through the eyes of a child

the little girl arrived at the beach yesterday and suddenly all that was familiar looks different. as we walk, she's like a hawk, spotting smooth white rocks and worn down pieces of beach glass and swooping down to pocket them. she calls the ocean by name, demanding that it come closer or retreat, and tries to hail gulls with a "hell-o! seagull!" she doesn't mind walking in the rain and thinks the resulting sunset is pink and beautiful. and the kite delights her, even though it doesn't fly very high or stay airborne for too long.

rocks & shells

i'm not sure why its happened but i'm disappointed with the way some of my photographs have come out this week, especially the close ones. above, the small round beach rock on the right was mesmerizing as it glittered with a sprinkle of tiny copper colored flecks. and below, the opalescence of the small fragment of shell was captivating, the way it undulated and changed colors in the morning sunlight.

but, sadly, you'll just have to take my word for it.

snail trail

how long must it take for a snail to make progress like this, i wonder as i walk. seeing the snail reminds me that i have a herculean task ahead of me this coming year. i'm thinking i should make this photo into a "slow and steady" type inspirational poster and hang it over my desk! i can learn from this determined snail!

more shore birds

to me, this trio looks like ducks. they were perched well out in the water, standing on a rock, i think. as i watched and photographed them, the waves grew higher and stronger and their watery roost soon disappeared, forcing them to float out onto the sea.

a fellow beach walker asked me to photograph these for her. she wished to paint them. i do have the photos now but she has yet to contact me. i believe that makes them fair game for the blog.

tern

spent time on the beach late this afternoon with the telephoto lens, attempting to capture the activity of a flock of swooping terns who kept dive-bombing into the ocean for fish. here's a lucky shot, a tern in midflight, carrying his dinner-to-go in his orange bill.

walking the beach

lovely low tide walks are one of my favorite things to do here. interesting today to see how much the beach has changed since last summer. pictured here amongst the seaweed is a feat of nature i've not seen in a long time. it's an almost perfectly round sand collar, the egg case of a particular kind of moon snail. i hope this is an indication of what i might find on future walks!

the beginning and the end

end of day.

beginning of vacation.

july morn

here's my neighbor's woodpile, shot out the window on a hot july morning. this is another picture snapped through the window screen between the camera and the subject. i'm fascinated with the effect it has on the sunlight in the captured image. it almost makes it look as hot outside as it really is.

from a small gardener

fieldstone has been removed from the middle of the perennial garden and the ground is settling in preparation for the installation of red brick pavers in early fall. the little girl thinks this spot is now her giant sandbox and has been observed digging out there with pails, shovels and trucks. and apparently she is planting, too. i laughed out loud this evening to see three solitary but strong scarlet runner bean seedlings, standing erect in the middle of the barren sand.

my new "boat"

on the right, my old gravy boat from my favorite set of dishes. look closely and you'll see that the "boat" itself is riddled with surface crackling in the glaze and the accompanying plate is poorly held together in several spots with super glue. it's been in that condition for decades. often have i thought to replace it but it's a a bit pricey for the two times a year i serve gravy.

on the left, the identical gravy boat, brand new and purchased for a song at a local antiques shop. now i don't want to wait until thanksgiving to use it. so maybe i'll make strawberry sauce for ice cream!

independence day

fireworks and parades and hours at the beach are a fine way for some to celebrate the holiday. but what makes me happy is a family cookout with a lovely, leisurely dinner outside at the picnic table! happy fourth!

milkweed

this tall plant is not very attractive. it seeds itself prolifically and, in the early summer, comes up everywhere. its leaves and stems are very sticky with milky sap that oozes when a plant part breaks. the spherical heads hardly qualify as flowers. you can see here its three graduated forms - the head with the buds at the top and the fully bloomed flower at the bottom. even the pink of the petals is a little mauve-y and washed out compared to other pinks in the yard.

but i let this plant grow intentionally for its one saving characteristic: the aroma of this plant is heavenly and is one of my favorite summertime smells. i catch whiffs of it in sections of the yard. when i pass fields of it, i stop to breathe it in. of all the summer scents, milkweed is the one i wish i could bottle up to take out and breathe in during the cold and dead of winter.

artifacts

it's amazing the things you can find while digging around in your garden. i wonder how old this bottle is. i wonder what swamp root is. i wonder who had to take it. and why. and when. living in this very old house and suddenly finding evidence of its other inhabitants and their lives always leaves me a bit awestruck, wondering for days afterward what life must have been like at this place one hundred, even two hundred years ago.

silver surprise

over a month ago, i hurriedly bought a pair of pants in a department store chain. they're more casual than what i normally wear, so i never even took them from the drawer until this morning. i put them on, then sat outside with coffee to read the daily news. suddenly i felt poking in my backside. i reached behind me expecting to find an insect of some sort but instead found buttoned back pockets which i didn't realize existed - and tucked deep inside each pocket, a jewelry card with a sole silver earring attached.

i photographed the earrings as i thought about what to do with them. should i keep them? return them to the store? what good to them or to me is one earring of a pair? and it happened over five weeks ago!

what do you think? what would you do?

bovine predictions

growing up, we lived across the brook from a dairy farm. early on we learned that cows lie down when it is about to rain. here, we see a herd of indecisive cows, some up and some down - and i guess they collectively were right in their weather predication. even though it was humid and overcast and the skies threatened the entire after-noon, it never did rain.

the unusual request

so a few months ago, out of the blue, i get this email from a guy named colin at the unusual suspects asking me for an interview. i hem and i haw and i outright stall because, quite frankly, i've never had a request like this before. eventually tho, ego gets the better of me and i acquiesce and answer his questions. and here's the result.

by the way, his is an unusual blog - little snippets of pop culture with links to the bigger story. movie reviews and commentary. an entertaining style of writing - and he posts not once but twice a day. i check it daily and have become a follower. go look around and maybe you will, too.

and why the photo of the pansy? no reason. i just like it, that's all.

right on time

with the early spring we've had in these parts and with plants blooming earlier than usual, it's encouraging to see elderflower blooming here in mid-june, right on time. above is the flower as it appears on the bush. below is the close-up, taken with the macro lens. that whole big fluffy soft flower head is made up of hundreds of these minute little flowers.

spoiling the view

a few times a week, i pass this. a rag, i think. it's hanging off a tree at the top of someone's driveway. and i bet it's been there for a least a year now. what is it, do you suppose? a marker of some sort? a remnant from a rowdy party? something blown in by the wind? whatever it is, it's unsightly and i fight the urge each time to yank it down and throw it away. but i'm afraid if i act on the impulse, someone may go careening down the hill after missing the sloping driveway.

summer solstice

"whatever is dreamed on this night, will come to pass."

a midsummer night's dream by william shakespeare

sweet solstice dreams, dear reader

three!

a big birthday weekend for the little girl. note the chocolate cake-y fingers holding up the candle denoting the new age. as it always does, time continues to fly faster than i would like - and the beat goes on.

nifty gizmo

i've been waiting and waiting for this to come in the mail - and today, it did! now, what is it?? take a guess!

in the wind

yesterday in a store, as we passed the display of hanging plants, the little girl spotted pinwheels amongst the leaves and flowers. she was captivated with their shiny brilliance even before the wind set them in motion. we spent much too much shopping time blowing them and watching them twirl around. in the end, we bought several and placed them in garden spots and in plants around the yard where they will spin with wild abandon all summer long, much to the delight of both the little girl and her grandmother.

graduation weekend

in a small town like this one, high school graduation is a source of community pride and celebration. for eighteen years, we've seen these young people everywhere - on playgrounds and school buses, at the supermarket with their parents, in church, at the library, on the ballfield and at the beach, getting haircuts, scooping ice cream, bagging groceries, taking our orders and washing our windshields. suddenly one day, they're young adults, leaving school and leaving us, as they should. i just love that the entire community comes together with such pride to celebrate this momentous right of passage with our young people.

almost time for tea

spent some time at work on this unusually chilly saturday and, after a few hours, felt the need for a cup of tea to warm myself. i checked the stash i keep in my drawer and found the tea bags and the packets of sweetener - but, alas, i was out of powdered creamer. off to the staff room i went, confident i'd find some there that i could borrow and replace on monday. but look, all i found was this gigantic bag of every kind of packaged sweetener you can imagine. but what good is that with no creamer, i ask you?

june grumbling

when you've been at work for twelve hours and you're tired and thinking about the two more hours of work you have at home, when you're hungry because you got so busy you forgot to eat lunch and all you've eaten was cheese & crackers at the meeting and you know you're now missing dinner, when you still have eleven miles to go before you reach home, this is not the vehicle to get stuck behind in a series of s-curves. particularly when your dashboard light comes on to let you know there's something amiss with one of your tires.

coffee break rituals

sad to say, i'm pretty compulsive about a lot of things, and coffee preparation is one of them. pictured here is the cup i always use at work. after i pour my coffee, i add creamers, one by one, tapping the bottoms to get the last drips of cream from each. when the first one is empty, i stuff its foil top back into the tiny container, put it down, then start on the second creamer. i do this four times, packing each fluted container into the previous empty one, making a stack, as shown. next comes two yellow packages of sweetener, with the empty sleeves crumpled, then packed into the topmost creamer of the stack. a swish with a spoon and i am done. the lid snaps on just so, with the sip hole lined up at a ninety degree angle to the cup's handle when i hold it in my right hand.

now if people would only make available a pint container of cream for my coffee, i wouldn't have to go through this compulsive ritual. well, the plastic part of it, anyway.

works like a charm

a beautiful holiday weekend, with perfect weather to be in the garden. pictured are iris in full bloom. with crutches, it's pretty easy to sit in the garden with a camera and take photos.

it's tricky, however, to work in the garden with crutches, and the most i planted was two tiny chamomile plants, assisted by the little girl. she wanted her own trowel and, after inquiring about my pink gardening gloves, ran inside to her toy basket to fetch the white cotton gloves she uses for pretend dress up. she dug and she planted and, when it came time to water, she chanted the magic words our family has always used to urge plants into growth:"tut-tut, it looks like rain" - a quote from winnie-the-pooh.

we'll soon be drinking chamomile tea because those magic words - they always work. the iris is living proof.

they're back!

despite our best efforts to eradicate them year after year, the non-so-pretties are back again. and i almost am.

out of commission

haven't been blogging because i haven't been taking photos. it's not easy to negotiate the camera from crutches. it's temporary though and won't be for much longer. stay tuned!

ghost tree

a couple of times a week, i head west to work and, on my way, pass by this obviously dead tree,sitting just at the edge of a big cow field. it's been there for many many years, tall and stately and reaching high into the sky. it looks majestic in summer, stark white with so much lush green surrounding it. and in winter, its lightness is a contrast to all the other grey and black trunked, leafless trees. i'm not sure what kind of tree it is but i like it. i also can't imagine why it hasn't fallen yet.

new year in spring

when my dad was alive, if he was asked his age, he used to say he was older than dirt. this phrase came to me last night as i was adding a forty pound bag of garden soil to the perennial bed, and it dawned on me that this may well be the dirt that i am older than.

hidden away

this elusive native woodland plant grows in dampish shady spots in the woods. the flower of this plant is called jack-in-the-pulpit. that hooded part is the flower - fascinating, albeit not very showy, i'm afraid. but take a peek below and you will see the solitary "jack" standing upright in the "pulpit" under the hood. see?

odd that i found more than a dozen of these, scattered in the woods at the edge of the yard. i have seen these plants only a few times in my life and have no idea why there are suddenly so many. i do hope they haven't been here all along and i just never noticed!

violets

roses are red but violets are not blue - they're purple. these are one of my favorite flowers and fortunately, i have a whole section of lawn devoted to them in the springtime.

inquiring minds want to know

sitting at a gas station, waiting for my receipt and wondering why their bathrooms are called "rest rooms". of course, it's a room. but a place of rest? really?

dustweb

perhaps you can't see it here, but i spotted it the minute the i walked into the room: this thin floor-to-ceiling filament glistening in the morning sunlight streaming in the window. i have seen these before, long phantom strands that show up at a moment's notice. what is this thing? is it web? dust? and how could it materialize overnight? i saw no evidence of any living thing having created it. unless perhaps it was a result of my own negligible housekeeping these fine spring days.

mothers' day magic

i've looked forward to today with some trepidation, since this is my first motherless mothers' day. so, in an effort to be positive about the day, i decided to search until i found some small sign that my mother was with me still, if only in spirit. and find it i did - or so i thought.

early in the day, i walked into church behind this elderly woman who was wearing a replica of my mother's fisherman knit sweater, the one that she always wore and that i now possess. i held the woman's arm as we climbed the stairs, i commented on her lovely sweater, and wished her a happy mothers' day. smiling, i found my place in a pew. it was mothers' day - and my mother was with me.

as sometimes happens, my eyes misted over a few times at the church music, thinking that i had so badly wanted a sign from my mother and i had been blessed with one. then, as the mass was ending, i listened in disbelief as the choir began to sing this, a piece i love, which means so much to me, which i had posted on serendipitous the night my mother died.

which i swear i had never heard sung in our church before. ever.

between the storms

i happened to glance out the window just in time to dash outside under an umbrella to chase this shot. and then the rains came again.

forget-me-nots

really, how could i forget forget-me-nots when they are all around the house and all over the yard? this clump was found blooming by the house's granite foundation, yards and yards from the nearest garden, which must be where they came from. and look - see the fly?

black flies

what is this, you say? it's my windshield, twenty-five miles from the car wash that i'd gone to thirty minutes previously. black flies splatter on the glass as i drive, each tiny body making a p-p-p sound as it hits. this spring, black flies are thick in the air around us, infiltrating our noses, entering our mouths as we talk, getting stuck in our ears and taking up residence under our hair at the back of the neck. dreadful little biting creatures, they'll only be around for a few more weeks, thank goodness. then the mosquitos will take over.

time lost

over the weekend, i spent some time with a friend i'd not seen in forty plus years. we had a long and lovely afternoon of talking and sharing and attempting to get caught up not only with each others lives, but also with the lives of our mutual friends, back in the day. the visit made me wonder how rich and rewarding our friendship might have been all these years if we hadn't disconnected when we were younger. it was a happy afternoon with easy conversation and i still smile today thinking about it. i'm really glad to have my old friend back in my life again.

may day 2010

the first day of may and i had to hunt for a mayflower (which april showers bring!) to photograph. they've almost gone by, which is very unusual for this time of year. it took me fifteen minutes in a pretty big patch to find this lone flower. it smelled heavenly, though! happy may day!

snow petals

there's snow in our forecast these past days - and today i thought i saw it! but upon closer investigation, it proved to be only petals from the myriad of white flowers on this tree, floating down and covering the grass, just like the snow.