Discovery Drafts

The white blossoms fade so rapidly in the summer sun.  It seems the only right and logical thing to do is stop, look, and enjoy. Today's Flowers

“Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud,  to be happy again in a new way on the earth! That’s what it said as it dropped,  smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standing under a tree. The tree was a tree with happy leaves, and I was myself,  and there were stars in the sky that were also themselves at the moment at which moment my right hand was holding my left hand which was holding the tree which was filled with stars and the soft rain – imagine! imagine! the long and wondrous journeys till to be ours.” (Mary Oliver) Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday

One rainy day, Adella and I took off for Wilmington, leaving behind the bicycles.  I snapped this image because it looked to me like they were talking to each other, communicating something about the rainy day that found them in the gargage while we went off on a road trip. In Wilmington, we came across this vintage clothing shop on Front Street.  I loved the watery colors of this display.  No matter where you go, though, there seems to be a lady in red...  On the streets, poles and pipes and utilitarian things were covered with sticker graffiti advertising bands.  I totally respect that the stickers were on ugly government-issue gray things rather than the pretty places. These two were my favorite.  The safe-to-cross dude and the mandala said "peace" to me.  "Well get you there." And that's my world:  a beautiful place I love very much. Our World Tuesday

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity." (Walt Whitman) Today's Flowers

VM song of the day: Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday

You wake up early and step out for a walk, and you wonder what big news will shape the.  The egg shell resting on the hedge tells you life goes on, however small, and this feels like big news.  What else could it be from such a small shell? So you give up on the solitary walk and get the dogs and your daughter, and off you go to the beach.  You start anew.  On a summer that has been notable for the paucity of turtle nests, the discovery of this false crawl somehow offers hope.  The turtle lady tells you that mama came ashore and dragged herself along without a front right flipper to lay her eggs, but she turned back to the ocean without having completed her task.  This is the third time she has made the attempt.  She takes photos and makes a call because the turtle people are looking out for this turtle.  There's hope.  This kind of caring takes the edge off of the paucity of nests....  Back at the shack, Adella photographs the pelicans--your favorite bird--and you

The last photo I took in North Carolina this summer was of this bougainvillea blossom.  By the time I had the car packed, the flower had fallen to the ground and withered in the sun.  So fleeting and gentle is nature. Today's Flowers

Wordless Wednesday

I took Adella to the Lejeune Memorial Gardens recently, and we took in the Beirut Memorial, a beam from the World Trade Center mounted as a memorial to all who died there, and the Vietnam Memorial.  The Beirut Memorial says "They Came in Peace" and depicts this Marine coming through a broken wall. The memorial honors the 220 Marines who perished when Hezbollah attacked their barracks in October, 1983.  They were a significant proportion of the 1800 Marines stationed in Beirut at the time. At the same time, 58 French soldiers were also killed there. Hezbollah originated in Lebanon and Syria in 1982, but, of course, the big mess that has become one long war in the Middle East began a century ago with the First World War.  At the end of that conflict, the British and the French were too busy carving up real estate to suit their own desires for oil and control to pay any attention to the people there, how they lived, and what they might have to say about it.  The

These lilies were blooming at the New Hanover County Arboretum when Adella and I stopped there a few weeks ago.  I remember a Japanese woman coming up behind me (like the writhing smoke of incense) to take her own picture and then apologizing to me for getting in my way.  She was not in my way but in my space, inches from my face.  She was with two women who, like her, wore long, slinky skirts and halter tops.  This detail is of no importance, but it made me laugh because her two cohorts were also slinking around with their iPhones taking pictures of everything regardless of the people they stepped over like proprietary cats.  They seemed to be in uniform on somebody's behalf from somwhere; they were so purposeful.  Someday, maybe I'll have the moxie to climb into a stranger's lap to get the exactly right shot and apologize later without looking back.  I mean it; I want to be the Japanese girl with the iPhone someday.  Meanwhile, I am the bemused mommy schoolteacher en

It's hard, reading Shakespeare, listening to Van Morrison, watching a new day land itself in your arms, to think you have a single thing to add to this hot mess of a miracle doing business as life.  So I don't write much anymore.  I really have nothing to add.  It's all there.  Like this: Which has its musical accompaniment: Skywatch Friday

 Wordless Wednesday

 Last Tuesday started out looking like this.  The day was perfect.  So Adella and I packed a few sandwiches and filled our water bottles and went over to the North Carolina Coastal Federation's property at Morris Landing in Holly Ridge . We were early, so we took a few minutes to enjoy the view of the Intracoastal Waterway from the pier.  Later, we would see dolphins in these waters, but early on, the waters were still.  When we got to work, it was our job to plant salt marsh cord grass. along the waterway.  The grasses help to prevent erosion, thereby contributing to the overall health of the waterway, which is rich in marine life.  It was Adella's job to add fertilizer to the holes and to plant the grass.  This worked only if I did my job correctly and dug the hole deep and wide enough with the orange thing, which is calle a dibbler but might be called Gold's Gym.  This is what happens a few years later if you do it right.  The Coastal Federation fol