And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green: The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours: I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. ~ William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
6.26.19 ~ cedar waxwing enjoying a mulberry
6.26.19 ~ dragonfly landing on dewy grass
We had a very wet spring and so far it’s looking to be a wet summer, too. Tuesday we got two inches of rain! It rained all day and I enjoyed many hours of family history research. But Wednesday we emerged from our den and took a walk in the very wet woods. And we saw several cedar waxwings, a new bird for us!
6.26.19 ~ cedar waxwing
6.26.19 ~ serenity
6.26.19 ~ ferns covering a bubbling brook
6.26.19
6.26.19 ~ cedar waxwing
As I approached this tree I was trying to figure out if it might be a shagbark hickory. (Still not sure…) And then a new experience for me: orbs appeared in the viewfinder when I went to take a picture! In the past, orbs have been an occasional surprise when they show up in pictures downloaded from the camera. But these were there before I even took the picture.
6.26.19
6.26.19 ~ looking up the tree with orbs
6.26.19 ~ more magic, sunlight highlighting a stone covered in lichen
In the span of centuries the rock became glazed with a gray-green crust of lichen almost indistinguishable from the rock itself, a bare coating of life. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge & The Teachings of Plants)
6.26.19 ~ juniper berries?
6.26.19
These trees and stones are audible to me, These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind, I understand their faery syllables, And all their sad significance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Collected Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1823-1911)
11.15.18 ~ Chapel Hill, North Carolina after the hard freeze and four days of rain
Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
Up and away for life! be fleet!- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,- The punctual stars will vigil keep,- Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Titmouse)
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Circles)
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. ~ Matsuo Bashō (Voices from Earth)
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
There is an extraordinary place located in the quiet corner of Connecticut. My sister and I used to frequent Logee’s, a sprawl of greenhouses specializing in rare and tropical plants and fruit trees. But I think it’s been a good ten or twenty years since we’ve been there.
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a workhouse. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Gifts)
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
Back in February there was a discussion in the comments here about how nurseries in northern climates don’t open until it’s safe to start planting outdoors in the spring. For the first time in ages, this got me thinking about an exception to that rule, Logee’s, and I was delighted to find out that they are still open year round!
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. ~ Jean Giraudoux (The Enchanted)
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
Tim & I made a trip up there on Saturday and the place was still a perfect antidote to the cabin fever which has been plaguing us. Several linked greenhouses are stuffed from floor to ceiling with colorful, bright and cheerful tropical flowers! The aisles were so narrow that two people could not pass by each other or keep from brushing against some of the plants.
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
Permission to take pictures was granted and I had a wonderful time shooting right and left, above and below, and at eye-level. An employee was on a step ladder picking fruit from an orange tree, answering questions while he worked. The stifling heat and humidity was a welcome change from the bitter and bone dry air outside.
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~ Claude Monet (The Fantasy of Flowers)
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
I came home with two impulse purchases, a climbing onion and a white Easter cactus. We’ll see how well I care for them. After a nice lunch at the Vanilla Bean Café, we went to see a movie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and enjoyed it very much.
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
Each flower is a soul opening out to nature. ~ Gerard de Nerval (The Fantasy of Flowers)
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
We noticed on the way home that the temperature outside had crept up to above freezing, just a smidgen! It’s time for the mounds of snow to start melting!
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
What a nice day after being housebound for so long!
3.7.15 ~ Danielson, Connecticut
To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy, than to attempt to fully understand. ~ Henry T. Tuckerman (The Fantasy of Flowers)
Katie and Barbara ~ 1.17.15 ~ Billerica, Massachusetts
Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation. ~ Lois Wyse (Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother)
a quiet moment with Grandpa Tim 1.17.15 ~ Billerica, Massachusetts
Saturday we spent the day north of Boston, visiting Katie, who was visiting some friends there with her mother. Katie the observer, she is definitely an observer, bright-eyed and curious. She had grown a lot in the month since we saw her last.
Things have been relatively quiet around here. We’ve postponed some plans because a few relatives and friends have caught that severe flu going around. I haven’t had the flu since 1988 and I hope to keep it that way! We get flu shots every year, but this strain mutated and this year’s vaccine is only about 33% effective.
And the nursing home where my aunt lives is under quarantine, because of the flu outbreak, which may interfere with our plans to celebrate her 100th birthday on the 30th. So far she hasn’t caught it.
happy Katie ~ 1.17.15 ~ Billerica, Massachusetts
Zoë, who normally has excellent litter box habits, got the trots. Poor thing was doing her best to get to the box on time but we had a day of cleaning up after her. She wouldn’t eat and she didn’t want to be around us, but she is now back to her hungry, sweet, affectionate self.
And so I am enjoying my winter rest, puttering around the house, watching the birds, wishing for a little more snow, pruning my family tree (still), and making travel plans. My eyes get very bleary reading these travel guides……
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Conduct of Life)
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man. ~ Leo Tolstoy (Promises to Keep: Thoughts in Old Age)
Old age. All the facial detail is visible; all the traces life has left there are to be seen. The face is furrowed, wrinkled, sagging, ravaged by time. But the eyes are bright and, if not young, then somehow transcend the time that otherwise marks the face. It is as though someone else is looking at us, from somewhere inside the face, where everything is different. One can hardly be closer to another human soul. ~ Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle, Book One)
This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Circles)
Wednesday afternoon Janet and I found a new woodland garden to explore, Kentford Farm in Stonington, Connecticut. We seemed to have the place to ourselves, but for a very charming tortoiseshell cat who acted as our hostess. When we left we spotted a sign saying the garden was open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – unknowingly we had been trespassing! But the gate had been open so perhaps our confusion was understandable.
We introduce ourselves To Planets and to Flowers But with ourselves Have etiquettes Embarrassments And awes ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1184)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
We will have to return as the seasons progress – it’s a perennial garden and there will be different things blooming every time we go. Please enjoy some of my favorite photographs. The plan was to travel light, with just the camera and not its bag, but it backfired on me when the camera battery died only about a third of the way through. Next time I will carry the whole kit and caboodle with me!
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
The wall is silence, the grass is sleep, Tall trees of peace their vigil keep, And the Fairy of Dreams, with moth-wings furled, Sings soft her secrets to the drowsy world. ~ Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (Tibetan Buddhism Deck: Buddhas, Deities, and Bodhisattvas 30 Meditation Cards)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
Way over yonder is a place I have seen In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream ~ Carole King ♫ (Way Over Yonder) ♫
Frequently the woods are pink – Frequently, are brown. Frequently the hills undress Behind my native town – Oft a head is crested I was wont to see – And as oft a cranny Where it used to be – And the Earth – they tell me On it’s axis turned! Wonderful rotation – By but twelve performed! ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #24)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
The good Will of a Flower The Man who would possess Must first present Certificate Of minted Holiness. ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #954)
A sparrow or a deer knows much more of nature’s secrets than a man but is less able to utter them. And those men who know the most can say the least. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Journals & Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, August 1, 1835)
