"Whatever you believe you can do, begin it."  -Goethe

Aunt Leaf - Mary Oliver

Aunt Leaf - Mary Oliver                                                                             

Needing one, I invented her -

the great-great-aunt dark as hickory called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves, and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool, and whisper in a language only the two of us knew the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel cheerful as birds

out of the dusty town and into the trees where she would change us both into something quicker - two foxes with black feet, two snakes green as ribbons, two shimmering fish - and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door

with the rest of my family,

who were kind, but solid as wood

and rarely wandered. While she,

old twist of feathers and birch bark,

would walk in circles wide as rain and then

float back scattering the rags of twilight

on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she'd hang in the milky moonlight

burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,

this old woman made out of leaves. 

Things to Think - by Robert Bly

Things to Think by Robert Bly

Think in ways you've never thought before. If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message larger than anything you've ever heard, vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose has risen out of the lake and he's carrying on his antlers a child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about to give you something large: tell you you're forgiven, or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

The Olive Room

The girl's passion was olives. The girl's dream was to have a room that was - an olive. A room she'd be free to nibble her way through whenever she entered. The girl blossomed into a woman - living on the olive room's edge. ~sjp

Fog in the Morning

It was a most lovely morning today. The fog rolled in early and stayed for a long time. The view out my window reminded me of Kyoto, Japan. 
Also, it was a treat to scope out my favorite weblogs on this foggy morning and find that my 'Timekeeper in the Garden of Shells' piece was a new addition to the beautiful weblog of Cendrine Rovini. Many thanks to Cendrine! Her sublime art can be found at her weblog Hortus Noctis and her Etsy shop Felicula.

Fog by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Spooning Yams

... All the particles of the world are in love and looking for lovers. 

Pieces of straw tremble in the presence of amber ...  -Rumi 

Day Shadows

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. 

-Leonard Cohen

Woman in the Banana Trees

when I was young I used to wish somehow that I could absorb things that my eyes would see, that to me, were either incredibly beautiful or somehow memorable...I devised a private reasoning that I referred to as the "wide open eye"...I would use my wide open eye technique in order to try to fully comprehend the beauty/awe of something or other...maybe a flower, maybe a tree covered in moss, maybe lovers holding hands, whatever it would happen to be, I thought that if I literally stared hard at these things that were of wonder to me, that then I could somehow absorb them, take them into myself much more deeply than just a casual glance or look...so I would blatantly stare at whatever it was that captured my attention, not blinking, just looking long and hard, with wide open eyes ... look closely - do you see the woman in the banana trees?

Web Dancers

These tiny straw-like flowers once lived on one of my succulents outside. One windy day some of them were blown off and into a fine spider's web. Don't they look like tiny dancers on a trampoline of web?

Ueda Yoshihiko

Quinault 1 : Ueda Yoshihiko : image from book 'Visions of Japan'

 i just got a most wonderful book by  photographer Ueda Yoshihiko. It's called 'Visions of Japan'.  To quote from the forward by Ito Toshiharu:

"Ueda's photographs are not images that have been actualized apart from the viewer, they are images that enter the viewer. Looking at these photographs, I see that secret topos, rich with an undulating chiaroscuro that we all carry inside ourselves, take shape unconsciously. Here one finally meets the archetype of that Self and the Other that has long lain buried within. Within the mystery of things released from the narrow confines of human consciousness is the place that transcends that which is visible to the eye."

His images of the Quinault rainforest are stunning in their beauty and the very feelings of this rainforest almost leap out of his photos.

Pomegranate Coral

How to extract the seeds from a pomegranate:

"The secret, it turns out, is to break apart pomegranates underwater. Here's the trick: Score the leathery rind, and then submerge the fruit in a bowl of water while you break apart the segments and tease the seeds free from the white pith. The pith floats, so it's easy to skim off. Pour the rest through a colander and in minutes you'll have hundreds of seeds and no stains!"

Syringa Isabella

Rock Rose Portrait

The wondrous papery rock rose in her beautiful orange & pink & scarlet array.

My Fridge Collage

Scrapbooks are wonderful . . . and so are refrigerator collages!

Elyse & Her Moonsnails

Free

Jade Leaves

My Great Gramma's Pot Scrubber