For Barbara Whose Birthday is Tomorrow

NOW you won't have any guilty feelings, Barb, about your belated birthday greetings to me because I'm late with yours! However, we do have blogland and if you check in here today or tomorrow I will be on time with at least a glimpse of the envelope that holds your birthday card.
I got to the Post Office at 4:11 p.m. Mail pick-up ends at 4 p.m. So sorry, but I doubt it would have made it anyway. Next year we'll try again.
I cannot "leave off" with the peonies. The pink is so voluptuous and I wish I knew enough wonderful words and could make them sufficiently sparkly to describe for you what a day it was here in Oregon. The rain poured at 3 a.m. and woke the Mister up; it sprinkled off and on throughout the morning; and the sunshine came out at noon to gladden all hearts.
Then around 2 p.m. the wind started blowing and the rain came in buckets. The sun broke through again and the wind rushed down our valley and pushed tree limbs this way and that. Pink and white cherry blossoms sailed all over our town and back yard, along with tiny green florets from the maple tree, and the small, blood-red, baby maple leaves that just weren't yet strong enough to hold on. All over the grass were blossoms, florets and leaves - along with dry, dead limbs from this past winter that had finally been shaken loose from the American elm.
Through all this wind and sprinkles, the sun gleamed through and lit up lilac trees and pink rhododendron blooms until their brilliant color hurt your eyes. And in the background - flitting through the sky and trees - were lots of baby birds, hundreds it seemed, chirping madly, while their parents flew back and forth calling out "Caution! Caution!"
In writing and copy editing, we sometimes note that "adjectives" are not your "friends." In spring, how else to describe the riot that occurs?
The Mister found half of this robin egg and I placed it with a shell on the kitchen windowsill. I then found the other half on the ground, where we were admiring the new foliage on the Lenten rose, and took that into the kitchen also. It wasn't until then I noticed they both were - in essence - former homes. Now discarded and unneeded, but each totally elegant in design. (The quarter simply gives you an idea how small the egg is.)
Today, I talked on the phone with a friend, had lunch and more talk with another friend, bought a new hosta, got two Grosso lavender plants and put them in the ground and bought two rosemary plants to replace my large one that didn't make it through the winter. No painting paper as I'd hoped, but at least I feel I accomplished something. The Solomon's seal is getting pendants on it - femminismo