Catch Me if You Can

Scatter Joy. ~ Emerson

Have a Beauty ✻ Filled Day

I Love Lisa


She is a friend of mind.  She gather me, man.  The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.  It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.  ~Toni Morrison, Beloved

I was on the phone with my friend Lisa for hours today, we get into conversations sometimes that go in all kinds of directions. First we chatted about some aches and pains we are both trying to remedy… which led to a talk about the aging process and baby boomers… then it took a turn into ideas about house projects… which got us making plans to visit each other… somehow I started to download how I stayed up all night ( because of the aches & pains )… I was journaling and had some aha moments as I wrote that may shift my whole way of walking in the world bla bla bla… I went on and on in that punch drunk way that happens from not getting much sleep. In the last half hour she helped me understand how to proceed on my new website design. That could have also been part of the reason I was up all night. My mind has been swirling with new ideas for my new website.

I’m so grateful to have girlfriends who can dance around all of these topics all at once. I can’t even imagine having a similar conversation with my husband, though I’ve tried!

I seem to hike in a similar fashion, wandering off trail when something new calls at me. After I found the bark carved with ‘ I LOVE LISA’ all kinds of bark started to jump out and call me over, it’s taken me a few weeks to gather these…

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though (s)he knows that you are slightly cracked. ~ Bernard Meltzer

Happy Holidays

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together. ~ Garrison Keillor

Happy Holidays to you & yours ♥

Christmas Colors

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.  ~Norman Vincent Peale

Golden Thread

Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world. ~ John Evelyn

Golden World

Perfect Placement

Oak Float

Geese Gathering

Tree Twisting

Sun Setting

Shimmering

Evening

Reflection

It’s been raining more than snowing lately and I’m thrilled, taking photos on rainy, stormy, cloudy days offers such diversity. I took the first and the last shot in this post yesterday, the others I took over the last few weeks. I used to worry about being timely ( trying to post photos I took that day or at least that week ) but I find it more interesting to collect & curate as a mood arises. It may cause some confusion, but my attempt to create beauty is much more important to me than being accurate. I save and sort photos waiting for the perfect collection to come together. Sometimes the photos inspire my thoughts and I wait till the words come out which can take weeks. Often a color pallette or subject forms into a group that feels like a mood or emotion that makes sense.

Today I was so excited to share this golden drop of sap. When I find a tiny treasure like this I get so excited to create a post, sometimes just one photo is enough to express what I want to share, often I spend hours organizing many thoughts and many photos in a way that weaves together a journey to go on…I love the combination of complementary blue and orange with golden highlights and all the shades of gray in-between.

Gold was the thread that I used to sew this post together.

Mysterious Influence

… the magic of water, an element which owing to its changefulness of form and mood and colour and to the vast range of its effects is ever the principal source of landscape beauty, and has like music a mysterious influence over the mind. ~ Sir George Sitwell

Wistful

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. ~ Wendell Berry

I wish it was the middle of the summer and I was rising early to collect dew wet red berries, but it’s not. Lately it’s been cold and gray so I decided to brighten my day and organize a few of the red berry photos I’ve taken over the last few weeks. There are still so many bright red balls clinging to branches and hanging in clusters. I’m grateful for the little splash of color.

I’ve actually been hunting for blackberries this time of year, not the fruit but the branches. In July, I stumbled on some wild blackberries while hiking and was able to pick enough to have some on my breakfast cereal. It’s been years since I had wild berries and I was so amazed by the taste.

They taste like my childhood, I remember being so lucky to live next to neighbors who had berries in their giant garden. I would just sit on the ground and eat as I picked, no need to go home for lunch, I filled up on berries and played outside all afternoon. Nowadays the supermarket berries are super-sized and strange tasting compared to the wild ones. Don’t get me wrong, I love that I can buy a pack of organic berries for $3.00 to have on my breakfast in the middle of December, this morning I had some yummy raspberries with my shredded wheat, but there is nothing like the taste of a fresh picked wild berry on a hot summer day.

The reddish purply branches have a beautiful icy gray patina, the color is such a feast for the eyes this time of year, they stand out against all the gray. Now that I know what blackberry branches look like it’s so much easier to spot them. I’ve found so many stashes of berry patches on many of my regular hikes, next summer I’ll be able to pick enough for a whole pie!

What tastes take you right back to your childhood?

Too Heavy

In every crisis there is a message. Crises are nature’s way of forcing change breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place. ~ Susan Taylor

The snow was so heavy

we marched on

the tulip tree was full of snowy cup cakes

tiny branches sparkled in the sun

bigger branches leaned and arched to the ground.

Our first storm of the season brought about 8″ of heavy wet snow that sent many trees to the ground ( see why here ). It’s been a week and some are still bent and slowly trying to upright themselves… unfortunately many could not take the weight and broke.

The storm destruction reminds me of how topsy-turvy the world feels, lately so many things are out of whack and falling apart.

I think it’s fascinating that technology / transparency is bringing about more awareness, but there are times I’m not sure what to do with all the information. It seems that each time I turn on the computer or television, I’m confronted with a new story of tyranny being uprooted, greed and lies are being exposed. ‘Old’ ways seem to be collapsing, things once hidden are being revealed. It’s a mess and all this upheaval is shocking and hard to accept or fathom sometimes.

This topic feels too heavy to write intelligently about yet here I am attempting to say something? I’m so curious about all the energy that is swirling around, changing, crashing… perhaps creating a path for new ways?

Some how I feel lucky to be living at such an exciting time full of strange opportunities, new ways of thinking, new ways of connecting and collaborating. I feel like I’m having my own personal revolution as I let old ways breakdown and fall away.

Any thoughts?

P.S. People like Pranav Mistry are the ones who give me so much faith that wonderful new ways will prevail.

One Mystery Solved

All things must change to something new, to something strange. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I took this shot ↑ last spring on April 17 during a late snow storm, it’s normal to see the buds appearing on the trees.

I took these shots ↓  this week on December 1. It’s not normal to see buds on the trees at the beginning of winter!?

I rarely watch the news but turned it on during our first snow storm. I’m glad I did, it solved a mystery I’ve been wondering about… when I was hiking a few weeks ago I was so surprised that I was finding so many caterpillars crawling, moths flying, and flowers blooming in mid – November, most surprising was a shrub that was budding? It turns out that we had exceptionally warm periods this fall that caused some odd occurences,.. trees and shrubs began to bud out soon after their leaves fell off. It’s so strange to see these buds in December?

Water Worlds

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. ~ Loran Eisley

When I download shots of rain drops hanging out to dry, I feel like I’ve shaken a magic snowglobe that reveals tiny upside down mysterious miniature world after world…

Have you watched the fairies when the rain is done, 
Spreading out their little wings to dry them in the sun? ~ Rose Fyleman