Every now and Carmi sets us a theme on which I can't wait to get started. Nature gives us many small sized creatures including those not for arachnophobes.
Its shadow would be enough for me
So here's something much more appealing,
Young rabbit
This year I have been fortunate enough to come across this in a Cornish wood.
Comma butterfly on a bramble leaf
Now that autumn has begun there are some small sized creatures that look for somewhere warmer.
Garden snail inside our tool store
I guess small boys qualify for this theme too.
All alone, dribbling down the touchline, oblivious to his surroundings
Sometimes I find cup-shaped items in surprising places.
Discarded contact lenses
Perhaps it would be better to be wearing them when trying to assemble the fob for our garage door.
I bought two sets of stamps this week from my local market trader. One was the set of George Stubbs paintings featuring dogs - but I will save that for another time. The other set was just right for this week's theme of 'Pets.'
Great Britain
The set commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1990.
Here are the other three that make up the set.
Great Britain
Pick your favourite and guess which one is mine before you check out other pets, including one of the dogs painted by Stubbs, at Viridian's Sunday-Stamps-154.
My A-Z posts this year
are based on my garden – flowers, animals, the birds and the bees, butterflies
- with a bit of poetry thrown in. For some letters I am expecting to cheat
somewhat – wishing they were here.
R – Rose, Rhododendron, Robin, Rabbit, Retriever
For a rose we can only begin with Burns:
My love is like a
red, red rose
That’s newly sprung
in June
An older verse applies to roses too as not all are as red as
those.
Thou blushing rise,
within whose virgin leaves
The wanton wind to
sport himself presumes.
Over the years we have been
nurturing a rhododendron bush that didn’t thrive in the soil in the front
garden border. It has gone from border to tub, to ericaceous tub to back garden
border where it now flowers happily.
Rhododendron
Three girls,
engrossed, were wrenching full clusters
Of cerise and pink
from the rhododendron,
Mountaining them on
spread newspaper.
They brassily picked,
slowed by no chagrin,
I’m pleased to be able to show a
photo of one of my favourite birds which I’m sure you will have all seen on
Christmas cards.
Robin
No noise is here. Or
none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles
still, but is content
With slender notes,
and more than half suppressed;
Pleased with his
solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray,
where’er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the
pendant drops of ice,
That tinkle in the
withered leaves below.
Cute but less welcomed is this fellow about to attack the
plants.
Rabbit
Now if today had been Friday then perhaps I’d get up early and
sing along:
The song was written for Noel Gay's
show 'The Little Dog Laughed' which opened on 11 October 1939, at a time when
most of the major London
theatres were closed.
The farmer with a gun would have
needed a Retriever to fetch the rabbit. I know one that could do the job.
Cody
Incidentally Cody was 15 years old on Easter Sunday; he’s no
April fool.
