THEY'RE HERE and SOPHIE'S COMING Oh, happy, happy day. They’re here! They’re here! The goldfinches have arrived in their finest courtship plumage at the front yard feeder. They look like brilliantly feathered lemon drops sporting black caps, their midnight wings and tails distinctively striped in white. |
Margie Tucker’s columbine, a gift four years ago before her passing, has matured to magnificence at almost three feet tall with a crown of bluest, clustered blossoms. Father Steve’s Easter lilies have established an extended, star-studded family fully filling all available space beside the miniature pink spirea. The row of stella d’oro ("star of gold" in Italian) is gleefully raising bud laden stems.
The parsleys, said to be the world’s healthiest food, replenish almost as fast as I harvest their goodness to use like lettuce for my lunchtime sandwich. Basil, transplanted from the winter sharings of Sarah Serio’s mother, adds just the right pungent highlight to a giant Provençal cassoulet in the oven.
The wintered-over snapdragons of mauve and burgundy are nothing less than regal beside the steps. Creeping Jenny, variegated vinca and Carolyn Wyatt’s chocolate mint, appearing now as tamed and docile, will require watchful tending lest they take over by July, if not sooner.
And now, oh look! Joining the goldfinches there’s a cardinal adding a scarlet grace note to their breakfast tableau. Beautiful abundance keeps multiplying.
I can see all this through my new, fully-glassed front door purchased with the windfall prize money made possible by my yogi friend Valerie Butler. So much joy. So much abundance. So much beauty. I am grateful.
Grateful I continue to be, personally and on behalf of artCentral, to each of you contributing toward artCentral’s Capacity Fund. During last week’s Ozarks Giving Day, with the capable guidance of Heather Collier and the support of the Carthage Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, |
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