Prickly Pear Cactus

I performed my song, Prickly Pear Cactus, at Cottonwood Park. This song was a part of a project that I’m working on the 2022 summer called “Sonnet Summer” (and it is a sonnet). Each song and poem that I created in the 2022 summer was a sonnet. Most of the sonnet forms that I’m using this summer are of my own creation so you may not recognize them as sonnets.

I am still singing songs to the nature that I love, but for the summer of 2023, I have taken to singing to birds as well as native plants. The Prickly Pear Cacti are not in bloom yet this year. They will be soon. In the meantime you can get out and enjoy many beautiful plants that are in bloom in the Lethbridge coulees right now.

This sonnet, like all of my sonnets, have a rhyme and rhythm pattern and are only fourteen lines long. The benefit of creating sonnet songs is that they are short. That is also a benefit to the listener, in many cases. I hope you’ll enjoy hearing my songs.

I am including a gardening poem, For The Love of Gardening, that I wrote in this post. It is a sonnet that I wrote on May 17, 2023. I’m not only writing sonnets this year. You’ll find it at the bottom of this post.

I just found out that the Lethbridge Public Library is hosting a home and garden show tomorrow, May 20, 2023. It seems funny to do a home and garden show on the May long weekend. That’s when gardeners are most busy. Perhaps some of Lethbridge’s gardeners will take a break from their gardens to come sit in the air-conditioning at the Library, though.

Update: I attended the Home and Garden Show at the Lethbridge Public Library and there were few people attending (besides the people working the booths). There were free garden seeds; a great door prize draw; and more.

More Free Stuff: I am putting out feelers to see if there is any interest in learning how to write plant poetry. I am a horticulturist who has been learning native plant identification for the past few years. I can identify hundreds of plants (which certainly helps me write flower poetry). I am interested in hiking with others to help them improve their poetry-writing skills and improve their plant identification skills. If you are interested, follow my blog for posts entitled Poetry in the Park (to find out the where and when).

I can never get close enough to the Meadow Larks to see them well (even by zooming in with my camera). I accidently wrote “morning lark” on the title of my picture below. I’m pretty sure that bird was a Meadow Lark. I hear a lot of them when hiking in Cottonwood Park.

For The Love of Gardening

I planted up my peat bale row.

I’m so exhausted and I ache.

I used to garden years ago

each day for hours, for goodness sake.

Now half a day just wipes me out.

But how I love to watch plants grow.

The joy I get, I have no doubt,

is very largely since I know

how hard I works to get them there.

Some others choose a different route –

they delegate their garden’s care

but I don’t know what that’s about.

The garden that I work to make

provides me love I’m glad to take.