I enjoy making photo collages after I’ve taken a walk. I went out this afternoon for a walk around the ponds. The dogwood is beginning to bloom, and jasmine is hanging from the trees. There are all kinds of wildflowers starting to bloom. I downloaded a plant identifier app to my phone and discovered that something that what I thought were weeds are actually plants that can be cultivated. Those tiny little star-like flowers are called false garlic and can be used as accent plants. The purple plant (bottom center) has an interesting name: Crow poison. According to the plant identifier app, the name comes from a Cherokee legend that the plant could be used to poison the crows that ate their corn.

And now a poem:

The Singular and Cheerful Life

  by Mary Oliver (from Evidence) 

The singular and cheerful life

of any flower

in anyone’s garden

or any still unowned field–

if there are any–

catches me

by the heart,

by its color

by its obedience

to the holiest of laws:

be alive

until you are not.

Ragweed,

pale violet bull thistle,

morning glories curling

through the field corn;

those princes of everything green–

the grasses

of which there are truly

an uncountable company,

each on its singular stem

striving

to rise and ripen.

What, in the earth world,

is there not to be amazed by

and to be steadied by

and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,

my own dear heart,

full of hesitations,

questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.

Behold the morning glory,

the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.

 Look at the grass.