New Year Greetings With a Fling of Sandpipers 𓅪

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.
Rainer Maria Rilke

We’re getting ready for another storm but yesterday it still was sunny and warm. Check out these south-facing sandpipers, all looking in the same direction. I wonder what they’re thinking about…

Maybe they’re hoping 2026 will bring peace and harmony and love to the world. That’s my wish, too.

Do you know what a group of sandpipers is called?

There are many recognized collective nouns for a group of sandpipers:

𓅪 a bind
𓅪 a cluster
𓅪 a contradiction
𓅪 a fling
𓅪 a hill
𓅪 a time-step

My personal favorite is a “fling” of sandpipers.

𓅪 Happy 2026!
Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou

As Above

As long as you still experience the stars as something above you,
you lack the eye of knowledge.

As long as you still experience the stars as something above you, you lack the eye of knowledge. Friedrich Nietzsche

Colors of The Cosmos

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between rainstorms, the sky around here has been especially lovely.

The rain stopped for a bit and I went for a walk before it got too dark. If I could paint, this is what it would look like.

This morning after an unexpectedly heavy shower, I was able to spot a rainbow before it completely disappeared.

I’d rather see the world as a rainbow than endless shade of gray.” Amani Abbas









Be You

Finally, the rains have begun. It’s a good time for a little self reflection along with some deep closet purging, sort of a sad but keep busy kind of day.

Be a witness, not a judge.
Focus on yourself, not on others.
Listen to your heart, not to the crowd.
Rumi

Be a witness, not a judge.
Focus on yourself, not on others.
Listen to your heart, not to the crowd — Rumi 🤍

As I clean/purge, I’m listening to Leon Russell (of course) and his song, Manhattan Island Serenade, is perfect for a rainy day. Fact: there was a real thunderstorm while he was recording and Leon included it. Why? Because he’s the Master of Space and Time, that’s why…

Magical Places

“Magical places are always beautiful and deserve to be contemplated.
Always stay on the bridge between the invisible and the visible.”
Paolo Coelho

Found on Pinterest

This is heavenly…no phones, no social media, no distractions; simply a butterfly-filled meadow alongside a sunshiny, babbling brook.

This pic reminds me of one of my favorite songs by (who else) Leon Russell, Down On Deep River. It evokes the perfect, serene mood…

“Hear the crickets singing for a mile
And the sound of the bullfrogs make you smile
So lead me beside the still waters
Let me love you down on deep river.

Won’t you sit by my side
And hold to my hand and love me all the way?

And we’ll leave all the highways far behind
And just take a little blanket with the wine.”

Take The First Step

Photo of Agua Hedionda Lagoon by Enchanted Seashells

The End of Roses


She felt vaguely upset and unsettled.
She was suddenly tired
of outworn dreams.
And in the garden
the petals of the
last red rose
were scattered by
a sudden little wind.
Summer was over

— it was Autumn.

“She felt vaguely upset and unsettled. She was suddenly tired of outworn dreams.
And in the garden the petals of the last red rose were scattered by a sudden little wind. Summer was over — it was Autumn.” L.M. Montgomery

Rainbow Valley is the seventh book in the chronology of the Anne of Green Gables series of novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Photos by Enchanted Seashells.

Time As a Construct

Lately, I’ve been thinking about T-I-M-E. Time flies. I hate to be late; I like to be ON TIME. Does time really exist at all or have we been brainwashed to think iit does?

Too much thinking about time as ephemeral makes me anxious. Too much thinking about anything does the same thing. My non-logical mind has determined that TIME itself isn’t the issue; THINKING about it IS and it makes my brain melt, just like Dali’s clocks.

Salvador Dalí

 “Time doesn’t exist, clocks exist. Time is just an agreed upon construct.”
— David Foster Wallace

“It takes just one unattended moment for an hour to pass.”
― Sherod Santos, Square Inch Hours: Poems

Santos was born in South Carolina, graduated from San Diego State University, and studied at the University of California, Irvine. I never met him when I attended SDSU, but I knew ABOUT him; all of us who studied creative writing and poetry knew about “Rod” Santos and W.S. Merwin and Glover Davis, who was actually my professor.

David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Wallace wrote the novel Infinite Jest.

“The Persistence of Memory” is an iconic 1931 surrealist oil painting by Salvador Dalí, famous for its “melting” clocks draped over a desolate, dream-like landscape inspired by his Catalonian home. The painting uses a paranoiac-critical method to explore the subconscious, with the distorted clocks symbolizing the fluidity and subjectivity of time, influenced by Freudian psychology and potentially Einstein’s theory of relativity. From Google.

Could Leon Russell’s version of As Time Goes By be the best ever? I think so…mature Leon was awesome, too.

I Am Feral

Today’s mood…

In my mind I am always the feral woman wearing a white nightdress with a mud-stained hem and twigs in my hair, running through a forest bathed in moonlight, screeching along with the owls and foxes.

Unknown, curated from She’s Magic & Midnight Lace
Image from Pinterest

The Bluebird Promise

As long as there are bluebirds, there will be miracles and a way to find happiness.

Quote curated from Pinterest: Credit to the writer.
Art by Ida Rentoul Outwaite