Today's Flowers, cupcakes and coffee

More summer dreaming on the last day of February. . .I took this photo at the end of August from the little 'wall' garden next to my favorite cupcake bakery & coffee shop in St. Paul just called Cupcake. I've posted about this place before; besides their colorful cupcakes this garden was a riot of color in an otherwise semi-industrial main street linking St. Paul and Minneapolis through the University area.

More colorful flowers here.

'Blue sky when you gonna learn to rain?'

More Midwest blue: Iowa skies over sunflower fields bordered by corn above and down the road,

an old stone church and cemetery. Watch more clouds go by at Skywatch Friday.

[Blue Sky Blue lyrics by Ryan Adams]

Today's Flower: food for thought

November being what it is leaves few flowers behind, so I'm posting this fine example of Mother Nature's ability to feed both body and soul--in this case, marauding Chickadees. See more flowers at Today's Flowers , the meme brainchild of Luiz Santilli, Jr.

Today's Flowers blooms again!

Who can look up at sunflowers in a clear blue sky without thinking of our old friend, Vincent van Gogh and how he saw sunflowers? To compliment my photo, below is a reproduction of a painting by Paul Gauguin, called Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers. Gauguin supposedly found Van Gogh's painting style intolerably messy and indicative of his bouts of insanity.

I took my photograph yesterday when the sky was really that blue and this sunflower was actually reaching for the sun. Their size and stature are a surprise at first. And then their color always leaves me speechless, where I remain, at least until I find the next flower.

See more flowers at Luiz's meme, Today's Flowers. You'll see beautiful flowers from all over the globe, places we only dream about visiting, and then. . . you'll want to join in the fun!

' Summer's gone but a lot goes on forever. '

A Black-capped Chickadee has been hovering around the autumn remants of my little slab garden the past couple of days. This guy keeps flitting from bamboo sticks to tall plants to somewhere so near the window it seems he might gotten in somehow. Today I took a better look and found my feathered friend's focus -- the dried seeds from the mini-sunflower Caroline gave me at the beginning of the season. Of course, I overwatered the plant and, alas, it would certainly have lived longer in the deep dark earth. . .luckily I had the foresight to capture it on film before execution day. Then I had absent-mindedly stuck it behind my 'gate' to dry. Chickadees are a favorite of mine and I was delighted to know they hang around Minnesota year round. Their dee-deeing reminds me of an experience I had many years ago. That's a story for another day, but suffice it to say that when I hear them I know God is watching over me.

Speaking of birds, I heard about a community garden called the Hua Mei Bird Garden in the Sara Delano Roosevelt Park in New York City's Chinatown. It seems that early each morning, Chinese men bring songbirds, including the garden's namesake, the scrappy little Chinese Hua Mei, in fancy bamboo cages. In 1993 legend has it that three Chinese men hung birdcages between two trees in this park because they wanted to establish a bird garden like the ones in their homeland. A segment on NPR's All Things Considered in August includes some of the sounds in the park on a Saturday morning.

Enchanting.

"On weekdays, a dozen songbirds can be heard in the park, on weekends as many as 50. Most of the men who come to listen to them are retired; the oldest are in their late 80's. We are old men. We like bringing the birds and drinking the coffee. We feel better.” (NYTimes-July/2007)

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Chinese Proverb

Happy Weekend!