A Little Color to Share

 A small vase to hold a collection of colors, textures, perfumes and corresponding memories.

Rosemary, spiky, aromatic, dressed in Provencale colors.

Velvet wallflowers in burnished orange, wafting scents that take me back to the garden of my Mother's Great Aunt Flossie.

 Brash petunias and perfumed stock, encroached upon by a bustle of sweet-pea starters and the evergreen leaves of jasmine. The stakes are there to support the Dahlias that are hidden to all but my inner eye, for now.

 Forget-me-nots blueing up in my overcrowded pots.

 Wall flower habitat. Unstructured, willful, messy. 

 Birds-eye view of sweet-pea plants that have reached a foot tall already, and had to be tied up to the trellis today. There is a seating area just the other side of this low wall, and a crab-apple tree behind, that flowers in an abundance of rich cotton candy pinks.

 The small green leaves down in front are Columbines. I see the flowers that are not there yet.

Orchids in a pot, by my front door. They come back every year, from this plant that I bought at the flea-market, on a jaunt with faraway friends. This year's abundance has let me use orchids as a cutting flower.

Are We There Yet?

Forecast-Rain

This morning was a cacophony of birds. Chirping, cheeping, warbling, whistling; a few who could hold a tune performing and competing, as if they too had heard the weather forecast and knew that time was short.

At lunch-time we watched the bees in the ornamental pear by the dining room window. In and out of the bright-white blossoms. Busy, busy; Now or never. 

By 3pm the trees are restless. The sky is a uniform pale grey; not too menacing yet, but this will not be an evening where dark hesitates politely at the threshold.

I take the dog for a walk an hour early this afternoon, unsure if we would make it later without bringing home gallons of water on her full, furry, collie coat. Diva likes the promise-wind before the rain. Her pointy nose gathers messages that her old ears cannot hear. She smiles into the wind. Diva was a puppy in the El Niño years; she loves puddles and saturated playing fields.

We have had a few days' break since the last rain. Gardeners have tidied up the ripped-paper strips of eucalyptus bark. The fat, pink camellias lusciously carpeting the ground are decaying, no longer perfect as they were last week. My invincibly bright daffodils, relentlessly beaten into translucent defeat have been replaced by a new army, stoically ready to face their fate.

As we head for home I see a newly flowering white Camellia by a neighbor's wall. Tight geometric blooms perfect and pristine as new snow. The round buds a suspended hail storm hovering over the dark, shiny leaves.

Sound-effects from a tall palm tree. Dry clack-clacking of old, untrimmed palm leaves; each desiccated, cricket-colored layer rubbing on those of the year below.

Today is Saturday. We will surely wake tomorrow to the sound of rain. Comfortably cocooned in our beds, sleeping easily in the fake darkness.

Later Diva will have her fun. She doesn't know it yet but tomorrow is bath-day for her anyway.