I’ve coddled two climbing roses for almost 5 years, now, and have been rewarded with about as many blooms. I almost gave up on them, truth be told, because they don’t didn’t seem all that happy in my backyard. But they’re finally taking off: arching outward and growing taller. We’re growing on each other, you might say. Behold the Zephirine Drouhin–a bright spot of color in the pelting rain.
“In the darkest nights of winter,” my Nana always told me, “watch the skies and listen for the robins.”
I mentioned that very thing, in my blog post last week.
She was right, of course. Again. Because, oh hey, look who’s splashing in my birdbath!
Rarely have I ever seen robins in this area, and only once before in my own garden. He perched on my soul fence for a single afternoon, and then vanished.
Such cheerful birds, these harbingers of spring. I’m glad for their company, however long they choose to stay.
Seems Edward Jenner was equally enthralled by their visits. Here, his love letter to these red-chested beauties:
Address to a Robin
Come, sweetest of the feathered throng,
And soothe me with thy plaintive song;
Come to my cot, devoid of fear,
No danger shall await thee here…
Hop o’er my cheering hearth, and be
One of my peaceful family
Then soothe me with thy plaintive song,
Thou sweetest of the feathered throng.
–Edward Jenner (physician, musician, balloonist, and inventor of modern-day vaccinations, 1749-1823)
My backyard is filled with butterflies — like swirls of churning butter, they are being carried from flower to shrub by the Santa Ana winds.
So grateful, to see with my very own eyes the miracle of a butterfly migration…
Serendipity: That midnight moment in which you're first awakened from a pleasant dream and find yourself wishing you were a poet because there aren't enough gorgeous words in your vocabulary to help describe the rain that's splashing on the tile roof pattering on the sidewalk and soaking into the parched earth and neither can you find the right rhythm and cadence to help capture the sounds of the wind that's whistling through the chaparral and whooshing through the palms. So you just stand at the open window and drink it all in.
As dark gives way to light, the rainclouds drift from west to east.
The pre-dawn downpours are replaced by sunshowers, and then sprinkles.
The birds are chirping, the fresh-washed foliage is sparkling.…and the hillsides are once again bathed in sunshine.
Rain, rain, come again…come again, another day!