Lilacs in dooryards holding quiet conversations with an early moon

Every old house and farmstead in Illinois and Wisconsin has lilacs. A hundred years ago women picked arms full of lilacs to brighten their drab kitchens. Fifty years ago families sat on their porches on fine spring days and enjoyed the scent of lilacs all around them. As a child, spring lilac blooms always graced our kitchen table. I carried bunches tightly clenched in my little fists to grade school teachers. In later years, a vase sat on my nightstand perfuming my bedroom. Today lilacs sit on my desk at work. A bit of my garden carried with me to this sterile place.

A few lines from Amy Lowell's poem. Read the rest at Amy Lowell Lilacs

Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.

(Common Lilac pale lavender)

(Agincourt Beauty a very dark redish purple)

Short poem by 16 year old oceanreverie

sunlight pours in as waves
gently caressing my face
the symphony of cars on gravel
birds serenading from their branches
a cool breeze through the trees
fills my cluttered mind
i throw back the covers
and step towards the open window
and smell lilac;
sweet and innocent
drifting in to greet me
this morning
is beautiful
a taste of something new
of something life-changing
so i'll walk outside
and cut a bit of lilac
of beauty
to hold throughout the day
so i'll remember
today is an open window
by oceanreverie
05/07/2008

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I'll close with more photos of squabbling finches at the sock feeder. It's easy to attract goldfinches to your garden by adding one of these socks full of nyger thistle seed. (Nyger is sterile and will not sprout in your garden;) Everyone, have a great day.