Summer Doldrums…

There’s something about this time of year that just gets to me.  I’m already a slow-moving person, but when it gets hot and humid, I definitely slow to a bare crawl.  This year it has had a detrimental effect on my picture taking and, consequently, my blog. I think summer always slows down my picture taking unless we’re traveling, but this year it has been worse than usual for some reason.

It's been like this for me for as long as I can remember.  I just really don’t like summer.

  I suppose there are those of you out there who could never understand the way I feel, but searching around on the interweb, I found that there are more people out there like me, albeit not that many. But it's a real condition called Summer SAD (Seasonal AffectiveDisorder) .  While I don’t think I suffer from it in a full-blown way, I do find it much harder to sleep.  The sun rises and so do I, like it or not.  Yes, we need room darkening shades.  I know, I know.   There are always too many blankets or sheets and not enough air.  I toss and turn and turn and toss.  I just can't get comfortable.

Summer is rather overwhelming to me in a social way as well.  Well, I've always been socially awkward so the parties and get togethers that seem to happen more frequently in the summer cause me a fair bit of anxiety.

The truth is that I completely and thoroughly hate the heat and humidity.  To me, the best day of the year is that first day I have to put on a sweatshirt in the morning and wear it all day.  It’s feels weird to me that when people describe paradise, they always seem to be talking about someplace in the tropics, sun-drenched, sand covered and sweat producing, while I always dream of places north.  I most definitely feel like a fish out of water this time of year or maybe a polar bear out of the Arctic.

  Oh, well, what can I do?  I have no control over it.

I decided that what I needed to do today is make the most of what is good about summertime, besides baseball, that is. Summertime is colorful and I do love color.  So I went out and took a tour of our yard and came back with these.

I did manage to accomplish something this summer and it is colorful.  Thanks to The Crochet Crowd for the free pattern.  This was easier than it looks and so much fun to create.  I love the pattern.  I think another one may be in my future even though I'm not sure what I'll do with it.

One thing that is very special about today, in particular, is that it is my very colorful daughter Carrie’s birthday.  My due date with her was June 21, but she waited until July 13 to be born, which was a Friday with a full moon, of course.  And yes, it was the hottest summer ever.  Of course, it’s always the hottest summer ever when one is greatly pregnant.  But I hit the jackpot with Number One.  She’s a wonderful, big hearted, quirky, intelligent and beautiful person.  Happy birthday, Number One!

Here's a photo of Carrie and her brother Evan (Number Two) taken in 1990.  Number Two isn't so bad either, by the way.

And here's how she looks these days.  Yes, that's a spider web in her hair.  I told you she was quirky.

Celebrating Diversity…

Once a year at the church we attend, we hold a Flower Communion.  The Unitarian Universalist Association describes the service this way:

 

The Flower Ceremony, sometimes referred to as Flower Communion or Flower Festival, is an annual ritual that celebrates beauty, human uniqueness, diversity, and community.

Originally created in 1923 by Unitarian minister Norbert Capek of Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Flower Ceremony was introduced to the United States by Rev. Maya Capek, Norbert's widow.

In this ceremony, everyone in the congregation brings a flower. Each person places a flower on the altar or in a shared vase. The congregation and minister bless the flowers, and they're redistributed. Each person brings home a different flower than the one they brought.

I look forward to this service every year not only for the beauty of the flowers that people bring, but also for the way it celebrates our uniqueness and diversity, qualities I truly value.

Sharing with you all today the diversity of Mother Nature here in the Northeast USA.

We come in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes.
Some of us grow in bunches.
Some of us grow alone.
Some of us are cupped inward,
And some of us spread ourselves out wide.
Some of us are old and dried and tougher than we appear.
Some of us are still in bud.
Some of us grow low to the ground,
And some of us stretch toward the sun.
Some of us feel like weeds, sometimes.
Some of us carry seeds, sometimes.
Some of us are prickly, sometimes.
Some of us smell.
And all of us are beautiful.
What a bouquet of people we are!

~Thomas Rhodes

Heading out on the road for a few days tomorrow morning.  Olive, the pug,  is staying home to take care of our son Evan while we are gone.  Hope you all have a great week ahead!

Lovely spoils and unwanted beauty…

The tulip's petals shine in dew,

All beautiful, but none alike.

~ James Montgomery

I really, really like tulips.  Maybe they aren’t my very favorite flower, but they are right up there on my list of favorites.  One of the things I like about tulips is that they look good even when they are on their way out of this world.  I’ve taken quite a few photos of tulips in their various stages of life.  The other day, I came across some photos I took when we were in Norway in 2013.  I edited the photos and stuck them in a folder on my hard drive and they have yet to see the light of day except in my cluttered office.  I am going to fix that right now.  Here they are.

It's true that I really like tulips, but I’m going out on a limb here to say that it's entirely possible that my very favorite flower is one many people would like to see eliminated from this world.  It is this:

Yes, it’s the lowly dandelion, one of the most charming and most cursed flowers on earth.  We yank it out of the ground and mow it down only to have it pop up time and again.  It is an elegant, beautiful thing in the early spring when it is caught by hoarfrost on a cold but sunny morning.  It also has an elegant and beautiful history and is sometimes described as "a plant for which we once knew the use but we've forgotten it."  Many cultures have used the dandelion in salads and soups and to make wine.  AND, get this, a coffee substitute can be made from the roots.  However, I’m not sure I’ll go there.  I like my caffeine too much.

  Andre Mason said, “If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.”

  I think he’s right.  It seems to be human nature to want things that are more rarefied and hard to get than the likes of the humble dandelion.

Okay, so I’m a little weird about flowers.  Are you?  What’s your favorite flower?

Good Rockefeller Fences…

One of the things I like best about photography is that it allows one to time travel.  That’s what I’m going to do today.  I’m going back to August 28 of this year, when Greg and I were in Maine visiting our friends, Linda and Brian Friedmann.

Linda and Brian own a camp on a beautiful lake in Maine not too far from Acadia.  We were lucky to get to spend a couple nights with them on our way home from Nova Scotia.  We were also lucky that they happened to have four tickets to the opening of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor.  This garden is open to the public only once a week in late July, August and early September, so we were very fortunate to get to go.

I don’t think much needs to be said about the beauty of this place so I will let the photos do the talking.

The walls that surround the garden were spectacular in their own right.  For my purposes here, I’m going to call them fences, because that’s really their function and it allows me to hook up with Theresa’s Good Fences.

My two-sided self ...

1.  I love nature, flowers, bugs, birds and all stuff like that, but I am not a gardener and never will be.  I just don’t have an interest in making things grow.  It seems like a real shame, because we have a large yard that would definitely benefit from some tender loving care…just not from me.  Whatever grows in our yard is a remnant from the former owner or transplanted there by some other being.  I am actually looking forward to the day when I have a small patch that requires nothing more than a quick mow, if that.  Then I might not be so overwhelmed and I will plant a pot or two.  Meanwhile, I will admire other’s efforts.

2.  Greg and I decided not to put the air conditioners in this year.  Initially, I was a little bit leery about that because if there’s one thing I truly hate in this world, it’s a hot, humid day.  But I keep thinking about the bottom line of our electric bill and also that we are polluting less than we would be if we were artificially cooled and I think that maybe I can stand it.  Fortunately for me, the summer has been relatively comfortable here with only a couple days in the 90s and mostly cooler nights.  And it doesn’t hurt that we have a whole-house fan.  That makes a tremendous difference at night.  If it gets too hot, I just sit in a dark room and wait.  After all, Mark Twain was pretty much right when he said, “If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.”

3.  My niece just posted this on Facebook:  “One day, when I'm extremely wealthy, I'm going to hire someone to read articles of my choosing and sum them up for me. I hate when I find an article I really want to read, but it's too long and I'm too lazy.....”   Well, I know that she’s not too lazy.  She’s a full time mother and going to college at the same time.   But I understand where she’s coming from, I think.  For a brief fifteen minutes one day, I thought about subscribing to The New Yorker.  I think I would really enjoy reading it from cover to cover.  But I know in my heart that I never would and they would just stack up.  There are just too many things vying for our attention these days.  Like blogging, for instance.

  It’s a world of sensory overload.

4.  I sat with some friends last night, one of whom recently lost her elderly Jack Russell Terrier Boomer.  Boomer was a fine, handsome, little dog.  I’m sorry to know I won’t see him again.  We talked about how difficult it is to lose pets who have been members of our families for a long time and the lengths we’ll take to keep them with us…maybe long after we really should let them go.  I’ve found that many people, after losing a beloved pet, often say that they will never go through that again.  It’s just too hard.  But I’m not one of those.  I think that you have to be aware when you take an animal in that you will most likely outlive them.  That’s just the way it is.  While it brings tears to my eyes to think about the pets I’ve let go over the years (Hobo, Henry, Clousseau, Gorky, Dinah, Kitty, Burgess, Tigger and Asta), I wouldn’t give up one minute of the time we had together.  And, I don’t care what my allergy doctor says; I hope to never be without a furry friend no matter how much it hurts in the end, because the joy that they bring while they are with us is worth it.

5.  The daylily pics I’ve posted here today are of a plant that is in our yard.  I didn’t plant it but it seems to be thriving through benign neglect and I’m happy about that.

Linking up today to Tanya’s Willy Nilly Friday 5

 on Around Roanoke…A Daily Photo Blog.

Sharing the Bridge of Flowers…

What a great idea Antoinette Burnham had!  She saw an old trolley bridge that was no longer being used and had a vision.  She sparked the idea to turn the old bridge into the Bridge of Flowers.  The Shelburne Falls Women’s Club sponsored the project in 1928 and the rest, shall we say, is history.  In spite of the fact that flood waters spawned by Hurricane Irene engulfed the Bridge in 2011, it is blooming and beautiful.  Here are a few blooms that Carrie and I saw on our trip there last Friday.

And here’s a little aside.  Last week I posted some road pictures from our trip to Apalachicola, Florida.  Here’s one:

While in Buckland, Massachusetts, I saw this and it made me laugh:

But I actually know what they support in Buckland.  They support local farms.  What that truck supported, I don’t know.  Maybe they support local farms too.

  That would be a good thing.

It’s sprung!

Well, I guess spring hasn’t sprung officially yet but yesterday I got a really nice spring preview.  Carrie, my daughter, and I went to the Smith College Annual Bulb Show and we got enough spring there in one dose to take us through the next few days of winter.

 

Though we have been to the Smith College Annual Mum Show a couple of times in the fall, this was my first time at the spring show.  I must say, it was a wonderful color and fragrance blast after the gloomy winter we’ve had.

 

Of course, I took a lot of pictures.  But the ones I like best are the ones of the tulips and that is what I am posting today.  Here’s to spring!

Here we are enjoying the show.  This was taken in a gazing ball so we are a little distorted.  Well, at least in real life, Carrie's nose doesn't quite lean so far to the right.

The power of red tulips…

I’ve been a little off my game lately and just haven’t picked up the camera.  So I figured the best way to remedy that was to pick up some red tulips at the grocery store.  Nobody can resist taking pictures of red tulips…well, at least I can’t.

The End of Sunflower Season in Griswold, CT…

Yesterday, Greg and I drove down to Griswold, Connecticut even though it wasn’t the best of days.  We wanted to see the sunflower fields at Buttonwood Farm before the owners of the farm let the cows loose in the fields at 5:00 p.m. today.

 

Since 2004, ten acres of the farm has been planted with sunflowers.  At first, the Buttonwood Farm owners did it just for the beauty of the display, but now they ask for a $5.00 donation from the sunflower admirers and 100% of the donations go to the Make a Wish Foundation.

I love sunflowers and find them to be extremely photogenic in all their phases.  I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.  And if you ever find yourself in Griswold, Connecticut, between July 21 and July 29 (or in our case July 31), it’s worth a trip to Buttonwood Farms, not just for the sunflowers, but also for some of the best homemade ice cream I’ve ever tasted.