In the 24-season syllabic poetry challenge for #TankaTuesday we have Poet’s Choice, as it’s the third week of the Early Cold season. My kigos are “Amaryllis” and “cold light,” which can be found in the haiku portion of the following haibun.
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Sonoran Blossoms
The two gardening seasons in the Sonoran desert are warm and cool. We plant flowers in the spring, which can be from February though May, for summer blooming. In the fall, we plant cool season flowers, which last until May. Our months of choice are generally October and May. My yard is one acre with a wash running through it. On one side of the wash the land is slightly higher than the other, and because cold air sinks, some winters the lower side may experience a slight freeze that lasts until mid-morning, while the other side rarely freezes. The flowers may freeze to death occasionally, if they are not covered by frost cloths. However, many winters we get no freeze at all. Because of the mild weather, we can plant blossoming indoor-outdoor plants outside after they lose their flowers.
amaryllis blooms
fade under winter’s cold light
time to plant outdoors
Sometimes people get creative with protecting plants when the temperature hovers uncomfortably close to freezing in the early morning hours. This person uses Santa hats usually, but this year after New Year’s they replaced them with multi-colored beanies!
Recently, I participated in an Ugly Art Club event and in Care December from Everything Art. I’ve mentioned them both before. This is the Care December journal I finished. Each spread is an exploration in emotions and self-care, rather than being an attempt to create art. So there is a lot of hidden meaning behind each one. And, yes, the idea for me was to create another GRUNGY journal, as they are my favorites. The theme this year was the color blue in all its meanings.
It’s such a delight to follow your creative life! Those beanies are so cheerful.
Thank you, Joy! They are! I am so used to seeing the Santa hats which are always cute, but this is a welcome change!
Terrific, Luanne.
Thank you, John!
I enjoyed your writing on planting in spring and fall — always some kind of floral beauty in your yard. Here it’s currently 1 degree F. with several inches of snow plus the occasional sleek drift. || Thanks for sharing your beautiful Care December journal — blue in all its meanings.
Thanks so much for reading and looking at the journal! 1 degree. I can’t even imagine that any more! Take care of yourself!
I’m glad you’re writing about things like this. Without that kind of attention, so many subtle but beautiful things would pass us by.
I agree with you about noticing the small but consequential parts of life.
Thank you for the information about your area’s growing season in haibun form. I enjoyed paging through your latest journal with you.
Thank you so much for reading and looking through my journal, Liz! I hope all is well!
Nice pics, good to learn more about the terrain and flora there. It is clear that a lot of love went into your journal. A keepsake for you now and your loved ones later <3
Lisa, thank you so much! I do wonder what my kids make of my journals! But I am sure my daughter loves the wedding one I made for her. I want to make a baby one now for my son and DIL, but they haven’t saved hardly anything as of yet for me to use to make the journal.
You live in an area that’s so different from what I know. For the past few years, our winters have not been as cold as usual, but just now when I got up, it’s 16 degrees with snow and ice on the ground.
Lovely journal!
So cold! It’s been so many years since I lived in the cold, but I feel that I do remember . . . . Thanks, Merril!
You’re welcome!
Lovely blue journal. I enjoyed reading about the planting routine in your area. Let there always be flowers. I enjoyed your haibun. Thanks. xo
Thank you so much, Selma! Hope all is well by you!
Thanks, Luanne. I’m doing ok now. Hope all is well with you. Blessings.
Wow! I didn’t realize your property was so big! We are in a deep freeze. Night time temps are in single digits and daytime we don’t get above freezing. We too have warm and cool flowers to plant but our cool flowers are for spring and fall, then they peter out when the heat comes. Nothing blooms here in the winter!
Yes, it is big. That’s why The Gardener spends hours a day outside!!!! Single digits. UGH UGH UGH. I’m so sorry . . . . But when spring comes it will be pretty by you.
My creativity has been limited to words for the moment. I do have other projects I’d like to get back into. Finish a chrocet sweater, work with some clay, maybe try and learn to paint flowers…
We have about three months of winter here… At the moment at 9:30am the temp has risen to 16F. The snow has covered the green grass – at least the sun is out!
Stay warm and enjoy all of your lovely flowers 🙂
Yes, it is nice here. I only needed a light sweater outside this afternoon. The sun is so important!
Now that you are feeling better, I hope you will gradually be able to get back to a project you want to work on. They all sound like fun and worthwhile projects!
What I have been doing is getting rid of junk… The projects will wait – I’m making room 🙂
~Thanks
Thank you for the tour through your journal. I hope you plan to keep all these journals and gift them to your children (or grandchildren) when the time is right.
I love your haibun and learning about your gardening routine. Now that we have a real garden, we’re having to pay more attention to changes in the seasons.
(By the way, I’m trying something new with leaving comments. I’m using the Reader to read and leave comments. Normally I would open a blog post in a new tab and read and comment directly from that tab, but now WordPress wants me to login every time, and the login is different depending on the blog so if I don’t do it right, the comment doesn’t “stick”, and even if it does, I might still miss responses to my comments. So. To keep my sanity, I’m using Reader ;-))
Marie, I am having that same trouble with WP. I think it started when they went to Jetpack app and kind of forced the issue with that. Now I have trouble leaving comments when I’m on my iPad. So nice to have a real garden! It’s difficult to grow vegetables here, whereas flowers are easy. But I have a friend who has a huge garden, but she has put a ton of money, time, and love into it. It becomes quite the job!
Yeah, the Jetpack app kind of sucks. I wanted to use my iPad to show my husband my latest post and wound having to go to my browser because the Jetpack app wouldn’t display my photos. Probably because I still use the Classic Editor 😉
We have only native flowers and plants in our gardens. Greg has talked about growing veggies but that’s on him. I haven’t been successful growing anything from seed ☹️
It sounds beautiful. I hate Jetpack, and I am sick of everyone changing everything once it’s comfortable.
Wow – I didn’t realize you had such a large amount of land for you and the gardener to keep up! Will be such fun when your grandchild is able to walk!!
Yes, we have the wash to explore as well as the rest of the yard. When I take the dog out for the kids, we go out to the street and around up the driveway and through the yard and out back and up the side, and he thinks he’s had a regular walk ;). And when you say “you and the gardener,” I just want to clarify that I do very little! I’ve really only been involved with flower planting projects and frost coverings. He takes care of the day-to-day. I have to give him that credit.
I love your journal…I love the color blue as well. It is the color of the sea and sky and so blue is so full of possibility. Your poem is wonderful! 🙂
Thank you so much, Linda. I appreciate your appreciation :)!!!! It’s really fun to paint with blues because they are the strongest, most vivid of the colors. They stain the hands the worst too haha.
I love watching you page through your incredible art journals!
Aw, thank you so much, Eilene. It’s fun for me to page through them, too :).
I love your beautiful creative blue book, Luanne! What a wonderful idea! One acre of land is large. You can do a lot of gardening.
My husband loves to garden, so he spends hours a day gardening. Even the watering takes a long time because we have such a big yard. But it’s lots of fun, especially the way it’s laid out with the wash running through it. Thank you so much about my journal, Miriam! I had so much fun making it!
I love gardening also. I’m going to install a dripping system in my new garden in the backyard. There are two patches in the front yard and I haven’t decided what to do yet.
Yes, your journal is very creative, Luanne!
BTW, I bought a wedge for the bed and elevated my legs at night for a few hours before bedtime. It seems to help a lot. I bought new stockings.
Oh, I’m so glad the wedge works for you! I can’t use the wedge because it’s too hard. My legs are super sensitive, maybe from decades of lymphedema, but also from venous insufficiency, bad knees, and a bad hip. So I have to have soft pillows around me and sleep on an egg carton foam. I wish they made a wedge that was super soft, but I’ve never seen one–have you? Have fun with your garden, Miriam!!!
I sent you a link on Amazon.
Beanies on a cactuses! Oh this is fun. I’m still waiting for our Christmas amaryllis to bloom. It was supposed to be flowering on Christmas Day, but no! The little bugger is slowly growing still, with no sign of a flower.
I thought flowers were supposed to have built in calendars!!!! What a stubborn little guy.
Luanne, your posts are always so fun. I love the haibun and your haiku to accompany where you explain about the wash that runs through your land. What an interesting phenomena—one half freezing, the other doesn’t. I lived in the Surprise area. I thought the two seasons were extremely hot, and desert cold. I bought a winter coat to walk in during the winter. It was cold and windy. We were out in the desert, so that makes a difference, too. xx
Thanks, Colleen!! I hear you on the freezing and boiling hot, but where we live it rarely is that kind of dry cold (which I despise) so 9 months of the years are pretty delightful. Let’s not discuss summer haha.
Hi Luanne, a beautiful poem about a gorgeous flower. Our winters are like yours, minimal freezing. We hardly ever get frost where we live.
Robbie, thank you so much! So interesting that you barely get frost either! The poetry sharing group on Facebook? Thank you so much for sharing this poem!
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Wonderful creative efforts Luanne!
Andrea, thank you :)!!!!
Luanne, your haiku beautifully encapsulates transition, signaling the opportune time for outdoor planting. 🙂
This is really well written.
Much love,
David
Thank you so much, David! Much appreciated!
I enjoyed your haibun, Luanne! As much as I love nature, I kill every plant I’ve ever had, including a cactus and a succulent. I just have to go to nature to enjoy it.
Yvette M Calleiro 🙂
http://yvettemcalleiro.blogspot.com
Oh no!!!! That’s such a shame! Thanks, though, Yvette. Hope all is well.
Thank you for this reminder of the exquisite beauty of the Sonoran desert.
Thanks for stopping by! It’s another beautiful day!