Tag Archives: photos

(almost) wordless wednesday

Posted on by

Me and the mister were sitting out on the deck last night listening to summer come to a close in our northern state. The sound of the crickets, tree frogs, and buzzing cicada’s got so loud at one point we looked at each other and laughed out loud. I remembered laying in my childhood bed with my head on the windowsill listening to the same sounds, knowing that September had arrived bringing cooler nights for sleeping and a new school year. That’s me on the right with my brother David, my sister Amy, and our happy little baby sister Carrie.

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips. ~Violette Leduc

Take a peek at other Wordless Wednesday entrants here:)

(almost) wordless thursday

Posted on by

I was going to post for Wordless Wednesday and then I realized it was Thursday. It’s been one of those weeks. Took my mom to the hospital yesterday. She had a spill over the weekend and used her head to break the fall, looks like someone hit her in the forehead with a baseball bat! Her head is actually the least of her problems though, so we’re hoping they can straighten a few issues out and make her more comfortable before they ship her back home. Anyhoo, that’s one on my latest iStock photos, my lovely daughter Lizzi volunteered to model for some “spa” pictures 🙂

skywatch friday

Posted on by

I took my mom to get some bloodwork early this morning and then spent a few hours hanging out with her while my dad golfed. She’s not doing so well. It was nice to just be with her though, seems like I usually see her just long enough to drag her to and from doctor appointments. When I got home I decided to participate with a blog that has people post photos of the sky where they live. I went to the park across the street and snapped a few, one of which is gracing this post. There’s a busy playground on one side of the park, a ball diamond, and this lovely little fishing hole tucked between some hills. As I was looking at the peace-filled photos I wondered why I don’t grab a book and go plop down there on a bench to read sometime?

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~Rachel Carson

monday reflections

Posted on by

I love when I come across a sentence or a paragraph in a book with words that seem to sing to me. Sentences that I read over again just so I can savor their cadence, their melody. When I was growing up my mother filled our home with books. We had a huge wall of shelves with everything from Faulkner to Fitzgerald to Conroy to Willa Cather on them. Before I could read grown-up books I would stand in front of those shelves and pull books out one at a time, I would feel their weight in my small hands and smell their yellowed pages. If we are fortunate, our mother’s love gives us many gifts while growing up, such as a sense of security, support, and comfort. My mother gave me those things and she also gave me words. Below is a quote from Leif Enger’s novel, Peace Like a River. The main character has briefly crossed over to that place between life and death.

At the moment I had no notion of identity. Nor of burden. I laughed in place of language. The meadow hummed as though thick with the nests of waking creatures, and the grasses were canyon colored, lifting their heads as I passed. Moving up from the river the humming began to swell-it was magnetic, a sound uncurling into song and light and even a scent, which was like earth, and I must’ve then entered the region of nests, for up scattered finches and cheeky longspurs and every sort of bunting and bobolink and piebald tanager. All these rose with sweet chaotic calls, whirling and resettling to the grass.

Leif Enger wrote those words but my mother gave them to me. Thanks mom.

wednesday meditations

Posted on by

I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there’s also complete stillness; there’s no mental labeling of sense perceptions. There’s simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that’s beautiful.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence. ~Eckhart Tolle

fragile beauty

Posted on by

When I was dealing with chronic health problems some years ago my mom once told me that she didn’t know how I did it. She said she wouldn’t have the strength or courage to do what I did, which was to go on. She has been very ill for a year now herself. This past week was particularly rough and she ended up spending twenty-four hours in the hospital. Yesterday, she said that a year ago she expected that she would be healthy by now and back her normal life. Now she is facing the reality that perhaps she will have to accept a new “normal”.

I remember struggling with the idea of acceptance and hope when I was sick. I think that when you face an illness, or most any other great challenge in your life, you need to embrace a little bit of both. You also learn that courage has nothing to do with strength or weakness, it’s really just a choice: to do the right thing, to find the blessings in the worst of times, or perhaps to simply choose to go on.

Mr. bookbabie took the photo above. It’s of a baby crane near his office that fell out of its nest is now living rather precariously in a small tree. The mother is still caring for it and we hope that it can survive until it’s big enough to make it on its own. Isn’t it beautiful?

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher