This virus has really knocked the stuffing out of me. We had to bail on almost all our planned activities this week, including (to my dismay), the extra Shakespeare rehearsals we’d planned. And I’ve ignored my garden dreadfully. All my herbs went to seed.
I would be sorry, but—
Who knew cilantro made such a lovely flowering plant?
That’s shot lettuce above it, the weedy yellow flowers.
Our nasturtiums have grown into huge bush-sized clumps, a tangle of red and yellow and orange flower cups that the bees are mad for. Sometimes the tangle of color happens on the petals of a single flower.
Love the nasturtiums even the leaves are beautiful. I have to add them to our backyard garden. I’ve obsessed this year with lilliput zinnias. Inspired by Guliver’s Travels. Although we are still waiting for buds…PA weather doesn’t produce flowers from seed until later and we were slow in planting:)
Thanks for sharing the photos, glad you’re on the mend.
Last year I found out why they are called broccoli *florets*. A happy accident. As in the kids were happy because they didn’t have to eat the broccoli, and I enjoyed the flowers!
Cilantro gone to seed becomes corriander seeds. You & the girls will have a lot of fun finding ways to use them. But…most ripening corriander has a terrible odor, some varieties worse than others.
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Love the nasturtiums even the leaves are beautiful. I have to add them to our backyard garden. I’ve obsessed this year with lilliput zinnias. Inspired by Guliver’s Travels. Although we are still waiting for buds…PA weather doesn’t produce flowers from seed until later and we were slow in planting:)
Posted on June 18th, 2009 at 9:25 amThanks for sharing the photos, glad you’re on the mend.
Such great photos. I personally love weeds. I hope these pictures mean you’re starting to feel better and that soon you’ll bea box of birds once more.
Posted on June 18th, 2009 at 12:10 pmLast year I found out why they are called broccoli *florets*. A happy accident. As in the kids were happy because they didn’t have to eat the broccoli, and I enjoyed the flowers!
Nice photos, I’m a weed fan from waaaay back.
Hope you’re completely well soon!
Posted on June 18th, 2009 at 2:12 pmCilantro gone to seed becomes corriander seeds. You & the girls will have a lot of fun finding ways to use them. But…most ripening corriander has a terrible odor, some varieties worse than others.
Posted on June 24th, 2009 at 7:35 amDid you remember to fertilize your silk (the corn)?
Posted on June 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm