The Sisterhood
Perhaps it’s because of my name that I feel such a kinship with flowers. I notice them like my husband notices vintage cars. Their colorful allure tugs at my camera — snap, snap, adjust, focus …snap. I need to own them, take them home.
There I parade them on my computer screen in all their bearded, belled and bonneted beauty. I enlarge them to look deep inside their secret rooms. I admire this pink rhodo’s wine freckles and that one’s variegated peach-to-cream petals. My currant’s blossoms have blood-red anthers on needle-slim stamens. These hydrangeas are filigree that could tiara a bride. Jester tulips and pinwheel petunias make me grin. And see those magnolias? They’re opening like one peels a banana!
I spend a couple of garden hours on Saturday settling Impatiens, Nicotiana and Dusty Miller for the summer. After the long winter exile, it feels like a family reunion.
© 2012 by Violet Nesdoly
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I wrote this prose poem for my Volta poetry group last spring (when we set ourselves a prose poem assignment). I planted this year’s garden last Friday and felt the same sense of kinship.
This poem is submitted to Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Linda at TeacherDance.
Violet Nesdoly 
Hi Violet, So lovely! Thanks, Ellen
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Thanks Ellen! Don’t you just love the new life and colors of spring.
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….and don’t you LOVE their names? I love click, clicking those delicate miracles! Smiles, sister! ‘They’re opening like one peels a banana!’…love it:)
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Thanks Janet. I know you feel the same way about the lovely things that surround you from reading your poems and seeing the lovely photos on your blog. Life is full of beauty, isn’t it!
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I feel that same way about garden peas — when I see them tall and covered with flowers I feel like a vital member of the family has come back home.
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Oh, how wonderful to feel a kinship with garden peas 🙂 Love it!
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I like that you take time to really SEE the flowers, freckles and all. We often need to slow down, and a budding sisterhood is a great way to do it.
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Thank you, Tabatha. Seeing opened up in a new way when I got my digital camera. It’s wonderful to be able to take all those details home, empty them into my computer, and explore!
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Beautiful photos of course, & the words, like “filagree that could tiara a bride” are wonderful. You’ve nudged me into getting the remaining flowers out this weekend. Thanks!
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Enjoy, Linda! Hope you have nice weather for it, as we have here today.
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“filigree that could tiara a bride” – love the verbification, love the piece. There is a small cottage community near me with several houses in a row that vie for most bountiful garden. Whenever I walk through there, whether in a hurry or not, I’m compelled to stop, look and see.
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I would love to see your cottage community, Jim. I’m glad that flowers have that stop, look, and see effect on others too.
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Beautiful. I love flower photos on my computer, too. The best part is that they never wilt.
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That’s right, Ruth, pressed in megabytes on the computer so to speak, never to wilt again.
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Glorious! Thanks for sharing. I love the idea of flowers having “secret rooms” and I’m adding my applause for using “tiara” as a verb. Happy gardening (and shutter snapping)!
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Thank you Robyn Hood Black! Yes, those blooms keep my trigger finger fit. (I think I’d need a 12-step program to help me stop–or a broken camera.)
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I just planted my flowers yesterday. I love spring. It truly is like a family reunion every spring.
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Yep, with the oldies (perennials) back, and the new additions (annuals) welcomed with TLC.
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