Black-Eyed Susan

Simply Beautiful

My Fairy Garden

 I heard fairy gardens are very popular this year. "What's a fairy garden," I asked?

 They are, or so I hear,

 large container gardens decorated with tiny lawn furniture and trinkets, small plants and vines,

 As a place where the tiny creatures might like to hang out on summer nights. Being an essentially hospitable person, I decided to make a fairy garden for my porch.

I chose an abandoned bird's nest as a more natural bed for a fairy .

  I gathered some plants with tiny blooms and leaves and some stuff that fairies might like furniture wise or as lawn ornaments, like sea shells, polished stones, and beach glass.

 A miniature fern

 A tinsy variegated ivy

If the rumor is true, fairies will come at night and lounge around in my fairy garden

 and leave me gifts like gold coins, fifty-cent pieces, and other treats.

 I planted a white moon vine that blooms only in the dark of night 

and gives off a sickly-sweet scent to draw special moths. 

I think the fairies will be awestruck!

Tulip Memories

My tulip 

a new one I planted this year.

It looked white in bud, just white and green.

Not until it began to open did I know that I had a special pink ruffled tulip on my hands.

 Oh, it did turn out to be a pretty bloom and I enjoyed for a while before it faded.

 Tulips are a favorite of mine. 

When I was a child and lived in western Michigan, we got to go to Holland, Michigan to see the tulip festival that they hold there every spring. The Michigan winter is long and dreary, 

so spring is especially welcome. The streets were lined with tulips of every color imaginable. Windmills turned their Dutch heads along the coastline of the big lake.Shops stood for handouts from tourists along the highway. Holland New Holland full of Dutch people with surnames like Brink, De Vries, Meijer, Jansen, DeJong and Smit.

 I recall going there once after I was married and had my little Delaney in tow. 

In a gift shop she chose a pair of wooden shoes which she kept for many years

 as a remembrance of the trip.

 Tulips take me back there. They make windmills turn in my mind. They are a Maypole with little girls in pastel dresses pulling sashes of ribbons into a braid. 

They are spring, new life, rebirth and rejoicing!