Sweet Dregs

Late this morning, feeling very achey sinus-ey and dampish and drizzly and lethargic and miserable, I made a pot of calendula, jasmine, and white tea to try and cheer myself up.  I had a single tied-up blossom left in the box that my son E had given me several years ago and that I had been saving for the right occasion.  On the packet it said "Feeling under the weather?  Calendula will cheer you."  It slowly unfurled as it steeped, and I got so caught up in watching it that I had to draw it.

And next to the tea pot with its dregs-- the flower remained open and beautiful long after the tea was gone-- I saw the dregs of this summer's honeysuckle, a single stem with several golden white blossoms the color and texture of yellowed ladies' soft leather gloves from the 1920s.  This one blossom stem was blooming as though it were May right at the entrance to the river trail on Friday.  I had brought it home to capture the last of that sweet late-spring smell.  I had put it in a vase with the last zinnia;  and then after I drew all of those I drew the calendula blossom again.  I looked at the clock and two hours had passed and I had stopped thinking about my miserable sinuses and felt much better.  The sun had even come out; so I finished up my DIY sinus treatment  sitting in the sun on the front porch and talking with my buddy C for a good long time.