Honeysuckle Time

I just discovered the brick planter in the patio is filled with honeysuckle, now blooming. It reminds me so much of the house in which I was raised in Southern California. There was a beautiful honeysuckle arbor outside my bedroom window. When it bloomed in the spring, the aroma of those flowers filled the house and yard, and the bees and hummingbirds found their summer home.

Yes, sweet memories, now possible once again by a brick planter full of honeysuckle. When it stops raining so hard--soon--I'll know that spring is definitely here in Oklahoma. In the meantime, here are some poems about spring, May, and June. The internet is so much fun! My Google "honeysuckle" search also found a short story by Wodehouse I'd love to read: "Honeysuckle Cottage," supposedly one of the funniest stories some people have ever read.


"Lathhouse shade –
the scent of honeysuckle
filling the shadows."
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

“In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day.
No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.”
- Aldo Leopold

"Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
But they don't get around
Like the dandelions do."
- Slim Acres

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
- Margaret Atwood

"I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory."
- Henry David Thoreau

"The world's favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May."
- Edwin Way Teale

"Be like a flower and turn your face to the sun."
- Kahlil Gibran

"Don't knock the weather: nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation
if it didn't change once in a while."
- Kin Hubbard


"The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit;
for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in
any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May."
- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur

"May is a pious fraud of the almanac."
- James R. Lowell

"Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their
blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire."
- Virgil

"Spring - an experience in immortality."
- Henry D. Thoreau

"The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven—
All's right with the world!"
- Robert Browning, The Year's at the Spring

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do.
I stare out the window and wait for spring."
- Rogers Hornsby

"An optimist is the human personification of spring."
- Susan J. Bissonette

"The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other."
- Arthur Rubenstein

“It's spring fever.... You don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes
your heart ache, you want it so!”
- Mark Twain