Taken two months ago (nearly to the day) a few miles southwest of Carrington North Dakota. The *ridge* or what passes for one on the prairie, seen in the far distance where the radio towers are barely visibe, is a couple hundred feet above the surrounding plains.
Visit here for more Skywatch posts.
hot hay-scented breath in your face brings on fits of giggling…
homemade peach ice-cream fixes a belly-ache…
busy bees fly off with your troubles…
pausing to admire a ladybug is sure to make you smile…
silly puppies with their first-ever bandana will cure anything that ails you!
Click for a nicer view!Are you wondering what a parterre is? Don’t speak French?
😉
A parterre is a symmetrical garden, often with roses or perennials and boxwood hedges. They’re meant to be viewed from above, to better appreciate the pattern of the design, but I preferred the ground-level view of this still young planting.
I’ve been watching this one take shape for a couple years now at the local horticultural park. It was nice the other day to find that the park system had reached the final stages of restoring this treasured part of the many display gardens at Deep Cut.
I think the view will be gorgeous in the wintertime from the top of the hillside by the rockery – the weeping hemlocks there laced with snow – and the curving lines of the boxwoods in the parterre outlined in white, too.
A pic of the parterre from two summers ago is here. I can’t imagine how much nicer it’ll be two years from now.
Update: Susan had a bit of fun at Delia’s expense also. Delia, of course, knows we make fun of her only cause we love her so. You know that Delia, right?
This pic of Delia, unashamedly stolen from her blog (and a definite contender for next month’s cover of “Field and Stream”) reminded me of this pic of the DH:
Apparently the size of the fish has nothing whatsoever to do with the goofiness of the fisherman’s grin.
😉
It’s the Spring of your life,
I laugh at your foolishness,
protect you from danger,
make sure you grow and glow with health,
practice and play until…
It’s the Summer of your life,
What a beauty you’ve become!
You’ve (almost) grown into yourself,
You live at full tilt, with a passion for life.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
It all started innocently enough. Heartbroken and dog-less for the first time in 12 years, we found this adorable pup to ease our lonesomeness. He’s brought joy and a good amount of laughter, but also a sense of déjà -vu; that we’d done this all before, that we know all the pitfalls, have fallen for these same tricks and devilment sometime in the past. There is no better way to forget, or remember, than a puppy.
I imagine I’ll always think of them linked this way; the leaving of one so close to the coming of the other. Today is Luka’s Gotcha-Day and this past Friday marked a year since Buddy passed away.
Dogs, especially old dogs, are a treasure. They are more than themselves, they are us. Part of us. They live our life, are the calendar of our joys and sorrows. We run our fingers through our past when we caress their broad chest and velvet ears.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
In the Autumn of your life,
you grew more sedate;
your troubles so far in the past,
I’d almost forgotten
the Spring of your life.
Your colors still vibrant, but
a tinge of silver frosted your muzzle
and foretold…
The Winter of your life,
your eyes as clouded as a December sky,
You passed as gently
as snow falling on frozen fields.
I weep now and remember all the seasons of your life
and the years of mine that you carried away with you.
*Poetry adapted from Pieces of My Heart by Jim Willis
Summer has its windows open: listen to the crickets and smell the thick breath of the sea. There’s not a cloud in the sky and miles of warm sun-scented beach ahead. We could walk for hours… leave our shoes on the boardwalk, skip stones by the jetty, trace our dreams in the sand.
That magic place where the sea meets the sky… I want to look at it forever, watch the slow progression of waves and listen to the dune grasses strum, laughter carried across beach blankets, the laughter of gulls rivaling ours, that old longing in me now so familiar as the waves roll in.
My sense of time and distance is lost to the lullaby of the surf, to an egret stalking the salt marsh on angel’s wings, the beckoning breeze and its thoughts of you.
Take my hand, stay for a moment, taste the sea’s kiss on my lips.
A postcard scene… wish you were here.
It rained today, all day.
I daydreamed.
There’s a certain joy about dogs that I think maybe cat people don’t get, or not as fully as the rest of us. I look at this smiling pic of Spencer (our boot camp mascot from the Adirondacks trip) – wet and smelly from rolling around in the bog – and I can’t help but smile myself. He had a small army of admirers in us and was a good tonic during the quiet times or when some of us (me!) were feeling cranky. I like the company of a dog in the woods or a walk on the beach and I’ve missed the quiet, well-behaved sort of companionship that an older dog provides since Buddy died last summer. Luka is fun on walks, but he’s not quiet enough for birds yet and insists on being the center of any attention with his goofiness. His specialty so far is comic-relief. (He’s doing donuts on the bed as I type this!)
Anyway… it was fun to have Spencer along and he was properly spoiled by us all. Someone was always sneaking him a bite of lunch or quietly cajoling him into some mischief.
He made himself a favorite photographic subject of mine and would often follow my attention on a particular patch of wildflowers (here, bunchberries) with his own sort of joyful attention. Like a good dog, Spencer did a lot of rolling in stuff.
That rolling around and looking cute was a ploy of his and he used it to his advantage whenever possible. How can anyone resist a three-legged dog having so much fun?
Don’t let the doleful expression fool you – that’s another ploy! He’s just trying to get you close enough for a splash.
One of my favorite pics from the trip – I think Linda’s smile says it all. She’s a dog person, obviously. She gets it.
😉
I spent a little time yesterday poking my camera into some of the living rooms and sleeping porches in the tent city at Ocean Grove. I’m there at least once a week with work, but usually avoid the maze of one way streets around the Great Auditorium and instead ogle the old Victorian homes on the other side of town. It’s a great little shore oddity and one that I remember visiting as a kid. My dad brought me for Sunday services in the huge open air Auditorium back when a blue law banned cars in town on Sundays.
The town was founded as a leisure-time retreat by Methodists and descendants of those founders sti
ll come to Ocean Grove to sleep in tents for the summer and to pray by the sea. There’s a hundred-some tents and they’re laid out within inches of one another in rows around the auditorium. A more permanent structure makes up the back of each – with electric and plumbing! – and the front of the tent is reserved as a sitting/sleeping space. They’re very cute and not nearly as rustic as one might imagine.
Other ramblings about Ocean Grove are available here.
azure moss sapphire forest cobalt fern navy kelly cerulean emerald indigo tea cornflower shamrock sea denim pine midnight army periwinkle pine sky hunter steel jade tiffany olive ultramarine celadon baby camouflage turquoise
Have I missed any?
Do you know that some world languages don’t make the distinction between blue and green in the same way we English speakers do?
Easy for me to imagine when looking over the photos I took. On that last day in the Adirondacks, we spent the morning hours waiting for the clouds to move off the top of Whiteface Mountain so we could make our way up. Those clouds and the shadows they moved over the forest and lakes rendered it all very beautiful in varying shades of blue and/or green.
