summer storms

In all the heat we've been enduring it is magical to have thunder clouds roll in. They are always  illuminated from deep within and move swiftly from here to there.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. John Lubbock

I am linking these to Skywatch Friday where you'll see many more marvelous skies

wordless Wednesday

 Same gate but two different seasons,

.

 months apart from each other. Open more gates at ABC Wednesday here.

Be nice to nerds.

Chances are you'll end up working for one.

 Bill Gates

a sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind

For Skywatch Friday I give you an illustration of our summer--and maybe yours too:  humidity (note the hazy trees), white skies and a hot wind. I took this in July at White Bear Lake.

Happy August!

quote by Webb Chiles

open season for Orbit

This is what summer days should look like. A calm lake, blue skies, a fishing pole and

and a dog that can fish the bank for you. This guy, named Orbit, was 'walking' quickly back and forth in the shallow water looking for fish. His owner said he loves to fish. He didn't catch any while I was there.

Skywatch Friday where you can see the catch of the day!

cel-e-brate

I give you red from northern Minnesota in anticipation of another snow filled winter [something I am loathe to think about.] These vehicles advertise for a company called Mattracks in Karlstad that manufactures rubber track conversion kits.



 

From the silly clever to the reds in the summer annuals on my deck. Above are the little, sliver-y blooms on a Nectarine Sage plant on the left, and below a cherry -red geranium decked out for the Fourth of July to come.

Have fun visiting Mary's meme for more reds.

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'

See more beautiful red at Mary's meme:

summer shadows

Please reconsider leaving.
I’m sorry I complained about the heat,
You know how I can be.

Once again, I’ve slept under your blanket
My fears dropped all over the floor
Your murmurings in my ear now
Sweet morning dew.

Overhead the loon calls for his mate and I know you
Are listening, not to me
But to the rhythm of change
You are quietly slipping away, until next time.

Have I mentioned that it really wouldn't be odd
For each year to have
Two Augusts?

daisy chains

Sometimes life can be just a field of wild daisies. We're in high summer now with an early spring and lots of rain since June. Flowers and foliage are lush and green. Both of these photos were taken in the same lake park where I walk--the field this summer and the closeup in the same spot two years ago. Like life, too, some things never change.
Spot more beauty at Today's Flowers, a virtual flower shop for all your beauty needs.

Today's Flowers amid wintertime

Flowers from an earlier, more colorful time on my little slab garden. Sweet remembrance as we now have snow on the ground from a storm yesterday.

In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,

earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

snow had fallen, snow on snow,

snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Christina Rossetti

See more lovely flowers at Today's Flowers. It will brighten your day and tempt you to join in. Happy Monday!

I'm just saying. . .Camera Critters

Where did my summer go?

It was just around here somewhere. . .

Visit Misty Dawn to see more critters--and possibly more existential questions--here at Camera Critters.

'...to negotiate the inscrutibility of life'

July brings more reading pleasure my way. . .too hot to do much else except swim and read. Not a bad combo. So, I've picked up The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri, put it down, checked it out from the library and finally bought my own copy at a yard sale. As in, it has followed me, not the other way around. I can now say it is like eating a homemade Sunday dinner with pie instead of a hamburger from the $1 menu. Here's all you need to know:

'Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing. Around him the lives of the apartment dwellers unfold...'

These two sentences seemingly kept me from reading the novel. It predicted a story almost too sad even for me who can read the most depressing stuff with the big girls, but. . .now halfway into this wonderfully written novel of Bombay (by a native), I can't stop--except to show you an interesting take on 'faith' from one of the characters who lives upstairs from Vishnu.

please click on each page for a closeup of the text

Seems he has spent years trying to do the right thing at the same time being open to similarities between the world's religions. He is nonplussed by his wife's supposedly simple, unintellectual belief--a flaw. Then he thinks the flaw might be with him. Interesting take on faith at the purest level.

Monday's (unconscious) Mutterings #284

After a wonderfully long weekend of fun, the Fourth, frolic, Wall-E and a trip to urgent care for a sinus infection (why the heck not!!) here's what's left to mutter:

1. Notification :: taxes due
2. Cheat :: Black Jack
3. Top Ten :: Casey Casum
4. Draft :: dodger
5. Unbelievable :: creation
6. Cheap :: dollar store
7. Spontaneous :: poetry
8. Harass :: hassle
9. Lipstick :: Revlon 1950 Cherries in the Snow
10. Transpire :: novel

Thanks to LunaNiña for this bit of mind jogging.

Here, the beginnings of my 'slab garden'--most are in the early stages of loveliness due to our extended winter season this year. But now our weather is in the 90's and our mosquitoes are hungry.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
from New and Selected Poems, 1992