no one planted them

no one planted them

or watered them through the ongoing drought

a bouquet of pale purple petunias 

growing from a crack in the concrete curb

Coming out of the bank, I almost step on them, but I'm arrested by a dozen purple eyes looking up at me. How did they get there, a clutch of petunias growing out of a crack in the curb? Certainly no one planted them there. True, there a window boxes on the bank's windows, spilling over with a riot of petunias. But none of them are this lovely shade of lavender. For sure, no one watered them through this long summer's drought. Yet they are flourishing, delicate but indomitable, Nature's everlasting bounty.

ripped apart and stained

ripped apart and stained

blue by fungus, a tree trunk

opens to the sun

On a walk around the Big Island, a flash of blue catches my eye. A fallen tree, its trunk twisted open, reveals fibrous strands of the inner bark, like hair or dead grass. Part of the sapwood has turned pale blue, evidently the work of blue stain fungus, slowly consuming the heartwood. The complimentary colors of blue and green against orange and yellow make a pleasing composition out of the wreckage of a fallen tree.