Signs of Hope

Poet Neal Bowers wrote that in the southern spring "hills [are] white with dogwood / or pink with redbud . . . as if [the south] invented hope." The dogwood is coming (mine sport pale green flowers which, with another day or two of sun, will blanch), but the redbud is already here, everywhere, making everything else more intensely blue or green or white or yellow or . . . .

Even the pale blue water tank, graffitied and rusty, and the yellow warning signs and the weathered posts and the horse pasture -- everything so beautiful as if made new again.

Like Going Home Again

This is where it started: love of flowers.
Like going home, but really at home.

(If you're unable to see the slideshow, see the photos here.)

A Letter to a Friend

Dear S,

I love the Cambridge garden photos you post, and the beautiful prints that your Iowa artist friend creates of trees, and animals, and flowers. I only wish I could grow such beautiful things, either in the soil or on the page.

Once a year, though, I think of myself as a gardener, or a forester, in spring when the flowering trees I planted all bloom: crabapple, Kwanzan cherry, dogwood, redbud. 

I made these few snaps for you today, just so you can see what are missing here.

I hope your spring is just as beautiful!

Your friend,
R