• Plants,  quotes

    God’s sense of beauty…

    Nature is the direct expression of the divine imagination.
    It is the most intimate reflection of God’s sense of beauty.

    John O’Donohue

    I’m outside on my porch in my blue Adirondack chair typing this post while sipping on a spicy chai latte. It’s about 10:19 am. The constantly changing canvas above me is an overcast sky with patches of azure blue. Trees are motionless and allows other sounds to dominate. So, I enjoy hearing a robin sing it’s heart out. A couple of flickers chat back in forth. I watch the three baby squirrels romp around the elm tree in a game of tag. A cottontail dashes past me to hide in the juniper bush. A group of Canada Geese lay around the edge of the pond, necks bent over their back, sleeping with one eye open. It is peaceful and serene! My weather app says we could see more rain this afternoon around three o’clock. In the meantime I partake of God’s sense of beauty and imagination that I am a part of. And now it’s time to push the publish button. I hope you have a wonderful day!

  • landscape,  mountains,  quotes,  sunsets

    Enjoying this season of my life…

    If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
    this is the best season of your life.

    Wu-Men, translated from Chinese by Stephen Mitchell

    The list of unnecessary things my mind can grab onto seems almost infinite. My imagination, dreams, and creativity are gifts when I work to make them reality. However, learning to let go of those that are unnecessary allows me to more fully enjoy this season of my life.

  • landscape,  sunrises

    The mystery of infinite possibilities

    If it is true that we are made out of love to be love then our possibilities can be infinite…

    mws

    I have always been an early riser but with aging and the shift in my circadian rhythm, I invariably rise before the sun rises. I’m okay with that. But, that also means I post a lot of sunrise images. It is in these hours of silence, solitude and fatigue that I am learning to fully listen to the voice of love within me. It even seems to be louder and more persistent as time goes on. I hope I’m not rattling people’s cages when talking about love in our current political environment of hatred, self-interest and chaos. Many are in a place of grief, fear, and dismay. I can find myself going there quickly but thankfully not camping there, finding more restful and peaceful places to live. Writing this out is one of my tools. The above quote rattled around in my head last night and would not let me go back to sleep until I got up and wrote it down. I am at a place where possibilities are beyond and greater than my imagination, and maybe yours, also. I find myself full of questions and almost no answers while experiencing an unexpected gift of contentment, some inner okayness. And the questions come. What if a change in people’s hearts “is” a real possibility? What if the voices of hatred, chaos, drama, fear, greed can be silenced through love? What if letting go of our old patterns of thinking that power, money and privilege will bring peace, community, justice and the end of war? Because it never has! What if we let go of our finite thinking, which is often based in fear, and embrace the possibilities we’ve never dreamed of? What if we are made with love to be love? What if we let go of what we think are the only possibilities and embrace the mystery of infinite possibilities? Thanks for listening and I hope this has not been too confusing.

  • Creativity,  quotes,  winter scenes

    Where We Become Who We Are

    Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine, largely unconsciously, into creations we call our own. The most wondrous thing about these seeds is that, when they first fall into the fallow ground of the mind, we have no sense of what they will bloom into years, decades, and selves later, what alchemic cross-pollination will take place between them and other seeds in the dark underground of consciousness where we become who we are.

    Maria Popova
  • fall season,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons,  trees

    Imagination

    “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”

    William Blake

    The only constant is change and this morning was a prime example. It’s all worked out and been a good day. Have new chair for my bedroom that sits looking out my bay window and will use it for my quiet times, reading and journaling. Fits my buttocks! 😂 The above photo was taken on campus this past week. Love my tree friends! Now that the leaves are mostly gone we can see where the squirrels nests are. On my walk I smiled as leaves danced along side me in the wind. I am not taking my laptop to Phoenix this week so you will have a reprieve from my blog posts for four days. Have a great week.

  • insects

    Todays Work

    Grasshopper in morning dew, Great Smoky Mountains

    “All you can work on today is directly in front of you. Your job is to develop an imagination of the possible.”

    Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

    While on a trip to the Smoky Mountains I dropped and broke my Nikon 80-400mm VR lens, a $1400 loss. Ouch! Needles to say I spent the last 3 days of our 7 day trip with nothing but two other Nikon lens, a 16-35mm and 24-85mm. Now my longest focal range dropped from 400mm to 85mm, what was I going to shoot?

    The first morning we were able to shoot in Cades Cove we were met with fog, wonderful fog. Along with the fog comes the heaviness of the morning dew, so needles to say we were pretty wet by the time we returned to the hotel. I noticed a barb wire fence covered with dew near the Tipton Place and wandered over to have a look-see. I discovered this grasshopper hanging upside down and patiently waiting for the morning sun to dry his body for the days activities. Since the 24-85mm also had macro capabilities it worked great for me to get some nice images. The fog was burning off and you can see the sun approaching in the background. This image was one of my first attempts at macro photography and spurred the purchase a nice macro lens. So, I ended up working on what was in front of me.