Our Compost Flower

A couple of years back, when the City started collecting organic waste, we rather gave up on our apartment compost bin that we had nurtured for almost twenty years. The part of the balcony where it sits is always closed off during the winter months, and what goes on in there tends to be left to its own devices.

Now that I have re-opened the area for the summer, I discover that a plant has colonized the bin in quite spectacular fashion.

It sits next to our long-suffering but always abundant clematis and together they give the area a beautiful look of greenery from the part of the balcony where we sit and contemplate.

The plant also has these delightful flowers. I am sure someone will be able to tell me what it is I am growing here.

Image: Geraniums

Poem: From Here To There

 

the wind wound round my legs,

changed direction, wiping my face

with a salty slap as it whistled away.

I veered with it, swinging south

along the strand, grinding my heels

into the beach to stand my ground

against the tempest’s growing bloom.

And though I’ve felt the lash

of fortune’s back of hand before,

never before did I assume the depths

of despair I felt that day.   No,

not even close. I looked ahead

as best I could through the spray

that pebble-dashed  my view.

The future spread before me,

flat as prairie, expressionless, gray

and drab, devoid of interest, latent or

exposed.  I sighed the sigh of the

homeless man;  then,

like a seasoning sapling,

I bent with the rain and trudged

on to Desolation Sound.