When I step out just a wee bit after sunrise, I often hesitate about taking my camera along. I tell myself -- I've given Ocean readers as many lily pictures as they could possibly stomach. So what that each day brings out a completely new set of blooms that have never been photographed before! It's still a lily field. Full of lilies. And bee's balm and phlox and false sunflower and whatever else comes into the mix.
But I swear, I take one look and I am so in love with what I see, that I go back to draping the old reliable camera around my neck again. And again. The moments when the light on a flower is exactly right...
... when the flowers are positioned just so, with their beaming faces all shining toward you so beautifully...
(These are my midsummer queens: their appearance is like a whiff of pure magic; when they finish their bloom, I feel like summer is packin' up its bags)
... those moments are fleeting. Indeed, a daylily bed is fleeting. So is summer. So is life. A photo allows me to take note, to linger, even as my schedule tells me I must move on.
In the thick of a snowless, monochromatic February day, I'll look at these same flower fields and think -- were they really with that much color? It seems impossible!
One glance at a July photo and I realize that it's all there, waiting to bloom again come summer.
Today, I actually was greeted initially not by my lilies or by the cheepers, but by Stop Sign.
She has been eating copious amounts of food. Either her other food sources have dried up, or she's pregnant, reminding us of our feral cat obligation to catch her and have her neutered. If it's a female. And if, in fact, she isn't someone else's cat!
So I feed her. And then I pluck my lilies (402 today) and groan at the damage to the real lilies whose heads and leaves have been eaten by deer, or groundhogs or whoever else is hell bent on devouring my flowers.
Breakfast, on the porch, despite the roar of trucks nearby. Ah, but some day there will be parkland...
This is the morning for me to shop with my mom. We're looking for certain foods she'd grown accustomed to in Berkeley. We find some plausible substitutes at the Coop.
And I take her as well to the bakery where a few times each week, I pick up pain au chocolat for Snowdrop.
Did I tell you how lovely the day is? Partly cloudy, breezy and very mild. September weather, really. Seasons come and go. But the photos stay with us for as long as we want them.
In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. We do go to the playground (I find a clip in my purse for her hair -- the wind is really kicking things around by the lake)...
... and she swings good and hard. But a curious thing happens. She wants to be pushed -- her own pumping never gives her the height she loves. But she also wants to talk and I keep telling her that it's impossible for me to hear her because her words fly off with the wind toward the lake, away from where I'm standing.
And so she asks to go back to the farm.
As we walk back to the car, she tells me that someday she will live in a farmhouse. She'll be like Ed and fix everything. She spins a futuristic vision that is elaborate in detail and fantasy. As we reach the car, she sighs. I want to be older... -- she tells me.
Well, you are growing up and being three and a half seems kind of fun too...
Growing is only fun because then I can be the age I want to be.
And what age is that?
Ten and a half.
I had to write down her words to get them right. I want to remember that at three and a half, you long for nothing more than to be able to do more than you can do right now. I suppose that when you get much older, you remember fondly all that you could once do, but can't anymore.
We never quite get to playing inside the farmhouse. The day is so grand that Snowdrop wants to stay out in the yard. She picks up the disks and does a mean toss. And another.
And another...
And another.
Evening. Catch your dreams before they slip away (if you're my age, you'll remember the song that gave us those words)...
Beauty pops up year round in a garden, but in July, it throws itself at you. For one magical moment, it is everywhere, all the time.You hold onto it as best you can.
But I swear, I take one look and I am so in love with what I see, that I go back to draping the old reliable camera around my neck again. And again. The moments when the light on a flower is exactly right...
... when the flowers are positioned just so, with their beaming faces all shining toward you so beautifully...
(These are my midsummer queens: their appearance is like a whiff of pure magic; when they finish their bloom, I feel like summer is packin' up its bags)
... those moments are fleeting. Indeed, a daylily bed is fleeting. So is summer. So is life. A photo allows me to take note, to linger, even as my schedule tells me I must move on.
In the thick of a snowless, monochromatic February day, I'll look at these same flower fields and think -- were they really with that much color? It seems impossible!
One glance at a July photo and I realize that it's all there, waiting to bloom again come summer.
Today, I actually was greeted initially not by my lilies or by the cheepers, but by Stop Sign.
She has been eating copious amounts of food. Either her other food sources have dried up, or she's pregnant, reminding us of our feral cat obligation to catch her and have her neutered. If it's a female. And if, in fact, she isn't someone else's cat!
So I feed her. And then I pluck my lilies (402 today) and groan at the damage to the real lilies whose heads and leaves have been eaten by deer, or groundhogs or whoever else is hell bent on devouring my flowers.
Breakfast, on the porch, despite the roar of trucks nearby. Ah, but some day there will be parkland...
This is the morning for me to shop with my mom. We're looking for certain foods she'd grown accustomed to in Berkeley. We find some plausible substitutes at the Coop.
And I take her as well to the bakery where a few times each week, I pick up pain au chocolat for Snowdrop.
Did I tell you how lovely the day is? Partly cloudy, breezy and very mild. September weather, really. Seasons come and go. But the photos stay with us for as long as we want them.
In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. We do go to the playground (I find a clip in my purse for her hair -- the wind is really kicking things around by the lake)...
... and she swings good and hard. But a curious thing happens. She wants to be pushed -- her own pumping never gives her the height she loves. But she also wants to talk and I keep telling her that it's impossible for me to hear her because her words fly off with the wind toward the lake, away from where I'm standing.
And so she asks to go back to the farm.
As we walk back to the car, she tells me that someday she will live in a farmhouse. She'll be like Ed and fix everything. She spins a futuristic vision that is elaborate in detail and fantasy. As we reach the car, she sighs. I want to be older... -- she tells me.
Well, you are growing up and being three and a half seems kind of fun too...
Growing is only fun because then I can be the age I want to be.
And what age is that?
Ten and a half.
I had to write down her words to get them right. I want to remember that at three and a half, you long for nothing more than to be able to do more than you can do right now. I suppose that when you get much older, you remember fondly all that you could once do, but can't anymore.
We never quite get to playing inside the farmhouse. The day is so grand that Snowdrop wants to stay out in the yard. She picks up the disks and does a mean toss. And another.
And another...
And another.
Evening. Catch your dreams before they slip away (if you're my age, you'll remember the song that gave us those words)...
Beauty pops up year round in a garden, but in July, it throws itself at you. For one magical moment, it is everywhere, all the time.You hold onto it as best you can.
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