For the Love of Wildflowers

We are leaving for a week. Don't worry, the ranch and all its critters and plants will be in capable hands.

We will leave you with some photos and a lovely poem written by a dear friend last year .

The wildflowers this year! The wildflowers! The late rains came and gave us the prettiest wildflowers I’ve seen. Hills of purple. Pink clover. Poppies, wild orchids. I gasp, I snort, I can’t
stop exclaiming over the wildflowers. I mourn that they are so short-lived, that it will quickly become hot and the sun will scorch them.

if I could,

I would weave you a ladder of wildflowers.

it would stretch straight into the air,

and I’m sure that your feet would scarcely bruise the petals

you’d feel them tickling that soft underside of your foot

as you leapt up my ladder, laughing.

you’d rise above all those things that nicker and nobble

the smokestacks, soot clinging to your clothes, the mounds of paper

bills and to do lists and, well, and all of it

you’d leave the freeways and the dust, the stripmalls, as you held on tightly

poppies springing back under your feet.

lupin under your hands,

I can see you, eying that one cloud as a good resting spot.

the cloud that resembles your band teacher (from the seventh grade.)

-By Rae