Poetry Friday: Ode to My Garden

I had the Inklings challenge this month: “Use a recent comment on one of your posts as a line in a poem.” Jan (Bookseedstudio) left the first two lines of this poem in the comments on my May 26 post. Her comments often sound like poems or lines from poems, so she made my job easy!

I have two kinds of peony and two kinds of foxglove. I tried to capture their personalities in my sketches. I’m having fun pairing stick-on quotes with my sketches. They provide a surprise caption.

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings (except for Margaret, who is vacationing with her family) met this month’s challenge:

Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda @A Word Edgewise

Mona has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Mona Voelkel.

The roundup schedule filled in record time! Thanks to all who volunteered!

17 thoughts on “Poetry Friday: Ode to My Garden”

  1. I remember that poetic comment and love how you used it to inform a new poem about your garden. In the pacific northwest I am coming to know peony and foxglove. Our climate is too hot for these beauties.

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  2. Gosh, I love everything about this post. Such a great prompt, and these paintings! The cut out lines really inspire somehow, and your flowers have such life. Here, the poppies and lupines are singing the last songs as peonies and just two foxgloves are taking stage. I want to find out about that second foxglove! Your poem is wise – I kinda want a “growing with decaying” tattoo now. Thank you. xo, a. ps – Want some lupine seeds later in the season? Purple.

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    1. The shorter, more pinkish/purplish foxglove is one I’ve had for awhile. The tall white one is a native foxglove.
      YES, I would love to try growing lupine again! Save seeds and send with planting information!

      Thanks for hosting us on Christmas. I’m looking forward to a cozy snuggle by your fireplace reading poems!

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      1. I did not know that those were native foxgloves. Thank you. You inspire me every time I come here, ML. My lupines are insane. I feel like Miss Rumphius sneaks here in the night! xo

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  4. Your poem and sketches are beautiful, Mary Lee. I’ll have to remember to savor the garden in evening’s “enchanted light.” Sadly, my peonies are about done. But I so enjoy them, however brief their time.

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  5. Hi Mary Lee, what a great Inkling idea to use comments to start a poem and your nature sketches are a delightful companion to your poem! The last stanza took me right into the world of twilight “evening that bathes you with enchanted light, laminating day with night, growing and decaying” ah lovely imagery and contrast:)

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  7. Oh, Mary Lee! Your flower sketches and your poem are so beautiful. Love how you captured both the sense of regret and the almost unheralded beauty, especially love “this particular light, though slanted, this blooming, shimmering, quavering evening.” Gorgeous!

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  8. There’s so much to love here! I’m especially fond of the phrase “laminating day with night.” Your flower sketches are just lovely and the captions add another layer. Your creativity knows no boundaries!

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  9. This is a delightful prompt we should add to our kit! What fun. And I love the number of artistic endeavors you’ve to shared this year!

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  10. The (adapted ❤️) Little Prince quote! The peonies! The poem! (“as if you landed/whole” — beautiful!) and that final line (“growing with decaying”) — Wow, Mary Lee. I love all of this.

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  11. Your poem and sketches are delightful! I’ve tried to grow flowers, but the rabbits get them every time. I need to find something they don’t devour. : )

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  15. Dearest wonderful creative, multi-media artist Mary Lee, I’m over the moon to belatedly find your painted pages of “richly planted/brilliant layering” flowers & your poem blossomed from your fecund, foraging, forward thinking poet mind. You are too too special for this world. As you may surmise, I have been not KeepingUP! & am so grateful to get down to it at this moment, to let you know how much this tribute to your beauties “Ode to My Garden At Twilight” means to moi. I especially shiver at “growing with decaying.” You are Zen….

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