Outdoor Pleasures

watching the growth of new plants

admiring the beauty of this persistent weed

inspecting a patch of clovers

and finding two to press

Nature's free gifts

quickly fill a basket.

The lovely warm sunshine makes me linger outside and enjoy this wondrous time called SPRING. I am anxious for blooms to appear in the flowerbeds and for the planters to be overflowing with color. I am an impatient gardener learning to be patient.

Nature's gifts

Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved pine trees. My brother and I used to climb to the very tops of them on my grandparents' farm in Louisiana. In grammar school my classmates and I would take the dry needles and construct "rooms" on the playground. I remember making pinecone turkeys for take-home art around the Thanksgiving holidays. Now that I'm a lot older I gather pinecones to decorate my home. Sometimes I leave them in their natural state . . . other times I coat them with gold spray paint. Where we live now there are several tall pine trees that provide an abundance of cones. My husband remembers planting those trees on his aunt and uncle's property when he was about fourteen years old. Those tiny pines have grown to be the giants of the yard.