Mother's Day 2020

PIGEONS ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOK SERIES

Mother's Day is for the birds, as evidenced by these pigeons in my garden featured in the image directly atop this entry.

It's Kindergarten Day!

It's Kindergarten Day! Here's what Holiday Insights (HI) has to say re this event: "The first day at Kindergarten is a memorable, exciting, nervous, and anxious time for mother and child. Most children and mothers will never forget the first day at Kindergarten. Hopefully, it was a good experience for all!

"Kindergarten Day is celebrated in honor of Friedrich Froebel. He was born on this day in 1782. In 1837, he started the first Kindergarten in Germany. It became popular quickly. Kindergartens were originally a 1/2 day to get children acclimated into learning, social interaction, and school, in a fun, yet educational manner. Kindergarten has evolved in most areas into a full time program. This is partly the result of increasing pressures on education, and partly due to the increase in working mothers in America."

HI suggests that one "celebrate today with a trip down memory lane. Pull out the old pictures of you and/or your child's first day at Kindergarten." 

And that's what I'm doing, as evidenced of the photograph above featuring me as a student with my kindergarten class.

Mothers Day 2018

I'm thinking of both my parents on this Mother's Day. Thoughts are with my mother for obvious reasons, who can be seen in the photo atop this entry, where she is pregnant with me; and they are also with my dearly departed father, who would be celebrating his birthday, had he not died from septic shock in 1995.

My grandmother is on my mind too, for without grandmothers, there would be no mothers, eh?

In any event, she can be seen with yours truly — giving a high five — in the next picture (which is a photo I've featured in at least one prior entry (in bygone years) here on Blogger).

One of the last things she said to me before she died was that she thought I should get back to  my writing, which I have through this blog, through my work on tumblr and hometalk, and my book series, Words In Our Beak  (pictured below).

VOLUMES ONE AND TWO

In spite of this, due to many health related issues, I may not be able to keep my endeavors with my writing, but I hope my circumstances don't force me to do that.

Meanwhile, I wish all of my readers who are mothers, a blessed Mother's Day.

ADDENDUM FALL 2018: 

Hardcover versions of Volume One, Two and Three can be found wherever books are sold.

MY BOOK SERIES

Please click here to go to my blog post that provides details as to where you can get these books. Additionally, I have rendered some images from these books into other formats and they are available via Fine Art America (FAA). Some of my other photographs (Black & White Collection, Kaleidoscopic Images and the famous Mandarin duck who visited NYC) can also be found on my FAA pages.

ADDENDUM SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2021:

When the third volume of the hard-cover version of Words In Our Beak was released, I withdrew from promoting my former versions of Words In Our Beak. 

The very first one is an iBook and went into Apple's book store in 2015.

This was followed by an ePub version...

... that is available on Amazon and was also published in 2015.

Subsequently, Words In Our Beak's digital versions were published as a soft-cover book (with slight variations) by MagCloud in 2017.

Its press release can be read by clicking here.  

Now with the release of BIRD TALES....

... I've been advised to make mention of my early versions of volume one of Words In Our Beak, they do vary ever so slightly in content from the hard-cover version of volume one.

As of this addendum, I do not intend to create digital or soft-cover versions of Words In Our Beak Volume Two or Words In Our Beak Volume Three.

Lessons Learned in the Garden on Mother's Day (Mother may know best.)

It is Mother's Day, and my seeing my Paeonia suffriticosa (Tree Peony) enjoying its friends is cause for a pleasure to be shared — probably like a pleasure mothers have in taking photographs of their children and sharing them proudly with anyone and everyone who is kind enough to view them — as you are, dear reader, in viewing my chronology of this season's Paeonia suffriticosa and other things that are flourishing in my urban terrace garden. 

My Paeonia suffriticosa is truly enjoying her friends, as evidenced in the photograph posted above, which shows a view of the most southwest corner of my terrace garden. It appears to me that my Paeonia suffriticosa is bending down, to give my Fancy Leaf Coral Bells aka Heuchera 'Marmalade' a kiss; a kiss much like the kiss I gave my sister soon after she was born, and a gesture that inspired my mother to take the photograph posted below of yours truly with my younger sister —

— a woman I've blogged about in a previous post and where the same photograph is posted.

Monday's Musings

A Northern mockingbird, who appears to be checking out a ball-shaped terra-cotta object which is on the floor of my rooftop garden, is featured in the two images atop this entry.

The object of this bird's interest is an upside down planter that is better suited as an outdoor sculpture than the planter it is supposed to be. This is because it is very difficult to plant flora inside of it. You might suspect this from seeing the next image, which was taken in 2011, and features creeping thyme attempting to thrive in the round container.

In any event, to the mockingbird's right (or left in the first two photos) is a grape that has rolled off a saucer of grapes (which can be seen near to the container).

An imaginative person, upon seeing the mocker staring at the terra-cotta object, might envision that the mocker thinks the round structure is a huge grape. Whatever this bird may or may not be thinking, remains private with him/her, for he/she has not revealed any thoughts on the matter.

Admittedly, the two top photographs are quite similar, but they are not identical. The gaze of this mocker is slightly different from picture to picture, the same holds true for the next sets of photos.

Mother's Day 2012

I have done volunteer work nearly every Sunday since 2003 (or has it been since 2002) at an assisted living center, a fact I've mentioned a few times here on TLLG (including a post which you may refer to by clicking here), and since today is Mother's Day, all the residents of The Home wished me a Happy Mother's Day today, knowing I am not a mother of any children, although sometimes growing up I felt like a mother to my own mother, as you may recall in one of my past  blog entries here on TLLG — which you may refer to by clicking here. 

On my way home, I ran into a young woman who asked me, "Are you a mother?" 

"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." OR "Flowers, they just wanna have fun. . . "

Today is the last Saturday in November, and twenty-three days (including today) have passed since I "featured" Thomas Hood's poem in a blog entry on TLLG, about the "NO" in November which I'll post here again:

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -
November!

The reason I've returned to this poem is that, fortunately, most of my fun loving things that I grow in my urban (New York City) terrace garden apparently decided to consider Katharine Hepburn's quote, "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun", and to stick around for at least the duration of November, therefore defying the "no flowers" norm (and perhaps an unwritten "rule") Hood cites in his aforementioned poem.