June Mosaics (plural)

What a month.

(...but aren't they all, when we stop to think of it?!)

I had my fortune told in a cup of Arabic coffee. Can you see the tiger's face? That's really lucky and rare! And see how there are several paths/options/choices that come together and are open at the rim of the cup? Also very propitious.

I weeded in the school land lab one cool morning after a rain, and caught the cup plant, an Ohio Native, doing what its name implies.

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Yum. Cherry Lambic Sorbet, if I remember correctly, and something lemony, though I can't find the exact one on the website. I do see Juniper and Lemon Curd and Lime Cardamom, both of which I HIGHLY recommend! :-)

We are loving having Natalie's Coal-Fired Pizza and Live Music at the end of our block! Will likes takeout best, pizza boxes being a particular favorite of his. We thoroughly enjoyed Juanito Pascual playing flamenco guitar music live at Natalie's...without Will.

I got a set of lenses for my iPhone camera (macro, wide angle, fish-eye and telephoto -- from Photojojo) and have had lots of fun playing with them. The macro is my favorite: text on a book cover and 3 of the sweet peas. There's my back garden beds with the fisheye. Then a couple more garden flowers and a homemade cinnamon roll with the built-in lens.

Can you spot mom's cat Mellie in the next picture? She's disappearing behind the microwave in a space barely wide enough to store an onion. In the next picture she reemerges with a look on her face as if to say, "What? I didn't do anything!"

Next are the pictures of a play space that makes me want to be 8 years-old again. I featured these pictures with my review of James Preller's Pirate's Guide to Recess.

That grass seed (macro lens on my phone again) is on Buffalo Grass, a short prairie grass native to Colorado that can survive without irrigation. That's why it does so well in mom's gravel alley!

Next is the turtle who walked up the driveway one morning last week, and who I featured yesterday with Kay Ryan's poem TURTLE for Poetry Friday.

The last few are: my poem and collage for Summer Poetry Swap, a Little Leaf Linden in bloom, a feather (hope is the thing with), an outrageously yummy BLT, a toad who didn't have the same good luck as our turtle in making it across the street, and sky, sky, sky, sky, sky...what there's most of in Eastern Colorado. Those last 5 were taken within about an hour of each other. Just before sunset and just after.

(You can view this set of photos on Flickr here.)



I had the great good fortune to spend the day at the Denver Botanic Gardens a week ago Saturday with Carol of Carol's Corner. We strolled and chatted and lingered and sniffed; we ooh-ed and ah-ed (and awe-ed). It wasn't the first time we had met on the other side of our blogs (in that other real-er life, as it were), but after spending all of April trading poems back and forth, it was more like meeting up with a neighbor from down the street than a neighbor from the blogosphere. The time we spent in the gardens, in the brilliant Colorado day, and in each other's company healed both of our souls in ways our souls needed healing. I am grateful that we had that time together. I took too many pictures for one mosaic, so here are three -- one all of pink and purple, one of the various parts of the Botanic Gardens proper, and one of the magnificent rooftop children's garden.

All of the Botanic Gardens photos can be seen by viewing my Flickr photostream, or my Flickr sets.