The Fly Orchid

 

We picked a rather scary orchid for May in our 2026 calendar. And I note from previous blogs that I have sometimes posted Karen Volkman's poem about May this time of year. It is a poem that is both beautiful and scary, rather like the orchid.  It begins:
  
In May’s gaud gown and ruby reckoning
the old saw wind repeats a colder thing...

But this May I thought I would post a poem from Ogden Nash:

A Caution To Everybody  

by Ogden Nash

Consider the auk;
Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
Consider man, who may well become extinct
Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.

https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/short/may

May - with its blossom, its "gaud gown" - should be such a paradise month. But we are still living in the tragedy of the loss of Eden. However we have this promise from Jehovah - whose every purpose is fulfilled - that he will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth". (Revelation 11:18)

So the current state of things should tell us how close the end of the current wicked system of things on the earth is, as it hardly seems like an exaggeration to say that we are in the process of ruining the very planet we are living on.

I am still full of this beastly cold and had to pixel it to the meeting on Thursday.  And I had sad vivid dreams - not bad dreams and not sad at the time, but ones that left me with a feeling of sadness when I woke up.  But maybe that is because of my age, not because of the cold.

I dreamt I was visiting Lilac Tree Farm only they had moved.  Their house was down a winding country lane, lots of tall trees, so just as rural. And in my dream I said how lovely their new garden was, even though it was all straight ahead, long and running down to trees, rather than the interesting ramble of the Lilac Tree garden.  There were big lilies growing in the garden and a storm blowing everything about. It looked beautiful, but with an Autumnal sadness.   I knew I had to put off leaving until the weather improved.  It looked like they had just moved in - there was a bed in the lounge, with someone asleep and children running about.  I remember thinking now which one is Pen's - and picking out a small blonde lad who looked rather like my cousin Peter when he was a child.

I don't know why it left such a feeling of sadness. Part of it might be that my body and my brain know I will not be here much longer to see all this beauty, and so it showed me this beautiful garden in an Autumn gale.  Who knows?

We are supposed to be in for some rain this weekend. Badly needed  - our Green is starting to turn into a Brown.  And indeed it did rain on Saturday afternoon, and there may be more today.

Col left very early to join The Lads in The Field, with his sandwich lunch and his metal detectors.  The homemade cake this month is marmalade muffins.  He also took with him a long mysterious piece of plastic that has been lying in the hall for a couple of days. Something to do with the garage door apparently. And I am about to harness up my pixel pony and make it to the virtual Kingdom Hall for the morning meeting.

It will be an antidote for sadness.