Gardens in plots and pots, mine and other people’s!
Irresistible. I don’t know why, but I just love flowers…
So for today—my favorite flower of the season—a dahlia. This one peeks in at the sliding glass door all day long. And I just love it!
What’s not to love about a flower?
Thank-you God, for such lavish beauty; it make life rich.
[A new Columbine for my collection]
–LS
Home again.
[I snapped this shot in memory of “Chase Me”. We sold her last year to a gung-ho sailor who outfitted her for racing. She sank in this strait just a few weeks back, during a wild and windy race… All aboard were rescued, thankfully. But she lives on only in our happy memories…So strange still to think of her lying at the bottom of the ocean with her home made cushions and fresh new paint and sails…]
But where was I?!…. Yes! I’m safely home again, just in time to see the wild currants bloom…
…and of course the homey dandelions too, which carry on in spite of Jim’s rigorous elimination campaign… 
Then there are these tiny daisies which I introduced to the lawn for fun, and have not yet regretted…
The garden lies fallow, turned and expectant
while the early risers exult in springtime sun!
The lupine bursts forth.
And the kale runs to seed welcoming bees to my garden…
While the wallflowers do what wallflowers do best— 
add beauty to the drab wall of the house!
The bushy Scouler’s willow in the swampy outback literally hums with bees on their mission to get making honey.
Meanwhile, blushing quietly, the most beautiful of blooms begin to open on the apple tree,
while at her feet the bluebells ring.
It’s good to be home.
–LS
I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living. Ps.116:9
Well, buds may be swelling and bursting into bloom in the house…
But that’s not quite the picture out-of-doors this week…
We thought we had come back to Home, Green Home.
But then it started snowing…
and went right on snowing for three days!
That’s unheard of here (at least in our short ten-year history) where some years may not see even an hour of snowfall in town.
But it did make for much happy snow play—for snow forts and happy snowmen at the local park
(I was the only bystander…)
And the woods are, as Frost would say, ‘lovely, dark and deep’…
The huckleberries, not yet in leaf, look like lace filigree…
All trails lead to fairyland…
And the slopes of Scout only lack daring Olympians…
The rather lovely thing about our snowy days is they are just on the edge of freezing and destined not to last, and they are warm enough to enjoy!
So on the final morning of our wintry wonderland (as predicted by the weathermen) I tromped out early to watch the sun rise to its task.
Its peachy golden warmth
made the morning irresistible,
so I walked the length of the street luxuriating in the glory of it…
Who could not love a shapely tree ‘au naturel’, dressed only in fresh-fallen snow?
But this I’d never seen before–a tree bedecked with a host of Turdus migratorius:
Surely spring is on the wing.
Here’s living proof:
None other than the common American Robin…
Here. Waiting for worms.
I love it!
So I’m glad to wait too..with the brave snowdrops
And the whimsical garden bunny 
not so camouflaged as his wild Albertan counterpart (who hides beneath our grandkids’ backstep…)
It’s not so bad to be home, waiting for worms.
–LS
Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience…
Rom 8:24-25 ESV