Poem for Tuesday and August Bellevue Flowers

The Flower at My Window 

By Lucian B. Watkins 

O! my heart now feels so cheerful as I go with footsteps light

      In the daily toil of my dear home;

And I’ll tell to you the secret that now makes my life so bright—

      There’s a flower at my window in full bloom.

It is radiant in the sunshine, and so cheerful after rain;

       And it wafts upon the air its sweet perfume.

It is very, very lovely! May its beauties never wane—

       This dear flower at my window in full bloom.

Nature has so clothed it in such glorious array,

      And it does so cheer our home, and hearts illume;

Its dear mem’ry I will cherish though the flower fade away—

      This dear flower at my window in full bloom.

Oft I gaze upon this flower with its blossoms pure and white.

       And I think as I behold its gay costume,

While through life we all are passing may our lives be always bright

       Like this flower at my window in full bloom.

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Tuesday was overcast and even cooler than Monday, a gorgeous day. I had a bunch of work to get done in the morning, and I wanted to dye my roots (I can't win, the light ash brown turns it much darker than the light golden brown though it's less red; next time I'm going back to more red, lighter overall). Then we took a walk to enjoy the beach, which was pretty empty except for lots of ducks who apparently like the cooler weather -- the geese, meanwhile, were all the way out in the lake. 

My Voyager group watched "Body and Soul" -- what a fantastic performance from Jeri Ryan -- after which we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner plus homemade blueberry pie (we shall not discuss the Orioles' loss to the Nats, which was bad enough, let alone the Mariners' 15-1 blowout by the Tigers). After dinner we watched the last couple of episodes of Netflix's The Decameron, which went from quirky comic take on the original to, well, plague-era drama. Flowers at Bellevue Botanical Garden: