Nature Quote - September 14, 2009

It's raining again today.

It rained all weekend.

It's going to rain all week.

Rather than looking at this as the depressing, housebound, cabin-fever occasion that it surely is, I've decided to look at it as the opportunity that, surely, it also is.

So, ten positive thoughts about rain:

1. It's watering in all of the plants I put in last week without raising my city water bill.

2. It's washing ragweed pollen out of the air.

3. It's making lots of pools and puddles from which beautiful wildlife can drink.

4. It's not flooding.

5. It's not drought.

6. It gives my daughter an opportunity to splash in puddles, which gives me the opportunity to splash with her and/or film her splashing - both of which are highly joyous.

7. It gives me the opportunity to go out in the rain and get wet so as to experience the bliss of coming in to get dry.

8. As my mother's Nana used to say: "All sunshine makes a desert."

9. It's great book reading and napping weather.

10. This last one is our quote of the day, courtesy of Ms. Dolly Parton: "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."


So now I'm going out for a walk in the drizzle. And I'm going to look for rainbows.


http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com

Nature Quote - September 11, 2009

Even eight years later, when I hear the stories of those lost on this day, my eyes still well up with tears.

Though I was lucky enough not to lose anyone on this tragic day, I remember the grief of our nation and feel it still like a hole going straight through my chest and out my back. An emptiness in my heart and between my shoulder blades.

There is no quote that can soften the sadness of this day with the healing power of nature - though time in nature is perhaps one of the most healing things there is, for me, at least.

What I have found are these; words that help me to take a deep breath, and then to take another.

To recognize that we owe those who have left this life too soon our full attention to enjoying the planet while we're still here.


"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." ~From a headstone in Ireland

"As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us. As long as I can I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us." ~Sascha, as posted on motivateus.com

Nature Quote - September 10, 2009

“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.”
- Alice Walker

Alice Walker says here exactly what I've always believed: imperfection is perfect and perfection is, well, boring.

It's not always easy to remember, as we strive for excellence, strive to be better, but it is our imperfections that make us the most interesting!

The same goes for photography. You'll find in my collection of photographs that none of the specimens are perfect - always a bug here or a burnt spot there. Symmetry just slightly askew. (If that isn't a metaphor for life, I don't know what is.)

Rather than focusing solely on a subject's flaw(s), I try to consider it an interesting part of the flower's "face" - a mark of being real, living and growing in an imperfect world.

And then they become even more beautiful.

http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com

Nature Quote - September 9, 2009

"There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story." - Linda Hogan

Today I plan to spend a lot of time outside. It's time to fertilize the garden here in Florida and I bought an organic fertilizer that I'll dissolve in the water from my rain barrel.

It will be a slow process of filling watering cans and watering each plant with the mixture - but that's what I want.

I want the time to look around. To think. To not think too much. To listen and absorb without fast forwarding to what's next.

I'll keep you posted on how the "story" unfolds.


http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com

Nature Quote - September 8, 2009

Something appropriate for the first day of school:

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." - Frank Lloyd Wright

The lessons in nature are too many to count, the peace there too great to measure. Both are good for students of all ages.

http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com

Three New Photographs in the Gallery Collection

Farm Fresh





Watermelon




Buttercream

Thoughts from a Tired Gardener

I am an avid gardener. Which, during summer along the Gulf Coast, is to say that I am a tired and defeated weeder.

I have been thoroughly and roundly defeated by the shy plant and crabgrass.

They mock me in the slanted light of morning, knowing that they will thrive in the heat of day while I stare, helpless, from my air conditioned barracks.

When I do venture out in the not-cool-but-no-longer-searingly-hot evenings to wrestle what I can out of the soil, I can hear the survivors whisper,

"Do not consider yourself a victor for those of us you have taken. Each of the fallen will be replaced with three new invaders."

They're right; their seeds outnumber me a million to one and they know I won't use the only WMDs at my disposal because broad-spectrum herbicides are bad for all manner of life (including dogs and daughters and the frogs that sing to me from my porch).

And so I struggle to hold my ground while the weeds know that the war will go on for eons and my little patch of resistance will someday be theirs again.

I would delve deeper into the drama, but I have to go out and pull weeds.

I leave you with this piece of wisdom from another Floridian, whose writing makes me believe that he has felt my weedy woes:

"Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons."
-Dave Barry

http://www.worldofcolorgallery.com