We all grow mold and mildew the longer we hang around so I guess today’s subject is appropo for my birthday. But my daughter did say the fungi issuing from the sides of this tree were fairy steps. Perhaps I also can inspire imagination and delight on some level. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I blow out my candles.
You say fungi, I say fairy steps
My oldest and middle daughters used to hold their breaths as they passed this graveyard, something the oldest picked up from one of the other kids on the school bus. As they learned the lay of the land, but hadn’t quite mastered it, they inadvertently forgot to do so one day. When she lived to tell the tale, my oldest announced, we don’t have to hold our breaths anymore; nothing bad’s going to happen.
Not that I thought anything bad was going to happen, but I think I was holding my breath for quite sometime before I felt I had the lay of the land. A year later and we all breath more freely. (except when we have trash for the dump in the back of the car, which was where we were headed when I made my husband stop for these photos 😉 )
Tell me when the cemetery’s coming, Mom!
Small is the gate . . .
Dappled quiet light from above
Scenes from September 5
The light pouring in the windows of this house is what sold us on it. The view through those windows didn’t hurt either.
Where the treetops meet the sky
As Hurricane Sandy rolled through, we woke to the tallest, skinniest pine bending back and forth in the breeze.
The solar hula girl whose hips squeak with each gyration.
The day of the insect.
I didn’t know it would be. I hadn’t planned on it.
But as the sun peeked over the trees this morning, it illuminated a huge spider web stretched between two branches. Upon closer inspection, I saw that they were everywhere. And big. And beautiful.
I know this is the time of year when I tend to find spiders smooshed into the smallest spaces and corners of our warmer-than-the-chill-outside-air house, but it seems like they are proliferating like crazy. Or just enjoying a last hurrah at the end of the season.
Then there were slugs and fuzzy caterpillars lining the driveway.
So insects and arachnids abound. They are my muse today.
I love the way this one seems to be floating through the air.
My children’s literature experience with slugs is the ones fireflies suck the life out of and My Buddy Slug – revolting and endearing. Don’t know about this guy, but I do love his little antennae poking up!
fuzzy wuzzy was a hairy old man who wreaked havoc on plant life . . .
The first day of school dawned misty and mournful, just like the groan that came from my daughter’s bedroom as the alarm’s buzzer issued. But the drive in was filtered by sunlight and these moments of clarity on the way home.
Bi-way
I loved the way the trees and various shades and textures of green filled the frame
Time flows on, just like water, but there is the moment just before the plunge; the pause, the reflection, the leaves poised on the brink. And then the plunge.
Baby frog (or toad – the girls and I have not sorted that out yet) that started out on our porch, then hopped under the chairs, off the edge under the rail, onto the grass from the raised flower bed – all through which we gave chase. Then most likely a heart attack as my camera flashed at the poor little thing as I focused. He looks huge here, but so tiny and delicate.
I’ll climb the walls if I have to in order to get away from you people!
A few mosquitoes, damp grass, the softly falling first leaves of the next season, a photographic excursion the night before the first day of school where time seems to stop, the season of summer suspended in its last breaths.
The 21st of this month marks a year in our new home.
A year ago, I packed my books into boxes, I read books on the subject, I wrote volumes about the subject.
A year later and the air feels familiar. The cool of a season I recognize in this place has arrived.
Which seems to me like the perfect time to reflect.
So I’ve decided to do a photographic series on my surroundings, seeing them everyday and for the first time, for this month of September, this month of settlement, that becomes less and less transitory the more it comes around.
Scenes from September 1
Snowflakes on lilac buds
Melting on the green back of the sandbox
Sunshine shower
Birds chirping, snow falling
Springtime in New England
My daughter wanted to set up the sandbox today. She’s been asking to hang the birdhouses outside for a month now. She and her older sister roller skated in the sand lining the edge of the road. She finally gave up when it started snowing. It’s springtime now, but the scene outside the window doesn’t look like it.
With an early release from school, I declared it a day to run around the backyard like nuts. My three year-old was the only one with me. I don’t waannnnnna go outside, said the eight year-old. Can I have a snack first, asked the five year-old. Belly full, she’s the one that hatched all those vernal equinox-inspired plans. She has a very real sense of injustice. When she awoke the first day of winter and saw no snow on the ground, she was pissed. And now? No Easter decorations up even though there’s snow on the ground? What’s up, Mom?
The snow today actually had my back, though. The first flakes floated to the ground mere minutes after her latest protestation about an empty sandbox. One good thing about a schizophrenic mood change on Mother Nature’s part. And one that I should be able to appreciate given my latest post!
There really should be nothing bizarre about snow showers two days into spring, though. Just because the calendar says it’s spring, doesn’t mean that we should wake up one morning to instantly green grass and gardens abloom. Two days ago it was winter. Two days ago snow was de rigeur. The passing of seasons is a gradual progression. Leave it to humans to expect instant results. Leave it to us to restrict the moving of the days in tiny boxes on a calendar and expect the weather to follow suit.
It was bizarre, though, to hear the symphony of birds gearing up for spring as the snow fell. They were a twitter with nest-building, bug-hunting, flit-flying from tree to tree. They seemingly paid no mind to the fat, wet flakes flying around them. Maybe I should take a page from their book – rejoicing in the expectation of spring, knowing it’s coming, instead of lamenting the fact that it’s not here yet. There is beauty amidst the cold and dark. And there is the promise of warmth and light at the other end of it.
I have to start taking my camera to the bus stop.
Pine needles etched in white relief against the soil.
Green mossy mountain peaks capped with snow.
Peaks and valleys of meadow grass filled with frost.
A large oak leaf the color of cowboy boots, its stem pinched between pink mittened fingers, the snow crumbling and peeling away in the wind as it bends.
But then there are the things that can’t be captured with a lens.
The great rushing of wind through the treetops.
The force of it demanding spine erect, shoulders back.
A tingling of the checks, a tear in the eye, a crisp, fresh burn
that makes life seem new,
the morning full of possibility,
the body full of life.
* On an somewhat related note: I found many gorgeous pictures of frost on moss by many talented photographers. I, however, did not have the heart to steal them, though they would have accompanied my musings perfectly. I also learned a lot about BFFs Sadie Frost and Kate Moss.
The country road I drove down this morning looked magical.
A feathered path down its middle where the few cars had passed.
A vortex of flakes pulling me through the windshield.
Boulders, trees, leaves touched by a light dusting.
The magic messed with by industrial orange dump trucks spewing their salt,
but reemerging in a parking lot, of all places.
A perfectly formed star pulled from the sky and placed on the fleece forest of my glove.
Another and another.
In relief against the black rubber strip of my car,
the honey colored curls of my daughter,
the harsh, manipulative world we live in.
A tiny reminder of
the awesome, wondrously made world we sometimes forget we live in.
Chopping Potatoes 