A Place of Pure Enchantment Gleams...

A photo colour-feast on today's post because

Today is a rather colorless day in southern Ontario,

one of those days when the sky and landscape are monochromatic...

Morning...

Afternoon...

So here's a little reminder at the almost halfway point of January

(and didn't we just get here in a blink?!!)

of what is waiting beyond a few more month-blinks!

A place where zephyrs tug and tease

Tendrils from buds and smiles from lips

And garden-rooms as winter slips

Into a vault of memories

A place of pure enchantment gleams

Beyond landscapes tucked beneath snows

Where winter’s boisterous brood bestows

A frosty air to balmy dreams

A place where apple blossoms blush

And fragrant lilac plumes unfold

And earth is drenched in heaven’s gold

And lively with spring’s planting rush

And heaven is a pasture, blue

Dotted with clouds, like flocks of sheep

And earth’s green pastures run knee-deep

With nature’s verdant, freshest hue

A green-gold-blue-blush-purple mirth

Emerges to grace every home

Rather than earth-sky monochrome

Of snow-laden heavens and earth

Where brooks like shiny sashes swirl

Through wood nooks, meadowlands, and sing

A rippling canticle of spring

As winter’s loosened grip unfurls

A place where zephyrs tug and tease

Tendrils from buds and smiles from lips

And garden-rooms as winter slips

Into a vault of memories

Janet Martin

I get a little colour-hungry this time of year

so to satisfy my craving I read 'colorful' 

books like those that travel through places like Italy...

This travel inspired last night's supper!

Below, dried oregano, fresh-chopped garlic salt and pepper and bread crumbs.

Rub between hands till thoroughly mixed and sprinkle on olive-oil spritzed tomatoes.

Bake at 350 till bubbly.

Both the dish above and below can be topped with 

fresh grated black pepper and parmesan before serving. 

Want extra-yummy extra topping? 

Fresh-made bacon bits!

Stick your Nose Into a Tulip...(and other simple pleasures)

A week ago my cousin gifted me this midwinter splash of spring...

the initial inspiration for today's poem

For a taste of spring, when it's not!

and other simple pleasures...

Stick your nose into a tulip...

Sip some lemon-spritzed delight...

Page through gardens, picture-perfect

Waiting while the world blooms white...

Take a 'tropical' vacation

Via pages in a book...

Dream a summer celebration/destination

On the bank of frozen brook

Stick your nose into a tulip

Sip some lemon-spritzed delight

Page through gardens, picture-perfect

Waiting while the world blooms white

Take a tropical vacation

Via pages in a book

Dream a summer celebration

On the bank of frozen brook

Make the most of words like 'cozy'

Before tasks of sweat-and-till

Unearth work gloves resting easy

For a little longer, still

Stoke home-fires with thanksgiving

Thank God for warm, fuzzy socks

Say a prayer for people living

Under bridges in a box🙏💔

Be content to sing and putter

Make a decadent dessert

(never mind the extra butter) 😉😅

A few winter treats won't hurt 

Chuckle at the chubby junco

Watch the birds without a clock

Dictating strict marching orders

With nothing but tick and tock

Pour a second 'second coffee'

Mindful of a subtle string

Drawing winter, like a tugboat 

Closer and closer to spring

Tromp/ski through snow-swaddled creation

With an ear tuned to a clime

Where green and violet arrangements

Will emerge in perfect time

Though the sunshine, brief and sallow

Cannot melt the snowy strand

We know soon its warmer yellow  

Will trump Old Man Winter's hand

 So, stick your nose in a tulip

Sip some lemon-sparkly bliss

Page through gardens, picture-perfect

While the sun fine-tunes her kiss

Janet Martin

Pour a second 'second coffee'...

Chuckle at the chubby junco...

Watch the birds without a clock...

Magnificent, Marvelous, Matchless Love - Praise and Harmony

Lyrics 

Song by Keith & Kristyn Getty

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love;

Too vast and astounding to tell.

Forever existing in worlds above,

Now offered and given to all.

Oh fountain of beauty eternal;

The Father, the Spirit, the Son.

Sufficient and endlessly generous:

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

Creation is brimming with thankfulness,

The mountains, exultant they stand;

The seasons rejoice in Your faithfulness,

All life is sustained by Your hand.

You crown every meadow with color;

You paint every shade in the sky;

Each day the dawn wakes as an encore of

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

How great, how sure;

His love endures forevermore.

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

What grace, that You entered our brokenness;

You came in the fullness of time.

How far we had fallen from righteousness,

But not from the mercies of Christ.

Your cross is our door to redemption;

Your death is our fullness of life.

That day, how forgiveness flowed as a flood:

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

How great, how sure;

His love endures forevermore.

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

United in Your resurrection,

You lift us to infinite heights.

Could anything sever or take us from

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

How great, how sure;

His love endures forevermore.

Magnificent, marvelous, matchless love.

April Quadrille

 PAD Challenge-day 13-For today's prompt, write a forgive poem. 

Green murmur on the meadow...

First timid tufts of flora...

Green murmur on the meadow

 New nest tucked in the brush

And on the verge of birth, a surge

Of calm before the rush

A bud pulsing with promise

A garden, primed with dreams

A zephyr. soft, blue sky aloft

Earth, bursting at its seams

Marmalade-misted morning

Sweet, sun-kissed afternoon

Silhouette-show of dusk’s tableau

‘neath tusk of opaque moon

First timid tufts of flora

Nature’s most modest plumes

Presents its charms to open arms

And eyes, thirsty for blooms

The ground, like Berber carpet

Where tender bare feet dance

Earth’s spartan sweep cannot long keep

Its pristine countenance

April arouses laughter

Wakes joy akin to Heav’n

A robin’s trill, a daffodil

And winter is forgiv’n

© Janet Martin

PAD Challenge day 3-Waiting for spring

PAD Challenge day 3-For today's prompt, write a connection poem.

My daughter sent me this picture of Dear Granddaughter, and three words

Waiting For Spring🌺☔🌞

'Do I have your permission to use it with a poem?' I asked 

to which she replied 'of course'

Ah, just beyond bedraggled fronds of remnant drifts of snow

Beyond the umber overtones before green starts to show

Beyond the gate where we still wait with umbrella in hand

While raindrops waltz from leaden vaults across storm-sobered land

I sense the steady trundle of a sturdy wagon heaped

With a three-season bundle to be sown, tended and reaped

Ah, just beyond the pond still chilled with winter’s aftermath

I hear the dance of bare feet spilled to dusty garden path

And like a teapot tipped to pour sweet sips of mint or chai

I feel the earth, an eager cup lifted to catch the sky

Where just beyond the bondage of what Time alone sets free

I sense an immense barrage of buds turned to melody

Ah, just beyond the wall we cannot scale or clap apart

I sense the love and laughter of a color-happy heart

After winter has gone the way of every winter-old

After earth’s rags of brown and gray are laid with green and gold

After the part after the art that draws ajar spring’s gate

I know once more we will admit that it was worth the wait

© Janet Martin

Ah, just beyond the pond still chilled with winter’s aftermath...

After the part after the art that draws ajar spring’s gate...

March Lion Adios

Jim didn't realize he provided the inspiration for the last line in today's poem

when he told me that he carried out a wee, newborn lamb 

from his truck this morning, as he unloaded sheep

 at a New Jersey meat-processing plant...

'Aw! what happens to a baby lamb in a place like that?!' I asked.

 Jim said the person he met said 'we may be a rough environment 

but we take care of these little guys. 

If we are able, we find the mother and put them in a pen

 until they are taken to a new home!'

March is no lamb today, but rather, a lion!

Let's give him a hearty slap on the rump and send him on his welcome way! 

(after a week where he seemed intent on one last hefty hurrah!)

He has switched today's tune/roar from freezing rain to snow...

The other day there was no denying it; the aftermath of a blizzardy bluster

was still very beautiful...

March Lion rakes the tress of trees. Ah, let him roar

And lunge and claw and fret the firmament that waits to pour

In warmer, gentler breeze o-er violet-dappled hills

Ah, let him rage and growl and sneeze, and waken daffodils

And chimes in lily bells, and climes, blush, gold and green

And perches/porches, where we pause a bit with picnic lunch between

…as nature’s orchestra of bird and brook and bee

And wind wafting through woodlands swathed in mint-frothed filigree

Entertains and delights, as budded bowers brim

As stark silhouettes blur as barren limbs burst into hymn

And 'earth’s fulness thereof' swells with hope’s renewed lays

Where winter is forgotten in worlds besotted with praise

Ah, let him seethe and rage and pelt the windowpane

With frozen tears; ah, let him fiercely shake his mangled mane

And thrash the air with brash retaliation, for

March Lion feels the friendly fervor of spring at his door

Where soon sidewalks will wear new mother’s pushing prams

And verdant meadow fair will host the dash and dance of lambs

© Janet Martin

Ps.24:1

The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; 

the world, and they that dwell therein.