Summer Sun, Somethings Begun

 

"Bees do have a scent you know, and if they don't they should,

 for their feet are dusted with the spice from a million flowers."

~Ray Bradbury

Dandelion Wine

Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer, but reality says we have about three weeks until the season really begins. Either way, there are signs everywhere that cheer me up in a summer way, and one of them is roadside sunflowers, and little bees enjoying them. It's a pretty happy turn of events, and quite welcome. Especially when it's May 27th, and it's cold.

 Mother nature certainly has a strange sense of humor.

😂

Imposter Seasons

 

"If I were a flower…I would be a sunflower. To always follow the sun, turn my back to darkness, stand proud, tall and straight even with my head full of seeds."

~Pam Stewart

It's late summer now, and but there are still some tiny sunflowers to be found along the roads here and there in the San Joaquin Valley. They always make me smile. I want to stop at each spot and take a photo, just so I refer back on cold days of winter, to keep me warm inside. The weather was perfect this summer. Not too hot, if not a little too cool. One night in July, I was actually shivering, while I was batting on the Franklin Bridge. I hardly got bit, there weren't nearly as many mosquitos as in years past. But there were sunflowers, which no matter what, they are always there in summer. That's a good thing, if not, I might not know if spring had ever ended!

The Little Autumn Spider Named Elyse

"Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn... that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness... that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling."

~Jane Austen

Persuasion

I was visiting Tilden Park, in Berkeley, searching for a little more autumn to fill me up, when I saw her. A tiny spider. I hate spiders, but she was way to small to take too seriously. just a speck, and I had no heart to harm her. It was cold, as Berkeley is usually this time of November, so I figure she has enough going against her. She was just trying to be her own true self, and hide on a nearly perfect leaf. But we made friends, and I asked politely if I could photograph her, she obliged, and in a little while we both smiled and said goodbye. Before I left though, she whispered to me that her name was Elyse, and I told her my name was Carly, and she promised to write if she got work. I smiled, nodded, and said, take care Elyse, and then I left. I already miss her.

 #56 Leaf Of The Day

November 16th 2019

Cull Canyon, Ca

Nikon

~Mood: Happy

~Me :)

Maybe Late Afternoon Is Autumn

"Maybe late afternoon is autumn; summer's retreat not being archived, but suspended, as the feathered vane of the bird wings it's way across the avenue."

~Michelle Cahill

The Accidental Cage 

It makes me sad to have to dig though my October files, to be able to post a little autumn, but it's what has to be done, until the rain comes in late next week, and clears the air of the heavy toxins lingering from the fire up north. I used to enjoy it when the air turned cold, and I could smell the wood burning fireplaces in the neighborhood, but at the moment it just makes me terribly sad. My goodness, a roaring fireplace is as a part of all the wonderful memories of late autumn, as leaves pumpkin pie and hot apple cider are. There air is so thick with smoke, my eyes are burning, and as nightfall comes, it only gets worse. I am devastated for the victims of the fire in Paradise, it's a complete HELL space there. A lot of natural beauty was lost, and it will be years before it's restored, if it ever is! So, I expect, for the remainder of my autumn journey, I will be posting my Leaf Of The Day photos, but perhaps not very many landscapes. Not this year. Maybe I can learn to find autumn elsewhere for a little while.

 #57 Leaf Of The Day

November 17th 2018

Photographed October 11th, 2018

Samsung

~Mood: Tired

~Me

A Little Bit Of This, A Little Bit Of That

Leaf Of The Day

October 3rd, 2016 

 

"Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth and depth and distance. 

What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling 

hills that reach to the for horizon?

~Hal Borland

The world was a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, this past weekend! Saturday Alan and I took a short ride to the East Bay, where I did a bit of leaf photography under one of my favorite trees in Cull Canyon, while Sunday was spent watching football on TV with my guy, while the outside showed the first real signs that the earth has finally, finally, turned from treacherous summer, to chilly days, with hints of soft rain! You know, all the things that just make my heart sing! I can't wait for the first baked sweet potato of the year, covered in butter and cinnamon! And in just a couple short weeks we will finally reach our vacation, and with a little luck, we will finally get back to Plumas! I like when life is a little of this, and a little of that!

Don't you?

:)

 "Come said the wind to the leaves one day;

Come o're the meadows and we will play,

Put on your dresses scarlet and gold,

For summer is gone

and the days grow old."

~Children's Song 1880

Mood: Quiet

Me :)

Wintery

"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."

~John Steinbeck

Travels With Charley: In Search Of America

Winter begins. And I am determined to find the beauty in it. 

 Even the ugly beauty.

Actually, I love winter. It's cold, and wet, and frosty.

Well, everywhere but California.

Here... we call winter Naked Spring.

:)

Nah... I kid the bleak season!

;)

Mood: Wintry

~Me :)

 

Serendipity

"It's hard to believe in coincidence, but its's even harder to believe in anything else."

~John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

It's really cold tonight, so cold in fact that the local weather forecasters are predicting snow as low as 1,000 ft, which pretty much means, that Mt. Diablo, Mt. Hamilton and the Santa Cruz summit will definitely be getting a dusting of snow... and so will Grizzly Peak Blvd here in the Berkeley Hills. That probably won't be until Friday, but our little house guest, Foster, who I told you about in yesterday's post, had to come in tonight. I am not sure Dylan and Hendrix are ready to have company over, especially someone so wee, but ready or not, we are all going to have to make it work! 

Sometimes people come into our lives quite unexpectedly. Sometimes people leave our lives quite unexpectedly. We don't have much choice in these matters. All we can do is... our best! When I think about all the human friends I have lost, for one reason or another, I get so sad. I remember the day I drew a personal line in the sand and said... ENOUGH. When Mr. November, ran screaming from my life, I decided I would never put myself in that position ever again. NEVER. And then one day, you find yourself making a friend, and you forget why you decided to shut yourself off so completely? It's funny how some of the best things in life, are so rarely convenient. I still love Mr. November, but I don't think about him much anymore. A fact that occurred to me just the other day, when I was thinking about the fact that I rarely think about him anymore. LOL!

"Of course, that's how life is. A turn of events may seem very small at the time it's happening, but you never really know, do you? How can you."

~Tom Xavier, Dark Curses and Faerie Dreams

Although I do smile when I remember how he used to make me laugh! And how everything was okay when we were around each other, and in the last little bit of time he was around, before he moved away, we were... well... understanding each other a lot better. I know, what I am saying doesn't make much sense, but it does to me. It's all good. But I really don't think of it much anymore, time passes, and feelings fade, and light replaces sad feelings.

Right now I have a feline house guest who needs me. His name is Foster, and he is already my friend. He was put on the same path Alan and I are on, and maybe he will stay with us forever, or maybe one day he will move on to a new family, and it's what's meant to be. Life is sometimes not convenient. Sometimes it hurts like HELL. Sometimes it's the work we have to put into things, that pays off the most. Time moves us along to each new adventure, whether we want to go or not, but moving forward with an open heart, makes any adventure more exciting!

Serendipity: noun; the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable things not sought for; also: an instance of this.

Mood: Happy

~Me :)