Like Alice, I feel like I'm either looking through the keyhole and only getting a small glimpse of the world, or a giant lumbering around my surroundings, bumping and thumping into things, my bottom and everything else bigger than it used to be, and my brain not registering that. Maybe that's just the nature of wonderland, how a world can feel wondrous and beautiful and constricted, all at the same time. the smell of autumn enchants me from the time i wake up in the morning till i fall asleep, the sound of crickets and sound of leaves and dying grass moving in the breeze, the river that is more like a creek this time of year, whispering in the distance. By day and by night my world is peaceful and quiet here; long stretches of time with no sounds but the "tap, tap, tap" of blue jays cracking juicy, fresh filberts they have plundered from our small orchard onto rocks or high tree limbs in the pines. I've tried and tried to capture the scene with my camera, but they're too quick for me; they're in the tree and gone before I have a chance to focus and shoot, frustrating....here are the ones that fell to the ground, these are the ones I gather into my basket to bring into the house every couple days. So delicious. When I first moved here to Washington, over 26 years ago, I didn't like filberts, and I didn't like oysters, both now acquired tastes, make my tastebuds sing and my soul delight.
I've been spending time wandering through the back woods on our property, these are wetlands, and during the rainy season, we can't hike through them at all. So I savored my solidary walk, camera in hand, itty bitty green spiders, crawling on me after i walked into a nest, but I just put it and them out of my mind, and kept walking, having to bushwack through tall grasses that walter hadn't had time to clear into a path this season. I didn't mind, it just felt good to be out there alone in the woods again, the smells, the sounds, soft mosses covering stumps and hanging over branches. The stream you see is from a spring that bubbles up from the ground in back of our house; it comes out of the ground just below a giant, dead, cedar tree. The water is cystal clear and clean, you could scoop it up with your hands to drink. We get our water from a deep well on our property, the sweetest, coldest water in the world, nothing better. Standing still, listening to the sounds of the deep forest; leaves quietly tumble to floor, getting caught on a branch, balancing there like a sculpture .
I feel totally at home when i'm walking in the woods, nothing to distub my mind, a place to relax, slow down, celebrate beauty and abundance life all around me. I wish I could think of it and just calm my mind, I wish I wish. It is beautiful beyond words in these woods, I feel the camera doesn't do them justice. They feel to be a perfect place for someone like me, who prefers to spend my time alone most of the time. I'm so grateful to live in this magical place I can call home. This quiet place has all the answers, why won't my frantic mind listen and remember that? I'm finding I feel so much stress these days, these months, like my life is a calendar with "to do's, must do's, overdues", why can't I just do what needs to be done and not worry about it all, agonize about it all getting done? I worry and stress too much, changes need to be made, mainly in my head I think. Or maybe I've really taken on too much, and need to cut back on my comittments. On and on the introspecitive cycle goes, round and round...
I had my little Violet for an over-night last weekend and we had ever so much fun exploring outside, playing with the hose and pails, big sidewalk chalk, and talking walks down the gravel road. Heather is taking the baby to Devner to visit Marissa, so I'll have Violet out here with me for 3 days and nights. She's a sensitive little spitfire, that one...meema's wascal!
And then there is sweet baby Lilyanne, such a love, i can't kiss her enough. if i go for too long without seeing her i go through smooching withdrawals :-)
my mind is hither thither, just like these photos, but hopefully they'll fix themselves into some kind of order that seems coherent to you the viewer. I'm very tired - off to bed i go. thanks for coming by. xox