Glorious Spring!

Here is just a sampling of Atlanta loveliness this time of year. The first Daffodils and Crocus start blooming in early February and by March things are in a fast and furious succession of blooming. Almost every day I come to work I can SEE the difference in leaf size or number of opened buds or flowers blooming. I love it!
Here are some of my favorite bulbs so far this year:

• Daffodil 'Jetfire': early blooming minature, with orange cup and yellow petals.
• Daffodil 'Tahiti': mid-season double blooming with hints of orange in the layers
• Daffodil 'Salome': mid to late blooming with an orange-pink cup and white petals
• Tulipa 'Purple Prince': early blooming short tulip that lasts a LONG time (for a tulip, anyway)
• Tulipa 'Retro Mix': yellow, orange, white mix, mid-season blooming
  And then there are always surprises, like the tulip close-up picture (white with magenta striping) it is the only one on the whole property and was probably mixed into a batch by accident. Quite a beauty. I wish I knew its name!

A New Skill

I have a Japanese friend here in Atlanta who recently taught me how to make homemade sushi rolls. The secret to getting a nice roll is using these funny little bamboo mats that you can find very easily at the local Buford Farmer's Market (they have easily five full aisles just for imported Japanese food). The bamboo mats are made slightly larger than a sheet of seaweed. You mix up your rice and other toppings and flatten it onto the seaweed and then roll the mat up like a sleeping bag and all the seaweed toppings roll up with it. Slice the roll, mix up some soy sauce and wasabi and break out the chopsticks!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

What marvy words! And the poem is full of them. Take for instance: gyre, gimble, mimsy, frumious, uffish, whiffling, burbled, snicker-snack, and galumphing. It is all jabberwocky, of course, (meaningless writing; nonsensical talk; jabber), but I love saying them outloud! Though the "real" words in the dictionary are not all quite so fun to say, I do keep a list of some of my favorites and thought I might share a few.

• blather: foolish talk; non-sense, and in conjunction with that, a blatherskite: one who blathers; a blustering person who talks much and says little.
• haberdasher: a dealer in the things men wear, such as hats, ties, shirts, and socks
• kooky or kookie: odd or silly; quaint, whimsical; crazy
• The "J" section of the dictionary has some fabulous descriptive words if you are having a good day. Take for example, jaunty, jocund, jollify, jovial, jubilant.
• Here are two "G" words that have distinctively different definitions by changing just a few letters, a fun juxtaposition--glutinous: like glue; sticky; viscid and gluttonous: greedy about food; having the habit of eating too much.
• perspicacious: keen in observing and understanding; discerning, shrewd, acute.
• whigmaleery: a fantastic notion; whim

Still A Monkey

My first thought as I sit to comment on these photos is a rebuke of Margaret Dashwood, the youngest of three daughters of that family from the Jane Austen novel, Sense and Sensibility, and subsequently made into a movie in 1995 (screenplay by Emma Thompson). Margaret is rebuked in these words, "That child must run positively wild, she is always up trees and under furniture." Perhaps I have run a little wild enjoying very much being "up trees."
Here is a little day-in-the-life of me doing one of my favorite things. I would guess that these trees are somewhere in the neighborhood of 65-70' tall and fabulous to climb. (Yes, I do have climbing gear and I am strapped in and very secure). These bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum) were in need of some pruning and my fellow co-worker, Elvidio, and I were happy to do the work. The work (or play as I would call it) needed was to remove any dead, diseased, crossing, or broken branches and do a general thinning just for good tree aesthetics. These photos were taken sort of unexpectedly by a missionary couple out on a walk who happen to always carry a camera with them. Their comment as they started snapping pictures of us was, "You never know what you might see out on a walk, best to keep a camera with you, just in case."
On this lovely day in February it was two monkeys.