A Postcard Swap…

Our Maine vacation is over and  the birthday week filled with family, house guests and parties is over.   Before either of those events occurred I joined  Liberate Your Art, a postcard swap initiated and organized by Kat Sloma of the blog The Kat Eye View of the World.  For the swap, participants had to send out five original postcards and in return would receive five postcards from others.

The postcards could be made in any medium…mine were photos of course.  During the months of July and August It was fun to wait and see what arrived in snail mail. 

The first to arrive was titled “Abstract in Blue” by Kelly of I Need to Color.  I like to think that her inspiration was taken from the water of ponds and oceans.

This beautiful photo by Angela  was the next to arrive.  On  the back was a quote from the Budda: “We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts we make the world.”  Her photography and family oriented blog Peach Coglo is full of beautiful photos.

The next three postcards came while I was away in Maine and I am sad to say I have yet to contact the senders…but I will!

Anita’s beach photo made me feel right at home…I liked the quote included too:  “Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you anywhere.”  Albert Einstein.  I was already familiar with her blog Going A Little Coastal and her amazing creativity.

This wonderfully purple photo postcard was sent by Brigitte – aka Rosie-Grey of  Rosie’s World.  She wondered if I liked purple…how could I not love this?

I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into the pen and ink drawing that was on the postcard that Lea sent me.  Even the back of her postcard was hand painted and drawn and beautiful…She left a link to The Beaufort Art Center but not a blog of her own.  Maybe she teaches there?

The last postcard I received was from Kat in thanks for participating…It is I who should thank her for this fun opportunity…I would do it again! 

Another Maine Interlude…

  Maine 2010 - Mt. Penobscot

Tomorrow we head out for our annual Maine vacation…Although we are fortunate enough to stay in the same place each year it is always a little different.  This year both of our children and their husbands and our grandchildren will be with us as well as some young family friends with two more children.  What will be different is that we could not co-ordinate with our best friends and their family to vacation nearby at the same time.  This is the first time that has happened and I will miss them tremendously!  The only two our age to sit and chat and drink wine with!  The only two who might hike as slowly as I do!  The only one who thinks nothing of cooking for a crowd and doing it deliciously!   It will be odd to be up there without them. 

Still…my grandson is excited about the hiking and I am excited about the lobsters so I am sure we will make family memories.  I will be back in a week or so to record those memories with photos…and a few words.

Obsession…

“The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.”

 Henry Moore (English Sculptor, 1898-1986)

So what is my latest obsession?  It is the Instagram app on my iPhone

This is surprising in part because I don’t Twitter, rarely use Facebook, and I am a very infrequent Flickr participant.  In spite of this, since I joined the IG photo sharing community I have spent more time taking and processing photos and checking the site feed on my iphone than I have with my camera and computer it seems.  It is a fun, creative community and I am constantly impressed with and inspired by the photos I see there.  Comments are shared and there are many different languages seen…The photos can take you around the world in one sitting.  Breakfast in Germany or Cyprus in one photo and dinner in California at the next.  I just find it fascinating. 

 
 
There are a lot of photos of food and restaurants…

  

breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and drinks…

 
 
cats, dogs, bugs, butterflies…

 
 
flowers and leaves…

 
 
children and grandchildren…

 
husband and self…

 
places near and far…

 
 
shots using fun apps….

 
 
…and lots of feet “from where I stand”!  

All the photos above are taken by me on my iphone..

Picture Color…

Although I haven’t posted much here during the month of June I was busy taking photos.  Through the blog Mortal Muses I won a membership in the Picture Color workshop which involved daily prompts and nightly comments.  I find these workshops both rewarding and overwhelming at the same time…  I am a bit obsessive about getting every prompt done and commenting on other photos which isn’t always possible.  All in all, however, I am sure that I take away more than I put into the class.  There is so much inspiration and support among the participants that when the month is over I find that I missed the daily stress…

The collage above was made using Picasa of most of my photos from the workshop.

Peonies…

When we bought our house in Arcadia 34 years ago I had fallen in love with the apple tree and day lilies growing in the backyard.  I didn’t notice the deep green leaves surrounded by weeds growing next to the shed which spring revealed to be a fragrant, light pink peony. 

 

Today the apple tree is gone, blown over in a storm, and the lilies  struggle to bloom in the deepening shade of trees 30 years older but that little patch of dark green has never failed in its beautiful but short lived bloom every spring.

  Every year I say I am going to cut the blooms and enjoy them indoors before the rain knocks them down…but every year I wait just a little too long and the petals are scattered everywhere. 

Every year I also said I was going to plant more peonies…but every year I forgot until it was too late.  This year one chilly, drizzly day in May, Mr O and I went to Peony’s Envy, a New Jersey peony garden and nursery which I heard of at a winter garden show exhibit.  

The name alone made me smile but the photos of their flowers made the smile bigger.  We wandered the wet grounds and took photos of soggy peonies and bought some plants. 

 

I hope my new plants thrive as well in my backyard as my inherited plant has .

 

With their beauty and hardiness it is no wonder that so many photographs are taken of peonies…and so many poems written with them in mind.  I read this on The Writer’s Almanac long ago…

Peonies

Grandma called them pineys, and I didn't know why.
They smelled so good, the full lush petals
crowded thick, the whole flower heavy on its stem,
the leaves dark and rich and green as shade in Chatauqua Woods
where each spring I hunted for violets. What could there be
to pine for on this earth? Now I think maybe it was Missouri
she missed, and maybe that was what somebody she knew
called peonies there, before she traveled to Ohio,
a sixteen-year-old bride whose children came on as fast
as field crops and housework. Her flowers saved her,
the way they came up year after year and with only a bit of care
lived tender and pretty, each kind surprising,
keeping its own sweet secret: lily-of-the-valley, iris,
the feathery-leaved cosmos, lilacs in their white and purple curls,
flamboyant sweet peas and zinnias, the bright four o'clocks
and delphinium, blue as her eyes, and the soft peony flowers
edged deep pink. In her next life I want my grandmother
to walk slowly through the gardens in England and Kyoto.
I want to be there when she recognizes the flowers

"Peonies" by Jeanne Lohmann, from Calls from a Lighted House. © Fithian Press, 2007

…and the second I recently discovered on the beautiful blog third-storey window and fell deeply in love with it.

Peonies at Dusk

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.

Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.

The moist air intensifies the scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.

In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.

Kenyon, Jane. “Peonies at Dusk” from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1996), p.207.

All photos are of flowers from my old, inherited peony plant either this year or last.

Friendship…

photo by Charlane Griffith

Two years ago I started a photography based blog and wandered over the internet looking for inspiration and help with my photography.   One site would lead to another and I grew to truly understand why this world was called “the web”.  Every once and awhile I would timidly reach out with a comment to a photographer that I particularly liked and wanted to emulate.  Char was one of those photographers that not only inspired me but reached back out to me and encouraged me in many gentle ways.  When her sudden and untimely death was reported and discussed throughout the blogging world I was stuck with sadness as many others were…In fact I was surprised how deeply saddened I was, after all I had never met her face to face nor seen a picture of her.  This led me to think about the nature of these internet friendships…what are they made of…what makes us connect?  I have learned that these friendships are real enough to suffer loss when a tie is broken.  Char made it easy to connect to because she wrote so well that her kindness and humor stood out and because she made an extra effort to do so.  Like many others I will miss her and will try to remember her through the words she used on her profile…

”life is too short to waste a single day: eat cookies, dance when no one is looking, and try to be as happy as you can.”

…and I will think of her every time I take a photo of flowers in an old blue jar.