I know...real frogs don't have red lips.
(Norfolk Botanical Garden... greenhouse) 
"A light exists in Spring
Not present in the year
at any other period
When March is scarcely here."
~ Emily Dickinson
It's an in between day... not really cold enough to huddle under a thick blanket in front of the fire and certainly not like yesterday with its cold northwest wind blowing at a good clip... but, not really warm enough to roll up your sleeves and start digging in the dirt either. No, its an in between day... in between those yo-yo oscillations that are common in March. The swampy preserve is filled with water from our one inch of rain from Sunday and the branches of the still bare trees reflect in the quiet surface of what will certainly soon become the nursery for millions of mosquitoes. Now though, it is home to the mallard pair... quietly paddling around and stopping only occasionally to plunge their heads below that murky mess looking for food. It IS almost that time.. when waterfowl pair up and eggs are deposited and little fuzzy ducklings are spotted marching across the way in long lines with the nursery workers in strategic spots keeping all the new life together.
Anyway... you get the picture... not cold, not hot... still jacket weather... and then... "Grrrooookee...grrroke....grrroke"... that certainly doesn't sound like the high pitched twittering and tweeting (real tweeting) from the birds that have now moved to other yards since I have not cleaned the feeders and put them back in place. (I had to take them down because of the 50 mph winds that came through last week) What could it be... I listened and then.. of course. It's the beginning of frog season. Not quite as low in tone as the bullfrog, but not high like the tiny tree frog either. The sound is coming from the preserve and no, I am not going to put on waders and venture out into the primordial sludge that more than likely holds at least one snake beneath its black surface.. no, I will not risk finding the quicksand that surely must exist there, simply to try and find the singing frog and photograph him. It would be an exercise in futility as he would shut his mouth as soon as my black boots made the first clumping splash in the water. (These are the same oversized boots that became mired down in the muddy swamp that was my rose garden until we had proper drainage put in... and believe me... you must thank your lucky stars that you didn't have that scene burned into your retinas... a mud covered.... mumble year old woman.. stuck in the ground up to her knees...I did get out.. but the boots stayed there until I could find something to grab them and they let go with a wet sucking sound.... anyway, another time, another place.)
It was nice to hear the sounds of life in the swamp... at least, sounds other than those of the birds. Not that I don't love the sounds of the birds, but there is something about that symphony of ribbits and croaks that fill the spring nights, that cannot be explained in words. I distinctly heard a duet.. lower tone and a mid to higher one... the early "first chairs" getting the songs ready for full orchestration.
So, since I am not a swamp creature and the frogs are not beating a path to my back door to have their countenances preserved in pixels for all time... this colorful counterfeit creature will have to do, even though he would never be mistaken for the real thing... real frogs don't have red lips. Everyone knows that! If they did, then they would leave red kiss marks on all those women who kiss frogs attempting to find their prince! And that would simply NOT be right!
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Ruby Tuesday
Colorful pansies.... (Click to enlarge)
"We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us." ~ Albert Einstein
Carmi's theme this week is "colorful" and at this time of year the color is really coming back outside. The pear trees, redbuds and the glorious tulip magnolias are blooming as are the forsythia. The grass seems to turn more green overnight and one of our small evergreens which takes on a beautiful bronze color for winter has lost it in just days and now sports that lighter, brighter green of spring. The daffodils are outdoing themselves and soon, for those who planted on time unlike myself, the tulips will be springing up.
Then there are the pansies. Around here, the pansy is a winter flower planted in late fall. It seems to weather our usual cold quite nicely. This year with all the unusual snow, they had a much harder time and really are just now coming into their own. It seems a shame that just when they reach the height of their beauty, they are taken up and replaced with the summer impatiens. Oh, well. We have a few more weeks to enjoy at least.
I think I will sneak on over to the Color Carnival as well and get in under the wire for this week.
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An odd sort of food.... Yankee Candle Company
(Click picture to enlarge) "It's a very odd thing—
As odd as can be—
That whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T."
~ Walter De La Mare (1873-1956), British poet. Miss T. (l. 1-4). FaBoBe. Family Book of Best Loved Poems, The David L. George, ed. (1952) Doubleday & Company.
I wonder what Miss T would look like if she ate a few of these funny fruits and vegetables? These orange cats, cauliflower sheep, gourd geese, pear seals and banana octopus are strange and adorable figurines found in one of the shops at the Yankee Candle Company in Williamsburg, Virginia.
This is a wonderful place to shop that keeps families in mind. From the outside it looks like a large warehouse with facades of different houses painted in different colors and with different roof lines. When you walk into the front door, however, you step onto the mainstreet walkways of a bygone era, when people shopped in small towns, sat on wooden benches in front of the stores and strolled beneath old fashioned ornate street lamps. Above the curved ceiling is painted with blue skies and fluffy clouds and a full size flagpole stands in the center of "town" replete with a full-sized American flag. To the sides various shops open onto the street.. some selling candles, others include bed and bath items, decorative wall hangings, knick knacks, and stationary products. There is a toy store and a candy store with large bins of penny candy and clear plastic bags to shovel your finds into. High above the town square runs a toy train, the tracks weave in and out of the various stores and all around the outside walls. Town square hosts cookie shops, fudge shops, snack shops and small ice cream parlor chairs and tables to rest and watch the mechanical town clock clang. On the hour the clock opens and a group of automated puppets appear for ten minutes of music, song and jokes for the kids.
It is always Christmas here, as one shop specialized in ornaments and Christmas lights... it is guarded by a large nutcracker and boasts a bridge over a frozen pond where penguins and polar bears frolic in the snow. This room has a dark night sky with thousands of tiny twinkling star lights shining down and Christmas carols are always, always, always playing.
The Yankee Candle Company is a magical place to visit... so be sure to take your camera... photos are welcomed there.
Last week I was very late for Carmi's theme... so this week I'll try to be a little more prompt. His theme this week is "odd", things that are odd, unusual or funny. I also think these critters are quite colorful... in more ways than one.. so check out the other colorful creations at Color Carnival.
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Little girls used to wear dresses to school.
(Click picture to enlarge)"I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns." ~ Winston Churchill
Once upon a time, little girls wore dresses.. at play, to church and even to school. I learned to sew when I was a sophomore in high school. Even though we had to take home economics in junior high and I had sewed the obligatory blouse in seventh grade and the skirt in eight grade.. I didn't really learn to sew until high school. That summer I was at my grandmother's house in Roanoke, VA and I was bored. So she took me to the fabric store and helped me pick out a simple a-line dress pattern and some simple cotton material. Then she cut me loose. I cut it out and sewed it up on her machine and amazingly it fit and looked really nice. So we got some more material, just a little more expensive.. and I made another one.. changing up the front tab and the sleeves. All in all I think I made at least seven or eight dresses from the same pattern.
When Nyssa was born, I made a few little dresses and short sets and then sweat suits. We moved to Mississippi and still made a lot of her clothes but wanted to branch out. There I took a course in smocking.. both geometric design and picture smocking. With smocking you can take a simply yoke patterned dress pattern and make hundreds of different styles by changing the material, the smocking pattern, the sleeves and the collars. Little girls outgrow their love for smocked dresses... all too soon for my thinking.
In the jungle the mighty jungle...the lion sleeps tonight.
This was one of my favorites... I love all the mixtures of colors with the animals and it seemed perfect for smocking the lion and lioness... as they are the king and queen of the jungle. I try to always use a good cotton, preferably one made by the Hoffman company, as they are consistently colorfast and don't fade when washed as cheep cottons from others do. This dress must have been washed at least forty or fifty times and no fading. Smocking is wonderfully relaxing.. you have to shut out the worries of the day and focus on your stitches. It always amazed me to see the scene start taking shape on the cloth under my needle. The greatest reward was seeing Nyssa put the dress on for the first time and look at herself in the mirror... hearing the words, "Oh, MOM! It is so-o-o-o beautiful! I love it so much! Thank you so-o-o-o much! Can I wear it to school tomorrow?" What mom wouldn't smock her fingers to the bone to hear those words?
This is posted for a very "colorful carnival" this weekend.
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Pale yellow rose... symbol of friendship and freedom.
(Click pictures to enlarge) "The rose speaks of love silently, in a language known only to the heart." ~ Author Unknown
The sun is shining and the sky is blue, even though it is still cold on this second day of spring. After last weekend's marathon rain event and another overnight rain fest on Thursday, it is good to see the bright yellow sun... and what a great theme for the first weekend of a new season.
Pansy - loving thoughts of thee
"They are all in the lily-bed, cuddled close together--
Purple, Yellow-cap, and little Baby-blue;
How they ever got there you must ask the April weather,
The morning and the evening winds, the sunshine and the dew."
~ Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz, Vagrant Pansies
Our pansies bloom all winter but it is only with spring that they seem to energize and really come into their own. All too soon it is time to replace them with the summer begonias.... there must be a perennial pansy out there some where. White's nursery is having their Spring Fling sale today... perhaps I should go!
Sunflower - adoration of the sun
"Space for the sunflower, bright with yellow glow,
To court the sky."
~ Caroline Gilman, To the Ursulines
One of the most beautiful sights in Italy are the fields of giant sunflowers that spread for miles with a small tile-roofed shed providing the occasional contrast. The flower heads are always lined up with faces to the sun, no matter the time of day... not that IS adoration!
Yellow rose - joy and gladness
"A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow rose was to him.
And it was nothing more."
~ William Wordsworth
This rose was in my flowerbed... a find at the White's Nursery last year.. called the table rose. It thrived in this swampy clay soil and bloomed well into November. I cut it back when they recommended and now we shall soon see what blooms come forth this year. One can never have too many roses.
Double yellow tulips - there is sunshine in your smile
"It is the color closest to light. In its utmost purity it always implies the nature of brightness and has a cheerful, serene, gently stimulating character. Hence, experience teaches us that yellow makes a thoroughly warm and comforting impression." ~ Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Because I take too many pictures of birds and flowers and because I couldn't choose my favorite one and because I know that Vicki's favorite color is yellow and because we all need a little sunshine in our day... these are my entry for this week's Saturday Photo Hunt theme Yellow.
(end of post) PhotoHunt
Chrysanthemum... orange in the garden.
(Click picture to enlarge) "Orange is the happiest color." ~ Frank Sinatra
Only once growing up did I have the chance to actually pick the color of my room. Even then it was more out of courtesy rather than practical, as I was already in college and would be home on holidays or in the summer; and then for only a couple of years. But, I did get to choose. Now, you have to remember that this was the early 70's and it was the time of large flowery prints on wall paper and shag carpets and I was only 17. So, for my attic room I chose orange.... this shade of orange... bright.... very bright...what was she thinking bright! It went so well with the pop art flowered bedspread in orange, bright yellow and lime green as well as the yellow and lime shag throw rugs. Of course taste changes... favorite colors wax and wane..... and....
I wonder what happened to that bedspread?
I am returning to Shutterday this week... the theme... Orange.
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Variegated Hosta
Submission for LensDay topic "green". (end of post)
