From the deepest, darkest part of the ocean to where I feel more at home, following a path on terra firma…
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening — Robert Frost
Artist Micell A. via Pinterest
Happy first day of summer and the longest day of the year!
Until recently, I hadn’t known about the practice of celebrating Litha during Midsummer. Litha is a pagan holiday, a time of light, purification, and healing; to reflect on the light and dark within us and the world.
It’s time to appreciate everything we have in our lives and to be grateful for nature and all that she provides.
Pick some flowers to honor the season or build a fire or light a candle. A fire lit on Litha is said to be very powerful and magical.
“Write down your hopes and dreams and burn them in the fire, to do this on Litha night will bring you your desire.”
The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
– Mary Oliver
I’m so excited! This is the first time I’ve ever seen a Red Admiral butterfly. I had installed a solar powered fountain in the pond only minutes before when this little guy came to visit and take a drink. After that, he spread his wings on the sun warmed rocks and I was able to get a good look.
I hope he hangs around for a while…I’ll try to capture better photos if I see him again.
The Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) has much more black than the Monarch. It has a black upper forewing with a bright, diagonal red-orange band across it and spots of white on the tips. It also has a red marginal band on its hindwing and the underside is a mottled brown.
I found a poem about this butterfly and had to share. I wasn’t able to learn a lot about the poet, David Wood, but I certainly do like his poems!
Sonnet 68: Red Admiral
Patrolling small stretches of the hedgerow
Like a silent sentry on guard duty,
Other butterflies they will overthrow;
The Red Admiral, nature’s real beauty.
Seen fluttering throughout summers hot days
From buddleia to Michaelmas daisies,
And sheltering from the suns golden rays,
All the people will sing of their praises.
But they cannot survive the winter’s cold
Their life is all too brief, a crying shame:
Alas none of them will ever grow old
Their short life is all part of nature’s game.
Their beauty we cannot take for granted
For they are delicately enchanted.
| Penumbra: a shadowy, indefinite, or marginal area |
I sent you a present last night you know
Though it didn’t address you by name
It was all of those meteors showering, dancing
And falling to earth like the rain
I wrote you a letter last week you know
But it won’t have arrived in the post
I wrote on the bright coloured curves of a rainbow
The reasons I missed you the most
I sent you a message just yesterday
But it wasn’t a message in words
For I spoke to the wind and I taught her our song
And I asked her to make sure you heard
I drew you a picture last Tuesday
But you may not have noticed it there
For I drew round the clouds with the rays of the sun
So they glowed as they hung in the air
No, you may not get gifts like you used to
Or get messages stored on your phone
But I’ll make sure I’m sending something each day
So you know that you’re never alone
And tomorrow I’ll paint something wonderful
I don’t know quite yet what it will be
But I promise you’ll know when you see it
That it’s sent just to you
Love from me
Xxx
From When I Am Gone – Becky Hemsley
DIL asked for suggestions about flowers for a hanging basket near their front door.
When I replied that I thought a fuchsia would be pretty, she snortlaughed and said,
“Ring-ring-ring, 1980s calling, Grandma!”
I had never before thought that a purple-pink fuchsia dated me as being OLD, haha. It was a great joke…UNTIL she saw mine, asked what it was, and I was able to identify this amazing creation as a…fuchsia!
So NOW who’s laughing?
How could anyone not love this delicate ballerina of a flower?
Fuchsia is a dancer
Dancing on her toes,
Clad in red and purple,
By a cottage wall;
Sometimes in a greenhouse,
In frilly white and rose,
Dressed in her best for the fairies’ evening ball!
This Bush Poppy (Dendromecon rigida) is a California native shrub. It’s a tough and beautiful plant but only if planted in the right conditions. The Bush Poppy thrives on rocky clay slopes with excellent draining. If planted in sandier soils, it can handle supplementary water up to once a month. Prefers full sun. Flowers are beautiful, as are the long, thin, blue-green leaves.
Look at this lemony yellow azalea. I didn’t even know they came in yellow until I used the info app on my phone to identify this gorgeous girl. I think it’s actually called Rhododendron ‘Lemon Lights’.
This is the last day of April. Tomorrow we celebrate Beltane and May Day, and while we can weave flowers in our hair and dance around the maypole, it’s also also called Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day, to commemorate the struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement.
May Day is a far cry away from the international call of distress, mayday. I always wondered where that term emanated from. For some reason, SOS didn’t work, so it seems as if mayday was attributed to Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio officer in the RAF. In 1927, the United States formally adopted it as an official radiotelegraph distress signal, explaining that mayday corresponds “to the French pronunciation of the expression m’aider.” It’s simple meaning in English is “help me.”
Beltane is a Celtic annual festival to signify the return of the light.
Whether you light bonfires, decorate your homes with May flowers, or make May bushes, have a Happy Beltane and May Day!
In May
Yes, I will spend the livelong day
With Nature in this month of May;
And sit beneath the trees, and share
My bread with birds whose homes are there;
While cows lie down to eat, and sheep
Stand to their necks in grass so deep;
While birds do sing with all their might,
As though they felt the earth in flight.
This is the hour I dreamed of, when
I sat surrounded by poor men;
And thought of how the Arab sat
Alone at evening, gazing at
The stars that bubbled in clear skies;
And of young dreamers, when their eyes
Enjoyed methought a precious boon
In the adventures of the Moon
Whose light, behind the Clouds’ dark bars,
Searched for her stolen flocks of stars.
When I, hemmed in by wrecks of men,
Thought of some lonely cottage then
Full of sweet books; and miles of sea,
With passing ships, in front of me;
And having, on the other hand,
A flowery, green, bird-singing land.
William Henry Davies 1871–1940
Poetry. A gentle play on words makes me laugh.
April is almost over and I nearly forgot it was National Poetry Month!
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer
I looked up at this gnarled but lovely twisty eucalyptus tree trunk and ran my fingers down her bark/skin. It was roughly textured but felt solid and safe. Notice all the nooks and crannies to shelter birds and other living creatures.
I am also protected.
For me, this embodies poe-tree.
(I know that one is not really supposed to end a sentence with “in”, but the proper way sounded stilted and phony, so I made a decision based on this information: “never ending a sentence with a preposition is a myth. It’s something wrongly attributed to English that is actually a real rule in Latin.”)
So…on a walk a couple years ago, I found this chair with its turquoise-painted partner tossed out on the street. They looked lonely and sad, so I went home to get my car and rescued them both.
I placed the chairs on the side of the house with every intention of brightening them up with a new coat of paint but their weary and worn character grew on me. I’ve left them to naturally weather every storm just as they are — honest and true — with nothing to camouflage their straightforward authenticity.
I like them just the way they are.
Funny enough, I get a lot of compliments from neighbors who walk by and comment about how they love the artful way the flowers seem to embrace this simple old chair.
The Chair That No One Sits In
You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple
who might sit there and look out|
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone
sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.
Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.
It might be none of my business,
but it might be a good idea one day
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs
on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them
for the sake of remembering
whatever it was they thought deserved
to be viewed from two chairs
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive that day.
The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,
the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning—
it passes the time to wonder which.
William James Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.
(Photo credit to Enchanted Seashells)
Scrolling through the vast wasteland of the internet, I discovered this picture and it immediately brought tears to my eyes.
I could actually feel myself as the girl caressing this magnificent humpback whale.
The essential and enduring connection and communion with other creatures is a combination of compassion and empathy and kindness.
I did a little research and learned about the work of Rachel Byler, artist and creator of The Colorful Cat Studio.
🐋It’s on my May Birthday Wish List as I could gaze at this painting forever and ever. It brings a simple yet complex joy.🐋
One of my favorite poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver wrote about humpback whales:
HUMPBACKS
There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.
Off Stellwagon
off the Cape, the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at play.
They sing, too.
And not for any reason
you can’t imagine.
Three of them
rise to the surface near the bow of the boat,
then dive
deeply, their huge scarred flukes
tipped to the air.
We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly
they smash through the surface, someone begins
shouting for joy and you realize
it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time
how huge they are, as they breach,
and dive, and breach again
through the shining blue flowers
of the split water and you see them
for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky-
like nothing you’ve ever imagined-
like the myth of the fifth morning galloping
our of darkness, pouring
heavenward, spinning; then
they crash back under those black silks
and we all fall back
together into that wet fire, you
know what I mean
I know a captain who has seen them
playing with seaweed, tossing
the slippery lengths of it into the air.
I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever
she can, and nudge it gently along the bow
with her long flipper.
I know several lives worth living.
listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs with song.
🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋
