A is for April

I'm not doing the A-Z challenge. 

I'm just excited that spring is here!

I want to start with a tulip...*

In the sixteenth century the first tulip was imported to Turkey from Holland. I know-- I carried it myself.

By 1634 the Dutch were so crazy for this fish-mouthed flower that one collector exchanged a thousand pounds of cheese, four oxen, eight pigs, twelve sheep, a bed and a suit of clothes for a single bulb.

What's so special about a tulip?

Put it this way...


When is a tulip not a tulip?








 When it's a Parrot or a Bizarre. When it's variegated or dwarf. When it comes called Beauty's Reward or Heart's Reviver. When it comes called Key of Pleasure or Lover's Dream...

Tulips, every one-- and hundreds more-- each distinctively different, all the same. The attribute of variation that humans and tulips share.

It was Key of Pleasure and Lover's Dream that I carried from Sulyman the Magnificent to Leiden in 1591. To be exact, I strapped them under my trousers...  

*(An excerpt from Jeanette Winterson's The Powerbook...)

Spring is Springing!

According to Climate Central this was the fourth warmest winter in recorded history in the contiguous U.S. . It's alarming (to say the least!) that the change in weather patterns (yes, caused by climate change or as we  more aptly call it "climate chaos") is becoming so obvious. Our February (the snowiest on record here in Colorado) was more like March which is a month we have often seen our lawns buried in snow (in 2003 we had a record 3 ft. of snow during spring break!). 

In spite of the alarming side of the weather news, I am overjoyed that I am out again, taking pictures of the landscape. Note the snow on Mt. Evans in my header- it's already lost much of it's winter white and the hills will soon be as green as the Evergreen in the foreground.  

The crocuses have just now shaken off the winter doldrums, pushed their way out of hibernation and are dotting the still barren gardens with color. 

A tenacious wildflower has welcomed the warm air with the exuberance I feel and reminds us that lingering long days in the sun have only just begun!

Ch-ch-ch-changes and why DO I blog????

So we went to the mountains yesterday and my new banner (do you like???) is just a taste of what we saw (I'll be posting them in the next day or so).  I am still not ready for fall but I am ready to accept that we are heading toward winter and I fully appreciated the beauty of the day. I was also deeply grateful for the long warm fall we having again but... 

Folks, if the significant changes in the weather patterns don't convince you that there is something deeply wrong then nothing will. Here in Colorado, I think we have been fortunate that we have experienced mostly good weather. Where it was really dry before, we have had extra rain, our warm weather has lengthened and the cold weather is not nearly as cold before (I am not sure the ski resorts would be as excited as I am about this!) but that's good news to a warm weather baby like me. I dread the cold! (though I love Christmas as you shall see and be tortured with!!!) But not everyone has been so lucky! In the last year alone the US has had $35 billion in damages from the extreme weather conditions and the government is now in the process of making sure we won't have the money to help communities who have been flooded or destroyed by tornadoes. Could be rough times ahead! 

 

At any rate, I thought I would take a stab at the prompt for yesterday... briefly. 

I began blogging because of NaBloWriMo. Amy Kalinchu of Craft-E Revolution suggested I start a blog and join NaBlo. Why would I want to do that? Because you're a writer and it's a good way to get good writing habits started of writing every day. It seemed logical so I did. That's how this blog started. I wasn't writing for anyone but myself and I didn't really comment on anyone else's blog. I didn't know the proper etiquette and was a little taken aback when I got comments. I ranted a bit and did some real writing on my fiction work here.  It was a real work in progress. I started making some connections though and saw the benefits of blogging. The blogging community is a fine one! 

Last year after NaBlo, I did a Blogfest and connected with more writers and I quickly made a whole bunch of friends. The community has been a warm one! I enjoy all my friends immensely.

I now have my blog as more of a display for my pictures, as you will see. I do comment on the world around me occasionally and I do sometimes insert some of my writing, but since writing is a passion that takes time which I hope to be paid for some day I don't want to offer it up for someone to steal. And since putting hot topics up for the public to view could wind up in the hands of my bosses at work, I try not to be too intense publicly. I save that for twitter actually! lol. So on this blog, you will generally find the expression of my eye, perhaps if I had had the passion of an artist with the paint brush. So I hope you enjoy and stop by now and then to comment! 

A final look back at spring!