light – Page 14 – In the Woods

hanging garden of bottle gourds

9-25-16-0372 — 9.25.16 ~ Holmberg Orchards ~ Gales Ferry, Connecticut

As we wandered around a corn maze on a perfect autumn day, we came upon an enchanting gourd tunnel.

Gourds are natural born climbers. They seek out anything they can reach to climb closer to the sun. They grow so quickly it can become a daily task to move the vines away from some places you don’t want them to climb on. And once a tendril gets itself wound around a hold nothing short of breaking the tendril off the vine will get the little curlicue to let go. Not even the death of the vine will loosen their grip much.
~ Karen Hundt-Brown
(American Gourd Society)

9-25-16-0376 — 9.25.16 ~ Holmberg Orchards ~ Gales Ferry, Connecticut

While I looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life: in that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s gourd.
~ Charlotte Brontë
(Villette)

9-25-16-0379 — 9.25.16 ~ Holmberg Orchards ~ Gales Ferry, Connecticut

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers)

9-25-16-0381 — 9.25.16 ~ Holmberg Orchards ~ Gales Ferry, Connecticut

autumnal sunshine

9-25-16-0360 — 9.25.16 ~ Holmberg Orchards ~ Gales Ferry, Connecticut

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne)

feeling gratitude

9-16-16-katie-web — 9.16.16 ~ Katherine ~ first pigtails

Happy we who can bask in this warm September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers)

subtle joy

7.24.16.3364 — 7.24.16 ~ female mallard, Richmond, New Hampshire

In the woods, sitting still, there is subtle joy in listening to the tiniest sounds. There is delight in the textures of light.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Awake in the Heartland)

7.24.16.3381 — 7.24.16 ~ Richmond, New Hampshire

We, all of us — blue-green algae, galaxies, and bear grass, philosophers and clams — will some day dissipate into vibrating motes. In the end, all of natural creation is only sound and silence moving through space and time, like music.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(The Pine Island Paradox: Making Connections in a Disconnected World)

7.24.16.3421 — 7.24.16 ~ Richmond, New Hampshire

moving with change

7.31.16.wounded.gull — 7.31.16 ~ juvenile great black-backed gull ~ photo by Timothy Rodgers

Well, I’m sad to report that I haven’t seen my gull friend with the mangled foot since our encounter on July 10th… I have a strong feeling that he was indeed saying good-bye.

Sunday afternoon a different gull with an injured foot limped over to us to see what food we might offer him. He’s young so he hasn’t learned yet that most humans follow the rules and don’t feed the gulls. While I’m pretty sure our old friend was a herring gull, our new friend is much larger, perhaps a juvenile great black-backed gull.

Of course I was without camera, but I made sure to bring it with me yesterday. The sky was striking. But our new friend wasn’t there.

8.1.16.3828 — 8.1.16 ~ light and dark, late afternoon sun

8.1.16.3834 — 8.1.16 ~ laughing gull portrait

On Sunday the parking lot had been full of laughing gulls, but yesterday there was only one, and he perched near us, watching us eat. The laughing gulls don’t usually hang out on the white posts. It seems everyone is behaving differently these days!

8.1.16.3845 — 8.1.16 ~ snowy egret at Beach Pond

As we left for home I spotted this bird wading in the nearly dried up salt water pond. Connecticut is in a moderate drought. We have many great egrets but this one was smaller and I wondered if it was a young one. He was too far away to get a decent picture.

8.1.16.3856 — 8.1.16 ~ snowy egret at Beach Pond

Imagine my surprise when I enlarged a few of the pictures and noticed his yellow feet! Pretty sure this identifies him as a snowy egret, which is smaller than the great egret.

8.2.16.3860 — 8.1.16 ~ snowy egret at Beach Pond

8.1.16.3863 — 8.1.16 ~ semipalmated sandpiper

Not sure what kind of little shorebird this but he sure looked cute exploring the exposed pond bed. So many appearances in the flow of life…

8.1.16.3871 — 8.1.16 ~ semipalmated sandpiper

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
~ Alan Watts
(The Wisdom of Insecurity)

8.1.16.3885 — 8.1.16 ~ semipalmated sandpiper

gull portrait

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that’s all, and it is as simple as a ray of sunshine, as normal as the blue of the sky.
~ Bernard Moitessier
(The Long Way)

Now that our son and daughter-in-law have returned home to Georgia our house is so very quiet… Yesterday for lunch we went to the beach. The weather was cool and damp and there were very few people there. I wasn’t the only one wearing a sweatshirt. At first we didn’t see our friendly gull.

7.10.16.3047 — 7.10.16 ~ there was a crow raising quite a ruckus, all by himself,
leaving us wondering what all the fuss was about

7.10.16.3051 — 7.10.16 ~ a mother Canada goose swam by with two children

7.10.16.3089 — 7.10.16 ~ gull monitoring Long Island Sound from the rooftop

Disappointed that we hadn’t seen our friend, we started to walk back to our car and then we saw him, standing on the sidewalk, almost as if he was waiting for us. He was quiet – no vocalizations this day.

So I got down on the grass and talked to him for a while. He sat down and allowed me to get closer than ever before. This time I had my camera!

After getting the picture above I pressed my luck and got the portrait at the top of this post. What a thrill! Somehow he knows we can be trusted. But again, he seems old and tired. I wonder if we will ever see him standing on one of the white posts this summer. Maybe those days are over. We’ll see…

midsummer magic

6.25.16.2935 — 6.25.16 ~ we celebrated the summer solstice on Saturday
good friends, good food and good fun…

6.25.16.2881 — 6.25.16 ~ downy woodpecker

6.25.16.2883 — 6.25.16 ~ downy woodpecker taking off

6.25.16.2979 — as close as I could get to this doe before she stomped her forefeet at me
~ I backed off so she could graze in peace…

6.25.16.2936 — 6.25.16 ~ so many orbs on a magical night

6.25.16.3019 — 6.25.16 ~ after a long day of fun in the sun,
a fire to enjoy under a clear sky full of shimmering stars,
with fireflies glowing in the surrounding trees,
and fairy lights sparkling near the grass…

grass-powered organism

“Kneeling Cow” by Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Artist — “Kneeling Cow” by Paul Gauguin

So this is what commodity corn can do to a cow: industrialize the miracle of nature that is a ruminant, taking this sunlight- and prairie grass-powered organism and turning it into the last thing we need: another fossil fuel machine. This one, however, is able to suffer.
~ Michael Pollan
(The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)

endless strife

FrederickChildeHassam2 — “Summer Evening” by Childe Hassam

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. What do creeds matter, what possible difference does it make to anyone today whether the doctrine of the resurrection is correct or incorrect, or the miracles, they don’t happen nowadays, but very queer things do that concern us much more. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
~ Beatrix Potter
(A Life in Nature)