as for my title, if you don’t know Our Lady of the Pun, check her stylish self out! She doesn’t throw the puns into every post, but when they’re there, you’ll know it!
We consider ourselves very fortunate to have a good portion of our yard still somewhat wooded with many native plants serving as ground cover. Much as I appreciate the salal, oregon grape, vanilla leaf, and other inidigenous plants, I think I’d have to choose the sword fern — Polystichum munitum— as the handsomest, most dramatic of these natives. One plant in particular, at least four feet in diameter, anchors one of our sunny gardens. We cut it down to the base every year or two and in the spring watch its new fronds unfurl themselves over the rusty old stubs. Here, a smaller plant in the shade does the same.
I know many of you don’t come here for gardening photos and may be getting a bit tired of them. I’m resisting apologizing because much as I appreciate and want to please my readers, I also want my blog to reflect my own interests. At this time of year, the garden fascinates me.
As well, while I admit my limitations with the camera, I love to get out and view through its lens, looking at the world more intently.
And I must admit that lately I’m feeling a certain ennui with my own blog-writing. This is partly due to the scholarly writing I’m doing which is sapping some of that energy. It’s also making me impatient with tickling at the surface of topics, yet I haven’t the time right now to really address them the way I’d like to. Several conversations have captured my interest recently — Sallymandy, Duchesse, and Frugal Scholar chatting about writing, for example — and I’d love to chime in but to do this properly would require several hours that I just don’t have.
Indeed, this mix of ennui and frustration has had me thinking about abandoning my blog, at least for a few weeks, and in some ways this would be a good time for that, since I’ll be leaving soon on (a partly working) vacation. But on the other hand, I’ll have so much I want to write about then! I’ve been going back and forth on this and my solution for now includes many garden photos, the occasional chat about this or that, perhaps a glimpse at my travel wardrobe, and soon, if my new Netbook plan works out, some postings from abroad. After that, I’ll just have to see. Meanwhile, though, I hope your days are unfolding happily, along with these lovely fern fronds.
Glorious, uplifting photos.
Not surprised that your professional writing uses a great deal of your creative energy. Hope you will post when you wish, finding the best mix to enjoy spring and prepare for your conference & holiday.
I’m so impressed when the bloggers I read (including you) produce such thoughtful pieces several times a week or even more often. I think you’re allowed to ‘coast’ for a while, especially when you have to channel so much into your work at the moment. Gardens, travel clothes and this and that will more than suffice.
Patricia
Oh, I am at the barely sitting up in my pram stage when it comes to writing, but my eldest daughter, the one who initially laughed at my writing this blog recently wondered aloud how it was that I did not have a newspaper column! She said much of what I wrote was more interesting and funnier than artcles she reads in the paper. Bless her.
The truth is if I write for fun, then I enjoy it. The minute I have to fulfil a brief I think I would just freeze, it seems to me the whole blog thing gives most people the most fantastic forum to release stream of consciousness that otherwise would lay dormant.
It is like the digital camera; it opens up everyone’s creativity and is a great equaliser. I admit my grammar is so very wanting, but I have really enjoyed putting together some of my posts and better still I get to read blogs brilliantly and more interestingly written than most columns in a paper.
Yours included so although you will be on a break I hope it will be a relatively short one.
Ferns always look very paleolithic to me, very they primal plants, but stunning when they unfurl.
Duchesse, Patricia, and Alison: Thanks for your understanding, which very much pleases but does not at all surprise me.
Alison, I’m so glad to hear what your daughter said — and just think, if you hadn’t started blogging, she might never have got to have that view of you!
I love the kind of environments where ferns can flourish. Le sigh. I love the wet lushness of ferns. Beautiful.
Enjoy your break. I’ll miss you. And, I look forward to whatever it is you want to share with us. I’ll be waiting for your return.
LBR: I guess I take the ferns too much for granted, thanks to our all-too-wet lushness!
I’m not actually taking a break — but I may be posting less often and about who-knows-what. But there should be some travel reports over the next few weeks, at least.
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These are EXQUISITE, Mater.
I’ve been sick, sorry I haven’t been here. I have a lot to catch up with. You cut your hair! How cute is that!!!!!