Summer evening

Close to sunset. Great time for a walk, playing tennis, watching the sky drift into twilight colors.

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
~Wallace Stevens

At sunset

Daylily glowing in the last rays of sun.

According to the Minnesota Extension Service:

Daylilies belong to the genus Hemerocallis and are not true lilies. This Greek word is made up of two parts: hemera meaning day and kallos meaning beauty. The name is appropriate, since each flower lasts only one day.

I like how the Greek translates into "day beauty".

These particular daylilies are also called tiger lilies. According to a site about tiger lilies, it's rumored that smelling them will give you freckles, and in Asia, the tiger lily stands for wealth and prosperity.

So, may you find beauty in the new day, keep the freckles in check, and win the lottery.

Ants go marching....

Discovered this army while taking a walk. The form they make reminds me of abstract art, like Motherwell, or perhaps a Chinese ink painting.

And yes, we're finally back online again. Our former internet service provider had problems understanding that all we needed was to transfer our service from one residence to another -- in the same town. Nothing changed but the address. They bungled it -- and then wanted us to wait yet another week for service. So out with the old, in with the new ISP (who got us up in less than a week)! Maybe an ever growing army of ants are making their way to the corporate offices of our old ISP even as you read this....

So -- now I've got a lot of catching up to do....

Ready to fly

This is a great piece of public art at the Hulls Gulch Center -- that seedling ready to ride the wind.

We're getting ready to ride the wind, too -- we're in the process of moving to another part of town. So, my postings will be irregular for a bit until we are fully moved in and connected. It's a welcome move and we're psyched for it!

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hosta

A swirl of green; dancing in the morning sun.
Happy summer solstice!

Before the wedding

As seen at the local botanical garden.



I always cry at weddings, especially my own.
~ Humphrey Bogart

All weddings, except those with shotguns in evidence, are wonderful.
~ Liz Smith

Ready for a ride?

As seen during a walk...

And a sprinkle of quotes:

To ride a horse is to ride the sky.
~Author Unknown

If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle.
~Rita Mae Brown

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
~W.C. Fields

Hulls Gulch

This is where we went today; it's in the foothills above Boise. Gorgeous day out, and lots of people hiking, biking, running, and enjoying the sunshine. Wildflowers are in bloom. Many birds soaring, dipping, singing. A gopher snake slid across the path at one point.
For more info, check out this link.

Viewing the viewers

Clear, sunny day today, like June usually is. People out and about everywhere, making up for all the cool, rainy days we had to stay inside.

And close to sunset, people climbed Camel's Back to take in the view of the area, when everything is bathed in gold-red hues of dusk.

Lunch break

Lots of squirrels in the neighborhood where we live. And a lot of people feed them. They've got it made; none of them have to go through what these 2 squirrels did to get a little lunch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWU0bfo-bSY

Poppy time

They are springing up everywhere in gardens and yards. But we don't have fields of wild poppies -- nor do we have magic ones....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They walked along listening to the singing of the brightly colored birds and looking at the lovely flowers which now became so thick that the ground was carpeted with them. There were big yellow and white and blue and purple blossoms, besides great clusters of scarlet poppies, which were so brilliant in color they almost dazzled Dorothy's eyes.

"Aren't they beautiful?" the girl asked, as she breathed in the spicy scent of the bright flowers.

"I suppose so," answered the Scarecrow. "When I have brains, I shall probably like them better."

"If I only had a heart, I should love them," added the Tin Woodman.

"I always did like flowers," said the Lion. "They of seem so helpless and frail. But there are none in the forest so bright as these."

~ from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

In the sway

These remind me of dancers.


How can we know the dancer from the dance?
~William Butler Yeats

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
~Martha Graham

Reconstruction

Reminds me of a Midwest summer evening long ago. Just need the tiny flashes from lightning bugs, the songs of frogs and crickets, and the soft rumble of thunder in the distance....


Most of our oldest memories are the product of repeated rehearsal and reconstruction.
~ Ulric Neisser

Iris...

...comes from the Greek word for rainbow.
Iris can also mean:

Part of the eye
A consortium of universities managing seismic data
A song by the Goo Goo Dolls
OCR software
A movie about Iris Murdoch
and
Certain types of flowers


People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
~ Iris Murdoch

Sidewalk journaling

We came upon this while taking a walk. Click to enlarge it to read it.

I guess we'll have to imagine what happens next....

In the early evening

Like the glow of a lantern. Stained glass. Colors of sunset.

What words would you use?

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Almost all words do have color and nothing is more pleasant than to utter a pink word and see someone's eyes light up and know it is a pink word for him or her too.
~ Gladys Taber

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Floral front

As seen during a walk through the n'hood.


These scenes would be fun to paint....

What's blooming....

Love these rhododendrons. The petals are such a brilliant white. And the flowers have persevered, even through the snow we had Saturday.


The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Bird watching

Or, in a nod to Gertrude Stein,
Pigeon in the glass, alas!

Livin' the high life

As seen during a walk in the n'hood.

Red light at night

Evening collage.

Anagrams

As seen during a Sunday morning walk.

Just for fun, I looked up an "anagram generator" online:

Antique shop = opaque hints

Hyde Park = had perky

Putting it together....

The antique shop had perky opaque hints. But, nope, it wasn't open.

Bonus: Did you know "Sunday morning" = "I'm sunny dragon"?

Hope you and your dragon have a sunny Sunday....

Red glow

A little bit of beauty for midweek.

Lost and found

Probably not even missed now that the weather is warmer.

In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.
~ Anne Sophie Swetchine

Sidewalk superhero

All you beetles better fly,
before Laser Larry gives you the eye....

Blossoms

Many trees are now flowering, pastel petals raining down onto the street, polka-dotting the grass. If blossoms made noise as they fell, would they sound like small tinkling bells?
One of the cats that greets us when we take walks likes to roll on the sidewalk under 2 blossoming trees, and the pink petals look like confetti against her black fur.



Two Haikus by Matsuo Basho:

From all these trees,
in the salads, the soup, everywhere,
cherry blossoms fall


More than ever I want to see
in these blossoms at dawn
the god's face

Garden guardian?

As seen during a walk in the n'hood.
You never know what's gonna sprout when spring comes....

Restless weather

Spring storms lately; rain, hail, wind. Warm Monday, 20 degrees colder today. (At least we didn't have snow, like some other parts of the country). All part of the rite of spring.

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.
~Proverb

Dinner with Rothko

We had pasta with chicken and veggies tossed in olive oil topped with grated Romano cheese, salad, apples, and pieces of dark chocolate for dessert.

How was your dinner?

Bouquet

Beauty is a good way to start a new week....

Awesome visions

It's the 20th anniversary of the Hubble telescope. So, the featured images tonight are from Hubble. This photo is Stephan's Quintet, a group of galaxies located in the constellation Pegasus.


This is the Cat's Eye Nebula, and from Hubble's site: "One of the first planetary nebulae discovered, it also has one of the most complex forms known to this kind of nebula. Eleven rings, or shells, of gas make up the nebula. The Cat's Eye Nebula is about 1,000 years old, and could have resulted from a double-star system."

To see more fantastic images, click here to visit Hubble's website.


Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.
— Plato, The Republic, 342 BC

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.
— Kalpana Chawla

The treasures hidden in the heavens are so rich that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
— Johannes Kepler

From lines to drops

Rains came last night and today, more predicted for tomorrow. Makes me want to sing, in the rain :)


Under my tree-roof
slanting lines of April rain
separate to drops
~ Basho

Good steps to take?

As discovered during a walk in the n'hood.

Time for nesting

Pairs of geese and ducks are building nests, guarding their territory. It won't be too long before we see their downy babies. Canadian geese mate for life and family groups usually stay together as a flock.



How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Clouds, sunset

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
~ Rumi

Spring cleaning?

As spied in an alley during a walk through the n'hood.

"Outsider" art

Curious combination.
Perhaps it's a secret message.... :)

Trio

After days of storms and rain, sunshine came. Blossoms sprang up from the ground, as if the blooms were impatient with the lingering cold weather. Here's a three-part song to spring.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
~Basho

Spring fever?

You never know what's gonna bloom in the spring....

Blossoms

It's always inspiring to me to see trees in bloom in spring.

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One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential.
~ Maya Angelou

Everyone has inside himself a piece of good news! The good news is that you really don't know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish, and what your potential is!
~ Anne Frank

Wondrous weather

Today we had rain, sleet, snow -- and later, skies like this.
April Fool to us from Mother Spring.