12:30 PM

Three years' worth of rain, missing in action, began filtering into Tioga County in March and by now are nearly all accounted for. The roadsides are lushly covered as we have not seen them in our 6 years here, with plants arguing with us whether they are fern or flower. Names they have, but names we do not know. The loveliest is the one that you would sewar is a carpet of good old friend purple clover... until you stop to cut a bunch and find instead a viny ferny ground cover so robust that it grows up just for space, making the flowers appear tall when in fact they are merely climbing each other amid the delicate roseleaf-like greenery upon which they travel.

The black-eyed Susans here have just begun to call to me again, having just this week popped up among the rest of the riot, and they seem surprised at all the company. It has been just daisies and Queen Anne's lace competing, for many years. Now they are struggling to be tall enough to anchor the whole display-- which they can, having the strongest color. And jostle they do, and are jostled as well, turning their dark flashing eyes to the roadway and to the sun while it briefly hovers over the rock cut made by the roadlayers.

(A pile of all this bounty lies a-drying in my office near the air conditioner vent on the floor. It has been so humd for so long that nothing will dry if hung from mere attic rafters. This bunch awaits shipment to a friend's dry and hot home, and although it was odorless when cut, it now smells just like fresh mown hay and when the box is opened.... if my friends are smart they will moo.)

The county's gravel hill roads are so thickly covered this year that the roadside spring has all but vanished under the encroaching canopy bursting from under trees that, last year, were the only sparse impediment to the trail extending up and past a large and comfy-looking fallen log. And deadfalls are in record numbers this year also, the thin soil cover being so wet that roots and all, the trees surrender their verticality to the west winds of cloudbursts.

County workers circulate among the roads looking for roadside tallgrass to mow, and are finding only this lovely purple carpet, just low enough to leave. They strip a token section extending a few feet either side of intersecting roads, and move on. There will be trees to pick up, this year, instead, and the paychecks will still come with no need to strip the beauty all natives' eyes here must have been aching to see. We, ourselves only recent transplants with roots so shallow, can only give thanks for the wisdom to wait out the dry times and to celebrate the wet.

Peter... thank you again.

~S~

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 12:51 PM

This is truly my favorite time of year. ('Course I'll say that again 3 months from now...) Peter, your words have expressed exactly why. Thanks, so much, again and again!

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: bbelle
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:07 PM

Careful, 'spaw, having your fly down in your truck ... did you ever read "The World According to Garp?"

moonchild

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: GUEST,Den
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:15 PM

Ahhh Peter sheer Popepery...oops Freudian slip from another thread that had me gander going. Poetry Peter sheer poetry. Very nice I could see the view from your window and smell the flowers (course it could be the new floor wax) but a nice job I wish I had your way with worms, Den;-)

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:33 PM

I have the blackest thumb of anyone I know, and have rarely regretted it as poingnantly as after reading this thread... well, the opening Thought, at any rate... lovely, Peter! Did you read a lot of Mary Stewart as a youngster? She has very similar phrasings in her horticultural descriptions which are always fully blown and just descriptivelicious...

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:38 PM

Did Mary Stewart know any of those truck driving butterflies?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:39 PM

The sagebrush is looking really lovely about now..**BG** Oh, Peter, just beautiful...and black walnut, I want to live in your yard! It sounds just lovely.

One has to look a little harder out here for the special treats, some of the flowers are brash and strong enough to mount up like the cavalry and ride across the plains, waving their yellow banners, but many are ground-hugging forces, safer keeping their heads hunkered down out of the wind, with many tendrils spread along the ground, in circle fans, anchoring them in a tentative search for water and safety. Their tenacity makes them even more endearing.

I have had some very special treats in my neglected yard. A hardy, miniature-sized blooms carnation I started from seed about 4 years ago, has come up every year on its own. I never water it and it has about 50-60 blooms on it now. Just gorgeous and smells delicious. My catnip started the same way & keeps producing euphoria for the critters, too. I've also just found a tiny 12" locust tree has come up by a windblow seed on my little front corner patch where the snow-in-summer, pinks, and wild mountain mint are holding their own. Trees are a precious commodity out here and it pleases me to no end seeing this brave and adventurous soul sprouting up, already offering a lacy shade to small bugs and the like.

I hope to make it up on the mountain this weekend, as it is a bit more colourful...still a lot of low-lying flora, but much showier, complete, wall-to-wall carpeting of ladyslipper orchids and many others, incluing Wyoming's state flower, Indian paintbrush, and Colorado's state flower, the lovely columbines.

If one is really feeling like a complete fool and wants to trek across the prairie, in 100 degree heat with very little water in sight and a hot zephry whipping up the dustdevils, one can also espy clumps of gracious cacti blooming, again low to the ground...but in fantastic, almost psychedelic colours of pink, yellow, and white, the blooms almost as big as the whole clumps of spiny and dangerous *leaves*. Makes one definitely appreciate what the Natives and the pioneers had to contend with AND to watch where one is stepping...now I know why mom and dad always made us wear high-top cowboy boots! Kept the snakebites away, too!

Nice thought, Peter. Made me nostalgic for all of those gardening threads we had. Classic Spaw, too....LOL

kat

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Naemanson
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:50 PM

This looks like a good place to mention yesterday's sights. We were called out of our offices to see a doe suckling two fawns in the field across the road. They showed no concern, being engrosssed as it were, in their lunch. Mother watched us carefully but the babies ignored everything. Their little tails kept flashing at us over the long grass. Wildflowers peppered the field and nodded wisely in the breeze. The blue sky above had added dimension when the puff ball clouds strolled by.

Or to describe it in terms acceptable to the curmudgeons who might read this: The scenery was here, wish you were beautiful.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Naemanson
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 01:52 PM

Oh, and I truly do love summer too. And I agree that I'll truly love the next season and the two that follow that one. I heartily agree with Elmer Beal from Differents Shoes. I don't mind the weather just as long as we get some more.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 02:34 PM

I know this isn't a poetry forum but...anyone remember the lovely one by AA Milne in When We Were Very Young? I just tried to look it up and failed so will try from memory...

She wore her yellow sunbonnet, she wore her greenest gown; she turned to the south wind and curtsied up and down. She turned to the north wind and shook her yellow head, and whispered to her neighbor: "Winter is dead." There are also some lovely lines from another in the same book... Where am I going? I don't quite know... up on the hill where the pine trees blow... down in the fields where the bluebells grow... anywhere, anywhere. I don't know. In another verse it's kingcups growing. Aah, and my window doesn't even open here at the office!

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Naemanson
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 03:03 PM

Ah Mrr, you have it so nice. A window, even if it doesn't open, is a window. This closet in which I work is dark and windowless. I cannot even get my favorite radio station!

Fortunately there must be some troll in my lineage for I don't mind the darkness of the cave.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 09:14 PM

Same here. N. I never know if it's raining or snowing. And the neighborhood is so bad I rarely go out for lunch. The company is buying a new building and my only request was for a window. Oh, and a separate Ladies Room.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 10:03 PM

Listen Sins.......See if they can give you one overlooking a truck stop wouldja'? I can't keep going up there every day even though my son Tris loves trucks. Besides that, the guy in the shower looked like a cross between Joe Palooka and the Wandering Jew and I thought he was gonna' pound my ass. And I also am afraid that another trip to the gift shop will force me into some of those blue cab marker lights.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Naemanson
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 11:24 PM

Be careful, Sinsull. My office is in our new building and has no windows. Good luck in getting your windows.

My old office was on the second floor in an ancient hangar and one wall was mostly window. Those windows opened and closed. I could watch the sun rise and see the weather develop. In the winter I could watch the snow swirl around the buildings and drift up against the cars. When the sun came out the snow on the roof would loosen and then slide off and plummet to the ground with an earthshaking series of thuds. Access to the building was a whole new experience of dodge and slide.

I could see trucks from those windows but mostly I saw airplanes. And they are louder than trucks.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 12:46 AM

Back from The Great Outdoors (at least between the Harry Potter party and home) and thought of lyrics, rather than poetry, recollected thanks to (the French "grâce à is so much prettier) Peter's Thought ...

As I were going to Strawberry Fair, singing singing buttercups and daisies...
In my garden grew plenty of thyme, it would flourish by night and by day...
Fair as the flowers in the valley...

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - July 7,00
From: Peter T.
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 08:39 AM

Nice reports from all over. thanks. yours, Peter T.