zirconium

[The subject line's from Auden's If I Could Tell You.]

I hadn't planned on working in the yard today. What with music to master and work assignments to plow through, it was squarely on the "C" list (along with scraping the studio walls, mending my overcoat, rinse, repeat...). But as I took out some trash, I found that I couldn't stand the sight of the infected hollyhocks anymore, and once I started filling the garbage bag, my peasant don't-waste-the-rest-of-the-sack nature took over, and why not apply the axe to the three rosebushes that looked dead as doornails?

Only, there was a limp green bud on Julia Child, and a cluster of new stems at the foot of Sparkle & Shine:

So, instead, I reached for scissors and spray, and tried to trim away the spottiest leaves and stems without being a lunatic about it. A thing that caught my attention today is how two blossoms on the same bush can be distinctly different shades of yellow:

I picked up that bush (Sky's the Limit) while shopping with my big brother two years ago -- he was sprucing up his house for sale, so we stopped at a nursery during my visit:

It's a friendly bush. It likes to reach over the fence:

In publishing news, my poem "Decorating a Cake while Listening to Tennis" was recently republished by Ted Kooser in his American Life in Poetry column, and the journal that first featured it, Rattle, featured "Substance" as the Artist's Choice for an ekphrastic challenge this past winter. "Snake Dance" continues to be on view at Georgia Southern University.

In my kitchen, I have worked my way through an assortment of odds and ends in the freezer, and am finally about to test my immersion blender (a December gift -- it can take me a while to reach the right headspace to enjoy even longed-for things ...) on a small pot of carrot-onion soup. And I have an excellent cup of coffee, and friends whom I am un-neglecting today. (I went to bed early on Friday and slept through most of Saturday. Fabulous business, sleep...) Suppose the lions all get up and go ...