More Heidleberg Project

This is one of Tim Burke's pieces. He lives on Heidelberg Street. If you click on the laebls below (or on the links above), you can learn more about Tim Burke and the Heidelberg Project (Tyree Guyton).

More Heidelberg Project

This is on Heidelberg Street, near downtown. See yesterday's post for links.

Heidelberg Project

On Heidelberg Street. Click here or on the link (label) below to learn/see more.

Backwater gates

I have "better" pictures of this, but I liked this one for its moodiness. This is on Jefferson.

Cranbrook, statues and spring

It rained and hailed, but we still managed a walk. Not the best
conditions for photographs, but thought I'd share these.

Nashua Creek, Belle Isle, slow spring

1)The red footbridge at Nashua Creek, with fisherman. There's one at
the other end of the woods, too, but there is some confusion in the
background so I rarely photograph it.

2)forsythia in our yard

3)snowdrop

We've been having a slow spring, but yesterday with very hot, and
today is supposed to be, too, so things are taking a giant leap
forwarad.

St Jude's etc

1)St. Jude's, at the corner of Moross and 7 Mile.

2)a few blocks away from St. Jude's--trash in an empty lot

3)our first tulip

4)The Christmas Roses, still going strong.

131 Kercheval

My doctor's building. The first shot is the cafe a few steps from the
doctor's office.

Another from the Ford Fairlane Estate

Sideboard in the dining room. Lovely paneling.

indoor swimming pool at Ford Mansion

This restaurant at the Henry Ford Fairlane Estate is in what used to
be an indoor swimming pool--they filled it with sand to make the
restaurant.

Maybury State Park

After visiting The Great Lakes Art Fair (see yesterday's post), we went to Maybury State Park and took a 47-minute minute walk in the rain. It was also getting dark. There were lots of wildflowers, but they were all closed up because of the rain and darkness (and some
hadn't opened yet, and were just in bed), The ones pictured here are bloodroots. (I was only carrying my tiny pocket camera because of the rain and darkness.

There are lots of hiking trails at Maybury State park, as well as picnic grounds, a farm and other amenities. The park is on what used to be the grounds of Maybury Sanatorium, where people in Detroit went for tuberculosis. They cut the tuberculosis rate in Detroit by more than half.

Here is a poem I wrote Saturday when I was all cranky because I was confined indoors on a beautiful spring day (I thought this was a good post for it, when I actually got out [in the rain] [no fawn though]):

Confined

Fawn lilies, pale in the shadows of trees, open their throats
and call the bees. Bees, drunk with sleep and winter,
stagger from the hive. The hive hums with its own morning.
Spring caresses the forest lightly. If you hurry, you will see nothing
but the dark still-sleeping trunks of trees. But stop. Place your ear
to the trunk and listen. Sap thrums in its veins, singing
to the buds who hum softly as they gather their new leaves
to unfurl. And in a spot of branch-filtered sun, the first
mourning cloak butterfly fans slow wings among the fallen leaves.
You might mistake it for one of them if you didn't pause and look.
But I cannot look. Confined indoors, I miss the birthday
of the forest: the doe, licking her newborn, pressing
with her nose to balance it as it wobbles toward
its first breakfast. Picture me longing, aching; see me imagining
instead of watching, as, stepping among the white lilies
that bear its name, in a moment never to be repeated,
the newborn fawn takes its fleeting first steps.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
forBB

It's national poetry month and I am trying to write a poem a day which I am posting here, if you are interested.

Great Lakes Art Fair

We spent the afternoon at the Great Lakes Art Fair. It was at Rock
Financial Plaza, a huge affair. We walked up and down aisle after
aisle enjoying the art.

The first lady was from Bozeman, Montana, but I didn't get her
name--she was one of the first people I spoke to. At the end, we went
back to see her, hoping to purchase something and get her name, but
she'd packed up the things I was interested in.

The second guy is Carl R. Sams. He and his wife, Jean Stoick do
wonderful nature phtography and sell prints, books, movies and have
won a number of awards. We bought two books for the grandchidlren and
Carl signed them for us.

The third guy was the very first person I spoke to--his wife had made
that wonderful dancing lady, but she wasn't there at the time, and I
didn't get their names.

The final shot is of the landscaping around the fair--indoors. I took
it handheld with no tripod and the light was very low.

If anyone knows the names of the two people whose names I failed to
get, please let me know and I will post them.

Spring!

Spring is finally coming to Detroit. Daffodils in our yard! Hyacinths too, and forsythia (this is at the "cottage," though we have some at home, too, and The Village Market has put flowers out--finally--along the wall for sale. It's sunny and warm today. Yes, that is our house in the back ground of the first two shots--and our neighbors' houses too. Only these early flowers are out, and no leaves on the trees yet. No wildflowers except skunk cabbage have been spotted open yet.

More Dodge Park, Clinton River

Two more shots from Dodge Park, along the Clinton River. The ducks and geese there are very tame because people like to feed them. As you can see, spring has not really arrived in force here yet.

Dodge Park, with poem

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge #13, a word list, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

White Duck in a Green Pool

The Clinton River makes an acute turn, chews
up the banks and topples trees whose roots hang fibrous
and ungrounded into the green water. Mallards, quacking
and grunting, slide along the current like pucks
in an air hockey game, smooth on the wrinkled green surface,
interrupting the reflection of willows and phragmites
with their shiny blue and green heads. When the river cuts
back far enough, it will rejoin itself, abandoning
this U-shaped oxbow to stagnate like an old appendix.
Already, the trail caves into the river and disappears,
almost impassable between the plunge to water
and the thicket of brambles. Already,
old oxbows ring islands of trashy willows and weeds
where Canada geese nest, the males hissing,
trailing intruders, attacking with wing blows,
with the heavy thump of breastbone against neck and shoulder.
No one in this dismal place is jubilant, but the white ducks,
resting on the sandbar opposite the bend of the river preen
their spotless feathers with bright orange smiles.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

I went to Dodge Park and wrote this poem while walking along the trail there. It was a grey early spring day, spitting bits of rain, cool. The flooding of the Clinton River had left mud on everything.

Inside the Abandoned Zoo at Belle Isle

Inside the Abandoned Zoo at Belle Isle and Nashua Creek (the zoo is on Nashua Creek). We really had fun exploring this old zoo. It was sort of creepy int he building, like an old prison where atrocities occurred. There was a log there that said the deer wanted to talk to their union reps about better working conditions (really). I even wrote a poem about it (sort of).

I have been posting poems and pictures here for national poetry month.

I am very behind on posting to Detroit Daily and even farther behind on commenting--may have to give up blogging--can't keep up. I have to spend the day at a location with no internet. Blogging time is severely curtailed at the moment.

Chickadee, Kensington

I almost stepped on this chickadee, it was so close!

Nuthatch, Kensington

Lots of birds singing with spring!

Deer at Kensington Metropark

I took these yesterday at Kensington Metropark. We took a day off from working at Rolandale. Happy Easter to those who celebrate. (See another [good one] from this series.]

Sandhill Cranes today

At Kensington Metropark