For Real Toads: by any other name

I missed yesterday's Open Link Monday with the writers' group, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, but today's challenge is to write an unusual poem about flowers, trying to avoid clichés.
Here are the definitions Kerry provided, along with the origin of the word cliché. I love it, fitting in as it does with my typographical background. Jinksy, for one, will understand why I couldn't resist.

Cliché is defined by the Merriam-Webster On-line Dictionary as

(1)  a trite phrase or expression; also: the idea expressed by it

(2)  a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation

(3)  something that has become overly familiar or commonplace

Origin of the word:

Cliché is borrowed from French. In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable type. This is also called a stereotype. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. "Cliché" came to mean such a ready-made phrase. 


Here, then, is my tongue-in-cheek response to the prompt. It isn't perfect...

but come ye back, when summer's in the meadow...

The flower of one’s youth

is fresh as a daisy

but when you’ve gone to seed

you’re pushing up daisies.

*

All the flowers of tomorrow

are in the seeds of yesterday,

and friends are flowers

in the garden of life.

*

A babe in the woods

is as delicate as a flower

while the bee from her bonnet

is beating around the bush.

*

A weed is no more

than a flower in disguise,

and painting the lily

turns over a new leaf.

*

I’m looking over

a four-leaf clover.

*

In God’s green acre,

oaks from acorns grow.

*

The last straw is flower power,

like a hothouse flower.

*

The last rose of summer

is a rose by any other name.

*

It is cut and dried, flower child,

every rose has its thorn.

*

Bloom where you are planted.

Welcome to my garden.

Boxing Day Ladies

Kerry is back, and so is Open Link Monday for the writers' group

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Today, in many countries including Canada, is Boxing Day.

The exact origins of Boxing Day are lost in the mists of time, but this is the version told to me by my grandmother when I was a child:

on Boxing Day

the ladies fine

took boxes of food to the poor

of course they sat

in carriages

while servants took

the boxes to the humbler doors

but the ladies

waved, smiled, nodded

accepting thanks which was their due

Boxing Day in Canada is now a day of large sales in many stores, with slashed prices enticing customers to line up before daylight for such things as electronic equipment at rock-bottom prices. I have never been tempted to do such a thing, but my husband has stood in the December cold to buy things he really wanted. I now have no idea what those things were. I wonder if he knows.

With Real Toads: open link cinq

Kerry has left us alone for a week, with Marian to make sure we aren't, to use Sherry's word, obstreperous. What can I do to get into trouble now?
It is Open Link Monday for the writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads and we are invited to share a poem, old or new, on any subject we wish. Aha, but it has to be a poem, said Kerry, before jumping ship and turning the tiller over to Marian. So, a poem, but a little poem, it shall be:

winter:

freezing, snowing;

summer: hot and glowing;

spring and autumn are best for me—

mediocrity!