Hello February

February - the most romantic month of the year.

some Valentines Day favourites

red velvet cupcakes

a slim volume of garden poetry

love locks on a bridge in Paris

fine bone china at tea time

old fashioned french roses

sterling silver sugar shaker and basket

strawberry roulade

cupid's love tokens

love is in the air

linking to 

Amaze Me Monday with Cindy @ Dwellings - The Heart of Your Home

Mosaic Monday with Judith @ Lavender Cottage 
Bernideen's Tea Time

Laurie's Annual Valentines Party @ Bargain Decorating with Laurie

Daily Daffodil

The daffodil is our doorside queen;

She pushes upward the sword already,

To spot with sunshine the early green.

William Cullen Bryant

(no relation!)

Mosaic Monday - Daylily collage

I spotted this beautiful, creamy white daylily in the garden of l'Authentique, a restaurant in our local market town when we had lunch there last week.
Unfortunately I got my shadow in there too, bottom right!
C'est la vie!

Kicking off the week by joining Mary for her Mosaic Monday gathering @the little redhouse with this simple collage and Shakespeares sonnet number 99.

To quote the bard:

The forward violet thus did I chide:

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If not from my love's breath? The purple pride

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells

In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.

The lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,

And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;

But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth

A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,

But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.

Trees and Poetry.

After the spring flowers have faded and become just a distant memory the trees in our garden step forward to delight us with acid green leaves and neon pink and gentle white blossom.

TREES

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray,

A tree that may in summer wear

a nest of robins in her hair

Upon whose blossom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems were made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

­Joyce Kilmer

The Sound of the Trees

I WONDER about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.--

Robert Frost

cherry blossoms

with the morning moon

still in the sky
(old traditional Haiku translated by Robin Gill)

Trees

Trees just stand around all day

and sun themselves and rest.

They never walk or run away

and surely that is best.

For otherwise how would

  squirrel or robin find its nest?

Aileen Fisher

Many thanks to NC State University for sharing these poems on their website.

Trees of Strength

Please join me over at A Southern Daydreamer and Susan our gracious hostess

for Outdoor Wednesday

click here or on the sidebar button.

Linking also to a new blog that Ricki Jill led me to,

Mamarazzi's Dandelion Wishes 

and

 My Happy List