Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

This photo above shows a single large magnolia blossom. It is past its prime so you can't see why God calls magnolias the lotuses of the air.

Thank you, beloved Heaven Admin, for so patiently uploading the photos.

There are more photos later on.

One of the loveliest things about teaching English in public school was sharing poetry with children. Children really love poetry. And just think! I was paid for reading poems out loud and listening to 30 or so seventh-graders recite them from memory. You know a poem isn’t meant to be just read, but read aloud again and again. This poem -- and others -- heard so often became very dear to me.

This poem by A. E. Houseman is one of the poems my seventh-graders memorized:

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 three score 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.

I thought this poem would be a good introduction to the photos of some of the flowering trees and plants where I live.

- the one above, bleeding hearts, also called fuschia

When I first saw a red tulip from the distance of my office window, I thought it was a red cardinal!

- weeping cherry with magnolia tree in the right background

- another photo of the weeping cherry tree -- it is so gracious.

- and another photo of same weeping cherry tree. Note the famous umbrella clothesline in background on right, also clothes hanging and clothes basket

- hasta plant and purple hyacinth

- meditating statue from yard sale

-another single large magnolia

Next spring I will be in Argentina and taking photos of other trees and flowers -- and mountains!