{pf peeps pick over an exquisite corpse}

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August 24, 2023

11:59 pm

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Musings on Extemporanea

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re writing a Diminishing — OR a Culminating Verse – Wikipedia calls them “pruning poems.” The last word in each line loses a letter from the end, yet remains a word – for instance, sticky becomes tick-y, and then icky. This will force you to use all your wiles, and will also force us to produce some pretty short poems. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing to throw our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION into the mix. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on September 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

I’ve fallen in love with the oddly named Exquisite Corpse poetry form. Perhaps it’s the fact that it is kind of Poetry, But Make It A Game, and there’s failure already baked in from scratch that makes it so compulsively enjoyable. If everyone in your neighborhood right now rolled up to your front porch with a line from a poem (already written or original), you know that lined up in they order of arrival, it would be complete gibberish. And yet! That you can massage it into some kind of shape from there is such a fun and freeing notion.

We’ve played with corps — ew, no. We’ve DONE THIS FORM before, but this time, the Poetry Sisters chose to mine Linda Mitchell’s clunkers for help as well as our brains – giving us quite a few more lines to work with, and, oddly, some kind of a theme. There’s no waste in wordplay, and we love to see a good line reused. A fine example of a great revision of an exquisite corpse can be found in Tricia’s story poem. Or Kelly’s sonnet.. Or Liz’s spare lines. Here’s Sara’s wordsmithing, and here’s Laura’s poem. Here’s Linda M. and Michelle K.’s collaborative corpses. Other participating Poetry Peeps will be posting throughout the weekend, so check back for a full-roundup.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

So, when we met last Sunday, we threw our lines into the “bucket,” and this is what we found:”

An Exquisite Draft

They say the mind is garden-like, with thoughts as sprouting seeds
*but I’m left holding cuttings I’m not sure where to plant
Weedy-thick, the prickly buds of odd logic bloom:
*You don’t cry anymore, but you sing all the words.
Each line in a different language as the light shifts,
*trees turned so orange the road looked blue.
Words tangle, colors muddy in the palette.
*I am no longer winsome to the sun.
*a whole sun’s rise to share
there goes the one that got away
*found a bit of sunflower
and plucked every petal (by the way, he loves me)
and then I remembered
*that’s what you wrote about the green beans
Stockpile, then, that snap and sass to sweeten your September.

In a way, this is already a poem. Even without knowing the other lines folks had chosen, we selected a lot of imagery of the natural world, of colors, and then, of … emotional states? Moods?? Most of us loved different bits of it, and most of had an idea of what we could do with it.

I… had no idea what to do with it.

It was my own fault. Mine was the first line, and it was a teensy bit of mockery for a Hallmark-esque phrase I heard a lot in junior high. ““Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.” And yes, please read that in the sing-songy little tone it deserves. This is akin to the sing-songy little “Everyone has two wolves” quote – both of which, don’t get me wrong, are PERFECTLY FINE analogies for how much control we have over our attitudes. PLEASE don’t feel weird if these are among your most beloved lines. Hearing them and others like them so much while growing up, however, mainly made me resentful of being told I could curate my thoughts like plants, and somehow yank out what was objectionable. In the brain-itchy, out-of-control emotional state of adolescence, I generally felt like my thoughts were MOSTLY weeds, so how was I supposed to cultivate the delicate freakin’ flowers everyone wanted of me???

Well. When you start a poem with snark, you have to end it with something a little better. So, I worked at this one — and while it’s still pretty much sing-songy drivel, I had fun with it.

Basically, that’s what counts.

In The Weeds

They say your mind is garden-like, your thoughts sprouting like seeds
(The cuttings that I’m rooting have their provenance as weeds.)
Sharp prickles, thick with offbeat buds of logic is their yield,
A soulful symphony of subtle shades therein revealed.
Each bract a shift of bright and dark, a language grown of leaves –
Petals and sepals, solid shapes sift sunlight through their sleeves.

Some tangled notions whip and twist like curly willows grow.
No-longer-winsome thoughts grow grimly dim and mute their glow.
A whole sun’s rise, a meadow-loud world truly made for joy
Yet wayward thoughts chase what is lost …that blight a bloom destroys.
But come the morning, light returns – perhaps cupped in sunflowers,
Knowing we’re loved and love’s returned remains a superpower.

If nothing more of plants and weeds and thoughts you can remember
That morning COMES is all that counts – rekindle with that ember.

Poetry Friday is ably hosted today by Linda Baie over at TeacherDance – thanks, Linda, for taking time in your busy school-time for poetry!

And now it’s time to tend your gardens – the weekend comes to make us take time for rest and a bit of raking, maybe. Be good to yourselves friends — even if you do grow weeds.

{acknowledgements again}

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August 2, 2023

1:39 pm

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Musings on Extemporanea

We’ve had this talk before, where I see the [TK] left deliberately blank in my copy editing notes and feel like I Ought To Say Something, but, in an effort to be true to my actual self, whose lack of reading of acknowledgements is a fact of my own existence, each time I resist. I put in a dedication – those are meant to be short. But, until I start writing nonfiction, or at the very least, unless it’s in a fiction book where I make wide use of nonfiction sources, I don’t see myself writing acknowledgements.

Not that my work exists in a vacuum. I know very well that I could acknowledge my writing group in every single book I write. They have to put up with me backing up, turning, and staggering forward again, like a drunken Roomba trying to avoid a spot in the carpet. They’re good people who listen to me agonize, and read my efforts that sometimes don’t cover much new ground. However, I do the same for them, and that’s our contract – we read each other’s worst crap, so it gets better.

Not that I don’t owe gratitude to the number of websites, books, and references materials I do use. To the therapists whose articles in Psychology Today inform some of my conclusions. To the sociologists whose work on humanity in groups helps me understand what I want to see, and how I want to explain it. The fact is, I have a ton of acknowledgements I could write, but I write children’s books. Kids don’t read those things, and writing something in a children’s book not intended for children feels kind of pretentious – from me, anyway – to write.

So, once again, I lay my acknowledgements here – where very few people will still read them, but where I feel like less of a soppy dolt for inflicting them on the world at large, vague and large as my gratitude tends to be.

♦ ♦ ♦

I acknowledge that the known world is, for many, decaying into entropy, by design. Things are no longer meant to be counted on, including goods and services, social media sites (sigh, Twixter), and more. Via capitalism we’re meant to propel civilization forward in a world largely indifferent to human needs and desires, basic things like facts, and fundamental human connection. We live in a hellscape, and it’s largely of our own making.

And yet, Science.

It is likely not easy to be in science in this environment. It is about as easy as it is to be a junior high girl, and yet, exactly like junior high girls, science keeps going. Inquiry keeps being fueled by inquiring minds. Rigor and clarity and research goes on. Answers people dismiss and dislike are produced, and methodologies which help and heal are discovered. And some of it is published online and I don’t quite understand it, but I acknowledge it: thank you to the scientists who published studies and grad school papers where I could find them, to use in my novel about a girl who discovered that sometimes girls are just mean, but that knowing your worth and holding onto that are the biggest things you can learn to do. Thank you, Science, for continuing to know your own worth in a world where liars hold office, and attempt to use the lever of government to remake the world in their image. Thank you, Science, for being there, even when my shaky Creationist-raised hold on you means I’m not entirely positive of what is in my hands. Thank you, scientists, who keep trying to explain.

Thank you, Dr. Faucci, you poor, patient man.

Thank you, Hank Green for educating a great many of us, and thank you, Brothers Green, for existing, and reminding us that science and faith can exist, and love each other without being awful about it.

I acknowledge that junior high is awful, the world is terrible, and yet, Science exists. And so here, my last acknowledgement – in spite of everything, we have something for which to be thankful.

{pf: pp go mano a mano with monotetras}

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July 28, 2023

5:29 am

20 Comments on {pf: pp go mano a mano with monotetras}

General Coolness, Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry Peeps adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of August! Here’s the scoop: We’re doing Exquisite Corpse poetry. These collaborative poems necessarily involve yourself and at least one other passing lines or stanzas along, so now’s the time to start choosing poetry compatriots. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION somehow wedged or sneaked into this form – and we’re going to also sneak in a few of Linda Mitchell’s clunkers to give us more to play with. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on August 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

It’s eleventy billion degrees here as I’m writing this (though tomorrow is forecast to be a whole five degrees cooler) and I view the calendar with horror… After a mostly mild summer which has suddenly hit ridiculous temperatures, it’s almost August… Which means it’s all but over. What?! My tomatoes haven’t even bothered to ripen!! In our neck of the woods, by August 1st, many teachers report back to school. At my nephew’s school, August 13th… is the first day of classes.

As the Bard says, “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

As always, my imagination takes me back to school this time of year (no matter how former, no teacher ever seems to lose the idea that September begins a new year) and I was thinking about the differences between my nephew at the beginning of his junior high experience, when he was a talkative, shorter, rounder person – and who he became by the end of it – a lanky, tall person who won’t use two words when a grunt and a side-eye would do. These thoughts fit well into our poetic theme of transformation — though for a while it felt like not much fit a monotetra. This is such a deceptively simple form, just four lines and eight syllables per line – but the final line repeating the same four syllables was… hard. With such a short syllable allotment for the stanzas, it feels as if each word should do more work than simply sitting there, so a repetition seemed pointless. I tried to make it work with homonyms – and I’m aware I wasn’t entirely successful (and at one point just gave myself an out to do what I wanted) but did I mention that it’s eleventy billion degrees out? I’m doing a patented L.P. Salas One & Done today, since normally we’re all a mite envious of her ability to just crank a poem out and call it good. We peeps are here for the PRACTICE of poetry, not the perfection of it, and I’ve officially practiced. I’m out.

(Gotta admit, though, that I did like playing with the homonyms, and sometime when I’m in a better mood, this might be a form to revisit. For someone who usually doesn’t mind requirements of rhymes and rules and syllables … the final line thing felt unnecessary, and for me, didn’t add anything. Others may have had a MUCH better time, however, so don’t miss the Laura Salas special, or Sara’s poemsmith-ery, or Mary Lee’s wordswimming. Tricia’s poeming is here, and Liz’s poem is here. Michelle K’s parrot poem is here, and Heidi’s nototetra slays me, while Linda B’s is scary. Carol’s gorgeous flowers (and poem) are here. Kelly isn’t with us this month, but other Peeps may be checking in with their masterful monotetra-ing throughout the weekend, so stay tuned.) Don’t miss the Bookseed Studio Dragonfly Bonanza – thanks Jan, for hosting Poetry Friday today!


EIGHTH GRADE

when you walk into a classroom
in eight grade, you won’t assume
that you’re a bud about to bloom:
(Cramped petals push: Make room! Make room!)

In every classroom, eyes compare
Those newly tall, some longer hair
Such change! Arriving from nowhere!
Of who, what, where – you’re quite aware.

Suddenly, last year’s playground joy
Is sneered at – who’s got time for toys?
The things you once loved now annoy.
You’re moody, coy, your moods decoy.

Fast as the year is passing by,
The sparkling social butterflies
Befriend the world. You’re so tongue-tied
You get a high from saying “hi.”

But then – the last class of the year!
One final test, and then a cheer
Erupting, you launch into gear.
You leap like deer. You disappear.

One thing the endless round of school years reminds us is that time. just. flies. The days get shorter and the years blur faster and the what you wanted to do won’t wait for the when you thought you would do it… No matter what happened yesterday, there is still a road forward into tomorrow. Now is the best present we’re ever going to get – so grab it with all your senses and make it count. Here’s to leaning open-heartedly into your one wild, precious life. Happy (Breathlessly Hot) Weekend.

{pf: poetry peeps write quote-ably}

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June 29, 2023

11:59 pm

8 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps write quote-ably}

General Coolness, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of July! Here’s the scoop: we’re writing monotetra poems. This four-line stanzas form is in tetrameter, with a total of 8 syllables per line, and can be a single quatrain, or several. Each stanza is mono-rhymed (each line has the same end rhyme), and the final line of each stanza repeats the same four syllables Writers’ Digest has an example. The Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION somehow wedged or sneaked into this form. You have a month to craft your creation and share it on July 28th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

Thought-provoking words from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: “We may not have wings or leaves, but we humans do have words. Language is our gift and our responsibility.” Those are the words before the sentence Mary Lee proposed for this month’s writing quote, which is, “If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”

…language is our gift and our responsibility. Though perhaps not in the way that Kimmerer intended, because my mind is far from the natural world, this phrase has really resonated this month. I’m always conscious of when I make a social expression of concern… – promising to keep friends in my thoughts or prayers, to find a way to help, if I can; to keep a daughter/son/husband in mind if I hear about a job/hear about an opening/tutor/book they might need or like. We promise each other so many tiny things in the name of care, a hundred small words that we genuinely mean in the moment they emerge. How many of them do we carry through? Because I AM Me, these are the types of things that revisit my thoughts late at night.

I am always disappointed in myself when I fail to fulfill the social exchanges I have promised. I feel, frankly, like a liar. We all fail, though, to follow through sometimes – sometimes on smaller, and sometimes on a larger scale. What would happen if we let that sting of feeling bad about it …change things? What if it all… meant something? What if we could go backwards and fix all the times in the past, from bad faith treaties to outright grift and lies, that have made the social contract has fallen apart? What wouldn’t we all give for a time machine that we could flip, and get a do-over.

I started out trying to use a villanelle for this poem, but a four-stanza pantoum – a form I normally struggle with – suggested itself, and, shockingly, worked out. The shorter lines conveyed a sense of my theme without drowning me in it, hinting at multiple meanings and not locking me into one way of looking at grief, change, or loss. I also took the opportunity to use one of Linda M’s clunker lines while revising. I swapped a clunker of my own with “for minute sips of time,” which worked amazingly, and is an absolutely BRILLIANT line, so thank you, Linda, I’ll take it!

I like the way this reads, laid out differently, too:

Time Machine

If grief can lead the way/ ‘cross the threshold of the world,
For minute sips of time /recreate our past again.

Cross the threshold of the world/ where our words, no longer lies
Recreate our past again/ bedrock-solid as we stand.

With our words no longer lies/ we, who never kept our word,
Bedrock-solid, make a stand/ make this lever pivot worlds.

We, who never kept our word/ if grief can lead the way
Make this lever pivot. Worlds,/ for minute sips of time.

I’m so glad I’m not teaching this poem, so I don’t have to force it to mean something that makes entirely coherent sense to anyone but me. ☺ Other poetic thoughts on quotations can be found at Cousin Mary Lee’s place, at Laura’s blog, at Tricia’s, and at Liz’s website. Michelle K’s lovely responsive poem is here. More Poetry Peeps will be checking in throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to pop back for the round up. And, Poetry Friday is ably hosted today by Irene Latham, who invites you to celebrate the moon in June and read more remarkable, thought-provoking, creative poetry. Happy Friday, and enjoy the supermoon and Independence Day.

{how is it the end of may, and other queries}

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May 30, 2023

2:22 pm

3 Comments on {how is it the end of may, and other queries}

Happenings, Intellectual curiosity, Literary Life Observations, Mental Health, Musings on Extemporanea

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

~ Anais Nin

So ends the merry, merry month of May, which brought to my circle, weather extremes, dishwashers blowing up, Achilles’s tendon surgery, mental health break, court dates, new, difficult medications, sudden sibling deaths, broken-into cars, suicide, lost jobs, lost illustrators, and plenty of book rejections, as always. May presented my larger circle the writer’s strike, persistent book censorship, a disappointing buy-in on the part of the industry (especially side-eying you, Scholastic) who want to appear in virtuous support of diversity and inclusivity, but who in truth bow to the loudest shareholder monies, and corporations moving hesitantly towards ethical behavior without ever embracing or wholeheartedly championing it. And further out from that, nationally, globally, May has continued to reveal to us ugly social divisions, war and its proxies, the high incidences of violence globally against immigrants, violence against trans persons, Asian, and Black communities in the US that goes on, and on, and on, a rising shriek in our collective ears. I’m thinking we’ve somehow cosmically agreed to delay the “merry” from this month until another day.

And yet, May has also been what it always is, a season of growth, a season of renewal, and a season of change. Yesterday I found the first morning glory blossom, peeking shyly from beneath a broad leaf. The hollyhocks are hip high and the dahlias buds grow fatter every day. The chard and lettuce are tiny, tender shoots, the walking onions stand tall in lines, and all the hard squashes and watermelon have more than six leaves. The last of the corn goes in this week, and the potatoes, ahead of a fall harvest. And there are tomato flowers.

In this grim place, there is still life affirmed. Even in an endless night, there are stars.

This month of shifting tides finds me once again reevaluating issues of religion/faith/denomination, re-examining my abilities to write, and contemplating my reasons for publishing. It is, in many ways, something I used to do more nebulously, a sort of anxious, “should I be quiet now? Do I any longer have anything to say?” angst that rattled in my mental background, but I feel it adds value to be deliberate in these thoughts, to let them come and be spoken aloud, instead of merely haunting me from shadowed corners. Who am I? What is my role? Why should I take up space? Each round of this kind of thinking moves me… some direction.

How about you? What questions are you asking, as the seasons blend and flowers move towards fruiting?

We learn things, through these revelatory moments in our lives. Trees age in circles, tides push us out, and draw us in again, moment by moment, step by step, always moving somewhere both familiar and new. I feel like I am moving both closer to my real self, and further out to sea. My closest relationships are becoming more genuine, and the ones which are …less, are fading. The refining continues to cycle things closer to the heart of the flame, and move what is mere dross further away. The Byrds echoed Ecclesiastes, “to everything there is a season.” All things will be revealed – finished and refined – in due time. So much of life and art is about our process, about waiting and being. About, in the wise words of the late Robin Smith, being here NOW. The seeds have been planted, the water is in place, and from this moment on, it’s about being present to take in each new unfolding, each new direction, each reset and rekindling of our purpose.

This is, admittedly, not my favorite part. I hate these treading water bits of life, this sense of standing in a boat while it’s being sloshed from stem to stern, while the tide is drawing in or running out, and we’re just trying to keep our balance. And yet – it’s been a month of unpacking some things, in between bouts of flailing about and wondering if I’m doing anything right at all. I sense an answer may be just around the corner…

…but, until then, we wait. We listen.

Here. Ready, though hesitant. Willing, though uneasy. Open to the next move.

{pf: poetry peeps drink deep of the ghazel}

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May 26, 2023

5:08 am

11 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps drink deep of the ghazel}

Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge in the month of June! Here’s the scoop: we’re writing in response to a quotation. Ours is an excerpt from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 359, in the chapter “People of Corn, People of Light:” “If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” How does that strike you? This time, the form and way you use this quotation – or another one which strikes your fancy – is totally up to you, but the Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. You have a month to craft your creation and share it on June 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

I feel like a dropped mirror – seven years of indifferent luck and little shards of self reflecting any number of different realities. This revision has just wrung me out – but in a better way than I had any right to expect of a novel outline done in a fit of pique that took me deeper than I expected. Himself sat patiently with me the times I completely wigged out and moaned aloud that I was never going to finish this on time. (I did. I always do. I always have. What is work, if you can’t be really dramatic about it, though?)

Oddly, all of this feels like really good prep for doing a ghazel.

No, seriously.

The #1 hardest thing for me to …embody in this couplet form is a sense of disjointedness. No, you’re not telling a story. No, you’re not pulling together the unified theory of anything. No, you’re not supposed to create an ensemble performance. Agha Shahid Ali, the poet who edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, in his foreword compared each ghazal couplet to “a stone from a necklace,” which should continue to “shine in that vivid isolation.” Sara had a great idea when she suggested we think of it as a new “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,”, by Wallace Stevens. That’s the level of splintered we’re going for – and while I’ve been working the past several months on being able to be … loose with words and wordplay, this was still quite a challenge. Dabbling in Neruda last month helped create a feeling of voluptuous abandon with words. This month, I wanted less to luxuriate, and more to make clockwork, ticking along with a limited pas de deux, each couplet touched and spinning perfectly for just a moment…

Well, that was the idea, anyway.

After writing THREE of the bloody things, each one more hated than the last, I took Marilyn Hacker’s “Dark Times” as my mentor text, and tried again… I only lightly kept to our transformation theme, but I tried to order the couplets from darkness into light, or at least from skies of gray to deeper shades of blue.

“Bad Times”

Did thriftiness (or hoarding) got them THROUGH the bad times?
“Use it up, wear it out, make up, or make do” the bad times.

Expansive “destiny,” proud wagons Westward believed
Sepia-tinted lies: this past previewed the bad times.

Did colonialism urge dominion, so might made right?
Post-planet Earth, what’s our next berth, as we accrue the bad times?

Sixteen-nineteen, heartwood filled hell’s incinerator
Nineteen-thirty-three new genocide renewed the bad times.

Prayers on Angel Island’s walls, grief observed in stone.
Regardless of race, the spirit debut in the bad times.

No “time of trouble” singular – disasters, naturally,
Buffet with waves a weary world in view of the bad times.

Sing out for voices silenced, lift memorials, and rise,
For those war-broken who remain black and blue from the bad times.

What generation will survive? A remnant, not a nation
For thick-heads still persist and MISCONSTRUE the bad times.

What metals alloyed, intertwined strengthen weak to strong?
Fired copper, iron, gold sings TRUE in the bad times.

There’s always more poetry. Sara brought this to the table. And here’s Laura’s. Tricia’s poem is here, and Liz’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s lakeside ghazel is here, while Michelle K. joined the challenge here. Heidi’s ghazal is right here. More Poetry Peeps will be checking in throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to come back and read the whole roundup. Meanwhile, Poetry Friday is hosted today by Patricia at Reverie. Thanks, Patricia!

A Buddhist koan about life after enlightenment says that “A broken mirror never reflects again; fallen flowers never go back to the old branches.” Well, I’ll respectfully disagree – of course a broken mirror still works! It merely reflects different pieces of the same sky, which is both a kind of clarity and a kind of distance I think I can live with. And if you’re feeling a little broken, a little blurry, taped-together, and wonky, don’t worry, friends. You’re not alone. ♥

Pax.

{npm23 – headline cinquain}

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April 30, 2023

5:48 pm

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General Coolness, NPM, Part and Poetry, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

It’s so weird to end a month on a Sunday – and it always feels a little sad to end the daily practice of NPM poems. I’ve had fun playing with cinquain. I don’t feel like I’m any better at them, but I do love how the five-line poem can be both so concise and full, depending on syllable count. I found I preferred the Crapsey; ten syllables for an end line feels simply too long – and too hurried, everything all at the end.

Today’s poem is a bit of a cheat; this isn’t news from the world, but from the microcosm of my garden. My alyssum sprouted and immediately burst jubilantly into teensy-tiny (I’m quite squatted down for this shot), scented flowers, so I figured that was the best news of the world I could get. Happy May, friends – fresh breezes, sunny days, more rain soon, and plenty of flowers. The best of the season to you.