"Springtime is the land awakening. March winds are the morning yawn." (-Lewis Grizzard)

"Everything is blooming most recklessly;
if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

(--Rainer Maria Rilke)

The daffodils and redbud trees are already doing their thing, the tulips are poking their leafy heads above ground, rabbits are eyeing our clover, and I'm so ready for it all. Bring it on...


Happy weekend, all! (Someone has new art DVD's, and hopes to get some time in the next few days to play and learn.)

“Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday cheer and like enough to consent.” (--Shakespeare)

Joe has an affinity for frogs.

I always say it must have something to do with his French “Gervais” heritage, (he’s now a Jarvis) but any time he sees anything celebrating the frog, he just lights up.

As a result, we have been given numerous gifts with frogs and they seem to be everywhere.

A few years ago, a friend gave us this little ornament (above) of a frog sipping a drink, and I have to admit, I smile every time I get it out of the ornament box. It’s just very apropos. Needless to say, I had to sketch it.

“The frogs wore red suspenders
And the pigs wore purple vests,
As they sang to all the chickens
And the ducks upon their nests.

They croaked and oinked a serenade,
The ducks and chickens sighed,
Then laid enormous spangled eggs
And quacked and clucked with pride.”

(-Jack Prelutsky)

"Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees." (David Letterman)

"Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause
between the opposing miseries of summer and winter."
- (Carol Bishop Hipps )

Happy weekend, all!

“The flower in the vase smiles, but no longer laughs.”

In every room of our house, there’s always a vase with cut flowers in it. Doesn’t matter what season: even in the dead of winter, we’ll have pansies and camellias to bring inside to brighten up the place. We're fanatics about it. I'll spend lots of time placing flowers in every room, and Joe will ask me, in a concerned tone, "Did you remember to put one in the bathroom upstairs?" Horrors, "yes," I'll respond, and he will calm down immediately to hear that reassuring news.

People tell me we have a lot of vases, and it’s true; we do. I suppose it’s a weakness, but it’s an ailment Joe suffers from even more than I do. He’ll spy a vase that he likes and he just can’t pass it by. I’ll remind him that we have plenty of them, but it’s just an addiction and I tell myself that he really can’t help himself.

As for me, I’m certainly not going to turn down a new one. Some I've had for years, some friends have given us and some Joe surprises me with. Cut flowers won’t always last that long, but part of the beauty of flowers is their ephemeral nature, and that’s what makes them so appealing to me in the first place. We're fortunate that most of our cut flowers are from our own gardens, and we love them.

“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And don’t forget to smell the flowers along the way.” (-Walter Hagen)

"Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them." (author unknown)

We have every color of the rainbow in an exuberant display in our garden, and sprinkled throughout the flowers are numerous statues of irreverent frogs.

Joe’s heritage is French, and I always tease him that the frogs must have some sort of significance that way. Most of our frogs are characters we pick up at our local flea market, and several of them started out their lives as heavy iron banks: their mouths are really slots for coins.I never think of myself as a “chatchky” type of person, but I have to admit I’ve come to be enamoured of our frogs. Joe has been the whimsical instigator of their proliferation around the yard. You’ll come around a corner of a garden bed and there they’ll be, peeking up at you. You can’t help but smile to see them.
Joe is 13 years older than I am, but I think the frogs speak volumes about his child-like nature.

“What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails, and puppy dog tails, that’s what little boys are made of.” (author unknown)

RIBBET.