Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A weed is a weed is a weed. . .

Or is it? I have blogged about this before. About the ability of some weeds to so closely imitate the actual flower. This is a picture of False Queen's Lace (Ammi majus), which is the cultivated variety of the native Queen Anne's Lace, which some people refer to as the true weed. . . But mixed in here is False, False Queen Anne's Lace--a weed that resembles False Queen Anne's Lace. Can you tell the difference? I, for one, vote for the native with its center black eye. It is watching us, closely, and probably laughing at our feeble attempts to replicate truth. . .

Monday, April 26, 2010

Tulip Time

April is tulip time here on the flower farm. We dig thousands of tulips that we planted in the fall, bulb in all, and store them in our shed until market day. This year they were taller than ever--maybe it was all that snow that blanketed them this winter. . . The flowers bend and sway on their stems like graceful ballerinas performing their spring dance. It makes me smile to think of so many of them putting on their show in so many different homes. It makes me smile, as well, to think of people reading one of my stories that was just published in the spring edition of The Main Street Rag, a literary journal out of Charlotte, NC. I know that people often say they just write for themselves. But, for me, once the setting, the characters, the plot, all the write words. . . are planted. . . I want that story to dance in many homes. I hope you'll enjoy.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Snow on the Sand

I have always loved the beach during the off-season. The serenity, the vastness, the ability to retrace my lone footprints in the sand. But I most love it when it snows, the white powder drifting across the sand, melting into the sea. It is so lovely, and, yet, seems so out of place; and it is this feeling of displacement that I so identify with. As a writer, I am a drifter. And, yes, the flower farm has grounded me, but I fly in my mind to so many different places each day, still searching for that definitive destination: home.