Two little second graders were in my charge today – as their class and two others descended upon a living maritime museum. They were cute, the scenery was beautiful, I am exhausted.
The official documents for the Acushnett, the ship Herman Melville sailed on and whose voyage inspired Moby Dick, were housed in this actual box!
Turns out the junk is not in the trunk. Who knew?
Jennifer Butler Basile
Nature, fate, the universe, the Spirit – has a way of prevailing.
While we humans fret that we may impede it,
that if we do not clear the ground and make way,
the right way will not progress –
we give ourselves too much power, too much credit.
All shall move forward on its own course.
We just need to stay that course.
All photos by Jennifer Butler Basile
The days are warm enough, the nights cool enough that each morning my girls ask me if it’s rained. Caught in a ray of sunlight, the fog tricks you into thinking it’s misting, which it is, I suppose. The dew clings to every angular surface.
I feel like a studio photographer!
So delicate. I love the texture of the buds and petals.
Walking in a woodland wonderland . . .
I have woods! In my yard! And the woodland creatures that come with!
Quite a difference from our little suburban plot.
After a hurricane, a blizzard, the taking down of six trees, and the impending purchase of a wood stove, we’ve got lots of wood laying around. Lots to chop, split, stack, etc. In the meantime, the piles have become part of the landscape. So much so, that little friends have moved in. This little guy peeking out is going to be supremely pissed when we clear everything out!
Can you see me now?
As I walked onto the beach, the sand and sea elicited the same feeling in me that it did years ago on a shore many miles away. The calm, the awe, the inspiration. I could dig out the essay I’d written that day, but I dare say it’d be the same today (though hopefully a bit more linguistically advanced!).
Sometimes it’s nice when place and sense take us down a familiar path.
Block Island, full speed ahead.
A ribbon of sea and sand
Rose hips
Tides of rip . . .
As our closing date and the harvest approached last year, a sadness settled in. I would be leaving my garden before it came to fruition. We’d enlarged it the spring before we left, adding more and different plants. Carrots, green onions, cucumbers. At least my herbs would travel well in pots that could go from a home beside one backdoor to another.
But, I realized, the woman leaving this house probably packed a similar burden amidst her belongings. She’d left a vegetable garden even larger than our new and improved one. Hot peppers guarded the perimeter, mixed greens and a lone acorn squash hunkered down inside. A boatload of parsley and a few tomatoes. Though it was the tail-end of the season, we were able to reap the benefits of her labor the same way the man and woman who bought our house would ours.
I am not as adventurous a cultivator as the previous occupant. Nor as zealous a waterer apparently. And I don’t fertilize. BUT we’re still eating fresh green beans and have cucumbers coming out of our ears. I tried to capture the beautiful purple pattern of a lone green bean as I prepped dinner. Then I broke out a few beans with the idea that I’d dry them as seed for next year. That’s when things got crazy 🙂
Hey, why garden if it’s not fun!
Mmm, mmm, green (and purple)
Have a green day!
A large part of beauty is light. The camera doesn’t always capture it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Shepherding shadow
Portulaca sprouts out from a thin crack in the concrete
The spirit descended
Intersection
Charity
The first time we viewed this house, our realtor said she could picture our girls climbing all over this boulder on the property. Mere seconds later, their little bodies ranged all over it. She apologized for jinxing us! After removing several trees from the yard and only recently removing the leftover wood, the girls rediscovered it and, today, turned it into their canvas. Remembering that first day and seeing how they’ve made it their own, I can’t help but see the cyclical quality of this year’s passage and how our little corner of the world becomes home.
Calcium carbonate comes home
Chopping Potatoes 