The Poet's Ice Plant

I did not leave the house today. Did my online office hours this morning and then spent much of the rest of the day working with students via email and then reading, assessing, and scoring their writing projects (and I will continue that when I get this blip posted).

So I walked into the backyard early evening on a scavenger hunt for a photo. I did not want to do a repeat of yesterday's beautiful rose, but several on that bush were begging for my attention. So I clicked their darling little faces.

I aimed and clicked at several other beauties too. The nasturtium, the deep red of the poinsettia plant that is mingling with the angel's trumpet (Brugmansia) leaves and the eucalyptus leaves. I pointed at the view southward toward the lovely geography that is so clear and visible today because of the Santana winds that have been blowing. Then I headed back toward the pool to round the corner to come inside.

There I spotted something I had not seen -- the ice plant is blooming. I always think ice plant is a combination of lovely and ugly. I think the photo displays that. It is also what I think about teaching and grading papers. I thoroughly enjoy being with my students. They can be so fun and crazy and full of life. Often their essays reveal that they can't quite muster that same fun energy when composing their papers. Reading them is less than lovely.

Years ago Mr. Fun picked a snippet of ice plant from the front edge of Robinson Jeffers' home along the Carmel coast just north of Big Sur. We wrapped that slip of a plant in wet cloth to bring back home to southern California. It would be ground cover if we wanted it to overtake the yard. We don't. So we keep it in a large plant pot.

Because it is poetry month here in the States, I thought this was most appropriate today, even though it is not a Jeffers' poem, in some extended way I think it is. Jeffers and his wife loved their home and all the foliage they cared for in that lovely location they called Tor House.

Thanks for all the encouraging comments yesterday.
I hope you are having a good week.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol

Here is a poem by Robinson Jeffers:

Tor House

If you should look for this place after a handful
of lifetimes:
Perhaps of my planted forest a few
May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast
cypress, haggard
With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.
Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers
had the art
To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.
But if you should look in your idleness after ten
thousand years:
It is the granite knoll on the granite
And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth
of the Carmel
River-valley, these four will remain
In the change of names. You will know it by the wild
sea-fragrance of wind
Though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;
You will know it by the valley inland that our sun
and our moon were born from
Before the poles changed; and Orion in December
Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like
a lamp-lighted bridge.
Come in the morning you will see white gulls
Weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon
Their dance-companion, a ghost walking
By daylight, but wider and whiter than any bird in
the world.
My ghost you needn't look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not
dancing on wind
With the mad wings and the day moon.