#23256
03/17/2001 6:07 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
With Spring less than a week away, and snow still on the ground ... I suggest some thoughts about FLOWERS.
I start with two that pop into mind :
Fresh as a daisy.
Shy as a violet.
and await the contributions of the much more imaginative than I.
wow
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#23257
03/17/2001 7:19 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 76
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 76 |
What fun! Anthropomorphism is one of my favorite things! How about these:
Tipsy as a tulip
Dauntless as a daffodil
Evasive as a morel (a mushroom, but it only comes up in the spring)
Rowdy as a black-eyed susan
Guileless as a dandelion
Gregarious as an apple blossom
(Aenigma sez "tiptoe" as a tulip)
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#23258
03/17/2001 7:22 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275 |
>wow!what a floweryidea!
I am not imaginative but I just love this scene from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream--
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and with eglantine.....
chronist
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#23259
03/17/2001 8:52 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Where did all the trailing arbutus go? I haven't seen, or more importantly enjoyed the fragrance of one for over fifty years.
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#23260
03/17/2001 9:21 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
For the rest of us, from my favourite US'n poet, Robert Frost. It's called My November Guest, but the season is right, anyway.
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
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#23261
03/18/2001 12:00 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Long ago in my far distant youth I read a poem about the cherry tree ... I have forgotten the name of the poem and the beginning, but the end touched me
" .. so about the woodland I shall go
To see the cherry hung with snow."
Anyone recall it? I would be ever grateful.
wow
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#23262
03/18/2001 3:41 AM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
LOVELIEST OF TREES - By A.E. Housman
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
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#23263
03/18/2001 6:37 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275 |
And this from Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
chronist
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#23264
03/18/2001 4:27 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661 |
PHOTO SIN THESIS
Tearing at its branches it is that
which keeps us both alive it exists opposite as us
extracting to and fro, realized by touching it twenty-four
hours a day it is in its motion that we see it feel as we breathe,
even as a lung upside down the tree is as a tree upside down
a lung is all around it, everyone draws value from it like a
single vote in democracy the roots which it draws
nourishment from are hidden
just as the mind which
draws the
picture of
each need
is hiding
the food
which we
eventually
live on, knowing
not the abundance of
sources, yet a sense of
convenience shall reign as motion
will always move faster than the air it is in...
A better shape is obtained with page centering on...
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#23265
03/18/2001 4:57 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Oh, dear Max
You found it ... I read it and cried with joy.
I was just about 20 when I first read it .... Ah, would that I had yet another 50 years.
What a lovely man you are ... truly Mea Nui.
wow
wow
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#23266
03/19/2001 5:21 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
In reply to:
(Aenigma sez "tiptoe" as a tulip)
Misremembering tiptoe through the tulips perhaps?
Bingley
Bingley
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#23267
03/19/2001 2:58 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
tiptoe through the tulips Aaaaahh, Tiny Tim. They don't make records like that anymore... thank D_g! 
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#23268
03/19/2001 6:04 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
In New England the first flowers we see are snowdrops, tiny white flowers that bloom when snow still hides in shadowy places. They are followed swiftly by the crocus of many colors then in late April the gentle violets appear to surprise us in odd corners where it seems unlikely a flower would grow.
Jonquils join the parade with banners flying in vernal winds, then the forsythia bush bursts into a golden shower of blossoms along its boughs, and just before the end of May comes the fragrant lilac in mourning lavender and in white to remind us it's Memorial Day.
On a trip to Connecticut (southerly New England) for an Easter visit in early April I was surprised to see jonquils already in bloom! Just two hours south ... what a difference!
What are the Flowers that welcome Spring in your area? And what are the ones you look for to tell you it's really Spring?
wow
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#23269
03/19/2001 6:38 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
thank D_gYou old orthodox dyslexic agnostic, you 
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#23270
03/19/2001 6:45 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Crocus first. Then jonquil and daffodil (yes, there's a difference), redbud, volunteer violet, tulip poplar, forsythia, cherry and other fruit trees, dogwood, magnolia. Awaiting the latter two.
Happy equinox. About damn time.
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#23271
03/19/2001 7:45 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
Classic example of the meaning behind the old saying: "Life is short; we must move very slowly."
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#23272
03/19/2001 7:49 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
>Happy equinox. About damn time.
Amen, sister.
I've still got a while to wait here in Minneapolis... much of the snow has melted (Oh thank you, sweet sun), but I'm not going to be happy until I see some stinking tulips. [seasonal-saturation-disorder growl]
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#23273
03/19/2001 8:35 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 76
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 76 |
Now, what is the difference between jonquils and daffodils? And just for fun, narcissus? (What a nice topic to wonder about on this springy, even in New York City, day....)
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#23274
03/19/2001 9:17 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
Classic example of the meaning behind the old saying: "Life is short; we must move very slowly."
Classic example of paradox.
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#23275
03/19/2001 9:28 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Fiberbabe refers to stinking tulips . We do need some, doncha agree? Maybe you can help me out. I'm on a mission to discover the *real tsuwm. Could you meet me behind the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, say, at vernal equinox tomorrow? (0731 CST) -------- BPatch, I learned just this past Saturday, from a local radio gardening expert, that daffodils and narcissus are the same. Jonquils* are the first to bloom, and the only fragrant ones in the family. ... I can only relate what was told to me by the Chinese plate.--- *Ænigma wants Joplin.
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#23276
03/20/2001 12:56 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
More thropies for you, BlanchP  Demure as seed spent tulips, dear as Amsterdam ones Hot as rising daffodils in late-spring frost Selfless love: a trodden violet Kind as valley lilies, scent unseen False-morels false fadle as fiddleheads And for a other seasons: Mad as datura Proud as anthurium Two-faced as amaryllis circum-spect as peri-winkle and [androgynous as mating fern]
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#23277
03/20/2001 2:45 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
valley lilies, scent unseen
Did you write all that, insel.? It's beautiful. But to the above quote, I have to say no, no, no: their scent most certainly can be seen, tho' it takes a discerning eye. It hovers just above each clappered stem, that is somehow bigger than the bells it holds, a shimmering aura that is faintly reminiscent of purple.
Inhaling it leaves sprinkles of glitter across my mind.
They are my favorite flower.
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#23278
03/20/2001 10:21 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Sweetheart Jackie Pooh-bah!,
Yeah, I wrote it.
You could do it this way: valley lilies' scent, unseen. That would get a piece of it, but you got all the rest, my dear inspired
They may be my favorite, too-and not only because I never see them. I spent a springtime with them once I will never forget: her, or them, or then.
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#23279
03/20/2001 12:21 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 76
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 76 |
Hot as rising daffodils in late-spring frost
I'll never look at daffodils the same way again.....
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#23280
03/20/2001 1:31 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
I'll never look at daffodils the same way again.....
Nothing crude here. I once read that daffodil shoots produce heat in order to break the frost.
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#23281
03/20/2001 1:51 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Spring arrived, officially, on the east coast of the USA at 0830hours (8:30 a.m.) Eastern Standard Time.... and school children were busy standing eggs on end !
They even had a bit about it on the morning TV show (Chanel 5, Boston)
Seems it is a phenomena that happens just once a year ... at the Vernal Equinox.
As Spring arrives in your time zone perhaps you'd like to try it.
Fresh egg, not cooked in any way!
Worked for me.
wow
(Zooming away into wild blue yonder to avoid being shot down)
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#23282
03/20/2001 3:28 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Eggs on end during the equinox: how do these things get started? Channel 5 in Boston did you a disservice: you can balance an egg, or not, any old time.http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_089.html
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#23283
03/20/2001 3:48 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
my favorite spring time ditty--learned as a pre-schooler
I have a little pussy,
Her coat is silver grey,
She lives out in the meadow,
She stays there all the day.
She'll always be a pussy,
She'll never be a cat-
She's a pussy willow,
Now what do you think of that!
my second favorite is the "round"
White coral bells upon a slender stalk
Lilys of the valley deck my garden walk
Oh, how i wish, that i could hear them ring!
That will happen only when the fairies sing.
In my own garden-- I have some Puschkin squills and some crocus blooming...
Daffidils are sending up shoots..(as are many other plants--) for my birthday i can hope the fairies will sing-- and i will hear the little bells of my lily of the valley ring!
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#23284
03/20/2001 3:52 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
As Spring arrives in your time zone perhaps you'd like to try it.
Fresh egg, not cooked in any way!
Just pop it whole in your mouth and crunch down. Yum!
WARNING:
RELIGIOUS DIGRESSION:
The egg represents the world egg laid by the goddess, AKA bridget96, after her impregnation by the world snake, AKA Ouroboros.
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#23285
03/20/2001 4:12 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Are stinking tulips like lilies that fester?
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#23286
03/20/2001 7:33 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Pansy: A person of caricature face, nya nya!
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#23287
03/21/2001 2:46 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
of festering lilies, I couldn't say -- but have you ever sampled a durian?
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#23288
03/21/2001 4:30 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Here are my contributions to spring flower poetry:
Ego flos campi et lilium convallium.
Sicut lilium inter spinas sic amica mea inter filias.
Sicut malum inter ligna sic dilectus meus inter filios.
---Canticum Canticorum
[The Beloved] I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys.
[The Lover] As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
[The Beloved] As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.
-- Song of Solomon 2:1-5
*******************************************************
Comme on voit sur la branche, au mois de mai, la rose
En sa belle jeunesse, en sa première fleur,
Rendre le ciel jaloux de sa vive couleur,
Quand l'aube de ses pleurs au point de jour l'arrose:
La grâce dans sa feuille et l'amour se repose,
Embaumant les jardins et les arbres d'odeur;
Mais, battue ou de pluie ou d'excessive ardeur,
Languissante elle meurt feuille à feuille déclose.
Ainsi en ta première et jeune nouveauté,
Quand la terre et le ciel honoraient ta beauté,
La Parque t'a tuée, et cendre tu reposes.
Pour obsèques reçois mes larmes et mes pleurs,
Ce vase plein de lait, ce panier plein de fleurs,
Afin que vif et mort ton corps ne soit que roses.
--- Pierre de Ronsard
As we see on its branch, in the month of May, the rose
In its fair youth, in its first flow'r,
Make the heavens jealous of its bright hue,
When dawn waters it with her tears at break of day:
Grace and love tucked away in its leaf
Perfume the gardens and the trees with scent;
But, beaten down by rains or blazing heat,
Languishing, it dies, leaf by leaf laid bare.
So too, in thy first youthful freshness,
When the earth and the heav'ns adored your beauty,
Fate has slain you, and ashes now you lie.
For funeralls, receive my tears and sobs,
This vase full of milk, this basket full of roses,
That, alive or dead, your body may be naught but roses.
--- BYB's translation
***********************************************
Part of a poem of Sir Henry Wotten, quoted by Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler
Joan takes her neat-rubbed pail, and now
She trips to milk the sand-red cow;
Where, for some sturdy foot-ball swain,
Joan strokes a syllabub or twain.
The fields and gardens were beset
With tulip, crocus, violet;
And now, though late, the modest rose
Did more than half a blush disclose.
Thus all looks gay and full of cheer,
To welcome the new-liveried year.
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#23289
03/21/2001 4:48 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Great choices, Bob. Thanks for those. Do you suppose the "neat-rubbed" means only 'clean', or is it a play on words on the archaic neate for cattle?
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#23290
03/21/2001 5:35 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
neat-rubbed
Dunno, Mav; could well be. Wotton was a friend of John Donne. You know what that crowd was like when it came to clever allusions. What I really wonder is what should be read into Joan's stroking a syllabub (or twain), especially when this comes in the line after a mention of a sturdy foot-ball swain?! (Sounds like they had soccer groupies in those days too.)
I wish someone who has the OED would take a look at "syllabub"; my dictionary has only a culinary definition.
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#23291
03/21/2001 6:39 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Bob: I'm sure a lot of us are grateful to you for the poems which I otherwise would never have seen.Bill Hunt
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#23292
03/21/2001 7:50 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
I only know a syllabub as a drink-- something akin to a egg nog-- I have some recipes for some-- but they don't really sound good-- one of those things i'd be glad to try if you made it-- but One syllabub "sheeps wool" is a blend of alcohol, whipped cream, milk, and apple sause-- not all bad-- it could with some modification be come a "smoothy"
I once milked a cow (being a real city person, i actually paid for the privledge to do so*...) the milk, as it squirts out, froths up in the pail-- and since syllabubs are frothy, dairy based drinks...
*i have also paid for the chance to walk behind a plow horse, and try to make a straight furrow...
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#23293
03/22/2001 12:55 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
I worked for a while in Southern Germany, skidding logs with horses. The man I worked for, who had quit his doctoral studies to fell trees, taught me to drive the mare and gelding in Bavarian. It was always more finesse, than vocabulary. There was a farm up the road and, when we ran out of milk one day, I took the pail up to the barn for more. Because I'd been working the horses all day, the cows seemed small and I asked the woman milking them what kind they were. She squinted at me for a minute and said, "these are black ones and those are brown ones."
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#23294
03/22/2001 1:27 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Inselpeter: I hope you made out better trying to drive horses than I did. The minute I touched the reins, the pair of horses that were pulling the plow knew I was a greenhorn, and did just as they damnedwell pleased. And they waited until the wind was right, and looked back, I swear, with a jeering look and laid down a barrage of flatus knowing I could not avoid it.
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#23295
03/22/2001 1:14 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Thank you for those lines from the Song of Solomon, Bobyb. Henry Purcell turned the next verses (2:10-13, 16) into one of the most beautiful anthems I know:
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.... My beloved is mine and I am his. Aleluia.
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