I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.
~ Sylvia Plath
Lately I have let gratitude slip through my fingers, turning my focus instead on things I can’t control. During times like this, my camera becomes my saving grace.
Birds, flowers and the dog
Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.
- "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
Even when I don’t know what I am after I keep at it. I keep at it when I don’t feel like it, or realize that all I am doing is shooting the same things over and over. Truth is I can’t seem to get out of my backyard, or my house, or my garden right now. I get lost in the light as it hits my morning coffee, the dog, or the birds.
But mostly I keep at it because I am afraid. Afraid if I allow that tiny little fire to die out, a portion of myself will die along with it, and I might not find my way back.
the first week of August
"The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.”
— Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
the flowers of August
in a corner of the garden
leftovers
Bits and pieces of my week.
vine ripened
the goldfinch
three lines
“Never be so focused on what you are looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
July slips away just as the first slicing tomatoes ripen.
August arrives and I swear I can smell, and feel, fall in the air.
I bail on the little writing class I started, and pick up my camera instead.
little messages
"The universe is always speaking to us...sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more."
― Nancy Thayer
hops
The light takes my breath away, and the dog makes me laugh. We eat from the garden and I clip flowers to bring inside.
tomato season
crocrosmia
stop by for breakfast
a good roll in the grass
this morning
“What I love about Black & White photographs is that they’re more like reading the book than seeing the movie.”
— Jennifer Price
Morning shadows and light.
pruning
“Sometimes we just have to cut off the dead branches in our life. Sometimes that's the only way we can keep the tree alive. It's hard and it hurts, but it's what's best.”
― Nicole Williams, Lost & Found
I do a little dance around this hydrangea in my garden, as I feared I had lost it to the unusual bitter cold weather of last year’s winter. Come spring I had to prune several dead branches out, leaving the middle a bit bare and the bush a bit lopsided.
But the bush is flourishing, and once again I learn something about myself thorough my garden. I see where there are dead and unwanted branches in my life too, and I set out to remove them. Along the way I prune some things back, allowing for new growth in new directions. It is a bit uncomfortable, but who knows, I just might bloom.