wildflowers – Grongar

52 Photos ~ Powder blue

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

52 Photos ~ Bright

This week’s photo theme was “Bright” and, wouldn’t you know it, it was a dark week.

Cloudy, stormy, rainy, with a power outage thrown in for good measure. The night the lights went out, we lit the stove by match, talked by candlelight, and carried battery-powered lanterns up to bed. It was a cozy feeling.

So, yes. A dark week.

But, as you know well, you can still find bright when you look for it, and I was bound to look.

This time of year, when bright appears, it’s slanted, angled, precise. It’s not extravagant the way summer bright is, splashed over everything you see.

The autumn sun is concentrated, rich, specific, like a jam that’s cooked down from watery juice to a sticky, puddle of flavor. You can’t gulp it down. You lick it off the back of a spoon, tasting a handful of fruits in one drop.

You can be walking along under a grey felted sky and then, from under the clouds, a beam streams out, as if pointing a finger: look at that hillside, that specific tree, that mottled leaf-strewn path.

That one-and-only late-budding rose bush.

Today bright Phoebus she smiled down on me for the very first time;
For the very first time she smiled on me.
Today bright Phoebus she smiled down on me for the very first time;
For the very first time she smiled on me.

No more clouds, no more rain, gone the clouds, she smiled again.
Today bright Phoebus she smiled down on me for the very first time;
For the very first time she smiled on me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

Summer ephemera

52 Photos ~ Uncommon Shapes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

Sweet summer decline

It’s been hot here this week.

Dog-gone hot. Tongue-hanging-out-of-the-mouth hot. Popsicles-in-the-afternoon-and-then-ice-cream-in-the-evenings hot. The gin is living in the freezer, only coming out briefly in the evenings to mingle with tonic, lime, and ice in our little sippy cups.

Summer has come, and hit with full force.

And I’m not complaining one tiny itsy bit.

This is what I crave all winter long: the sunlight until 9 pm, the windows open, the evenings on the deck, watching bats (yes! we’ve seen bats again this week after none for two years!), fireflies, the stars, the milky way, the satellites gliding in their orbits.

Sure, it’s hot and a bit sweaty and sometimes you don’t feel like moving, but, then, it’s summer. Why move? The view from the deck chairs is awfully pretty. There’s that big glass bottle of sun tea. And did I mention popsicles, ice cream, and chilled gin?

Yes, there’s work to do, and that darn lawn needs mowing again ten minutes after you finished mowing it. But even when the days are busy, the days are longer and things feel less rushed. Well, a little bit less rushed.

The other day, Gryfe and I took our usual walk into the valley. It was hot. I had this song in my head. The wildflowers were brilliant. The birds were all napping. Nothing but the river was moving. The river was just rolling and splashing and singing along.