New Beginnings

You may recall a few weeks ago I mentioned having our son do a bit of yard work for us. He was appointed the task of weeding a small section of the garden that was completely over grown. To make his task easier, he broke out the 'whipper snipper' or 'Weedeater' or whatever you call the gadget in your part of the world and chopped the weeds off from the base (yes, they were that big). He attacked the job with the teeth-gritting destructiveness that only a 14 year old boy possesses and managed to also slice through most of our clematis at its base. After a few days it started to wilt and eventually most of the vines browned and dried out on the trellis.

Over the past few days, though, the vine has shown its first and probably only flower of the season. The first photo above shows the sole flower of the season while in the second photo V has displayed a bit of camera wizardry (at least to this technological dinosaur) and taken a B & W shot with only the flower showing in colour. Magic.

The flower, of course, represents a new beginning and I would be totally remiss if I did not mention the start of a new online publication this week by my friend KV Taylor. The Red Penny Papers is an electronic journal published quarterly and features sensationalist and fantastical fiction stories. Issue One features stories by Corrine Duyvis, Cate Gardner, John Cash, NK Kingston and episode one of the serial "Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos," by Aaron Polson. You can link to that issue here. Drop by and read the stories and let Katey know what you think.