June Bloom Day

Here's what's abloom in June!


Cannas look so exotic and Victorian to me. What a pleasure to leave them in the ground and have them survive the winter. I have two varieties in my yard--I'd love to have a few more.




Spiderwort. I know, I know, it's a weed around here...but it's also a beautiful, hardy native. Love the little blue faces.



Cherry Tomatoes Sweet 100. I think the tomatoes look gorgeous against the brick--although they don't much like this soil.



More cannas. This doesn't really show the flowers....but it does, to me, convey the feel of the garden on a hot summer day.

Gardens at the American Rose Society

Took a road trip the other day and stopped in at the American Rose Society gardens near Shreveport, Louisiana. We missed peak bloom by a couple of weeks, but there was still much to enjoy.













I would shower you with roses, 

Dozens of roses,
and peonies, lilacs, camellia, gardenias.
A thousand ruffled, scented blossoms
piled all around you.
A roomful of plundered gardens, and you,
The sun to which they turn.
You, the sun.
I follow you across the sky,
Dizzy, thirsty, longing.
See this light on my skin?
it turns golden, it shimmers,
each fine hair rises to your touch, 

limned with your light.
How do I make you see? held by your gravity,
I am free to fly.
And so I bring you roses,
and peonies, lilacs, camellias, gardenias.
Perhaps you will see my face in theirs.
Perhaps, then, you will know.

Iron Photographer

The Utata group on Flickr is one of my favorite places on the Web. Every two weeks, writer-photographer and pillar of Utata Greg Fallis posts the elements for a new Iron Photographer project. The challenge is to make a photograph incorporating three required elements. The resulting images are amazingly creative, beautiful, intelligent, and often hilarious.

I can't resist Iron Photographer. No matter how tired I am or how much I have to do, I drop everything to mess around with those three simple elements. It isn't always a successful image, but I always enjoy the challenge . . . and the conversation that follows.

Here's my entry for Iron Photographer #71. I shot it tonight, right in the middle of making dinner, abandoning my preparations because that's when the light was right. Required elements: 1 - something pink;
2 - a piece of furniture; 3 - minimalist style.




I made this pic for Iron Photographer #70. Required elements: 1 - something warm(ing); 2 - something from your desk; 3 - a quotation pertaining to either of the compositional elements. (The quote: "Flowers seem intended for the solace of humanity." John Ruskin.)





I could go on and on. The photos in my "hall of mirrors" post are both IP shots. Altogether, I have 51 Iron Photographer images, created over the past 2 1/2 years. You can see them here, in my IP set on Flickr.

One more of my faves, from IP 65. The requirements: 1 - a shirt; 2 - something you'd find at a child's birthday party; 3 - square format.





I'm not sure if my photography exercises should be considered creative expression or pure procrastination--but I won't give them up!

hall of mirrors

My work goes meta. While the painting on my easel creeps along ever-so-slowly, I thought I'd share some fun photos I've taken using my own paintings as creative elements. I can amuse myself for hours making these kinds of pictures, usually prompted by group projects at Flickr.


Click here to see some of my favorites among the photos on my Flickrstream.


The glass in this photo is the one from my orange spiral painting a few posts back. It's also featured in the painting it's perched on. Don't worry, there's glass in between. I called this one "glass under glass under glass" (every Flickr photo gets a title).
Sometimes I crack myself up.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

I love this idea: a once-a-month post featuring whatever it is that's blooming in your garden. Begun by Carol on her May Dreams Gardens blog, this happy practice now has hundreds of followers. While there is MUCH more to be seen in bloom around town than in my little plot, here's what I have blooming today:



Dianthus--these little dudes have been blooming away all winter long. I suppose they'll take a rest when it gets hot. Or maybe not. I've never been a Sweet William fan, but these little bloomers get full marks for persistence!













Buttercup--Yes, I know it's a "weed," but how can I resist these cheery little faces popping up between my pavers? I just step around them, smile, and wave.















Daffodils--Running a little late, and looking a little bedraggled after all the rain the past few days, these daffodils still have that laughing daffodil charm.



















Fig leaves--Okay, I know this isn't a bloom pic, but it's so pretty, it may as well be. These fig leaves are that mad feverish green of early spring, and they sparkle in the sunlight as if they're brushed with gold. It's dark, dank, and dreary today, and still they gleam.

Oh, and there's a sunflower just coming into bloom on my easel. That counts, too!

Someday I'll learn the secret to formatting multiple-photo posts without putting them all in a straight line. For now, this jumble will have to do.

What's blooming in your garden? Drop by the May Dreams Gardens blog and post a link to your photos for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Join the party! You don't have to be a garden blogger to participate.

Welcome to USDA Zone 8

There is a big palm tree outside my front door. Not a sugar maple, not a red oak, not a gnarled old apple. A palm tree. It has three fibrous, serrated trunks and an arcing fountain of fronds that trail against the upper windows of the building next door. This is a foreign creature, citizen of a different vegetable nation. I feel I should show my passport before sitting in its rustling shade.

Beyond the palm is a fig tree. The figs don't look ripe to my New Englander's eye, but an obstreperous group of starlings seems to think they're worth an argument. I'll trust the birds; I don't know figs. Nor do I know bananas, whose lavender inflorescences thrust like rockets against the high brick walls of my courtyard. I brush past encroaching piper auritum, a black pepper cousin with strange white pipe-cleaner flowers. Its crushed leaves really do smell like root beer.

I've never seen any of these plants before. Their exotic architecture reminds me that I am very far from home. I am stunned by my good fortune. I unpack my botany texts and field guides, pour myself a sweet tea, and begin to learn this strange new botanical tongue. My passport's been stamped; I'm staying awhile. I have a big palm tree outside my front door.

the light according to palms

Everyone knows light influences mood. The grand lighting designer for this latitude must have set the mood to “euphoria,” because here I am staggering around sun-drunk and bedazzled, high as a kite on the startling light in this humble inland city. I knew it would be hotter here—and it is!--but I didn't think ten degrees of latitude would lend such intensity to the visible light. The only place I've seen this shattering white radiance is at the beach.

I've always marveled at the light near the shore, even the cold New England coast. It is so clear, so pure, so exhilarating that I want to eat it, and I know it will taste cool and tart and clean, like fine lemon sorbet. This Louisiana light is Tabasco-sauce light. It burns my bare shoulders and leaches all the color from my midday flowers, searing its way into my brain until I can hardly think.

On this flat, floodplain landscape, under this transcendent light, I feel all the time like I'm about to round a corner and find an ocean. The local paper mill adds to the illusion--its sulfurous emissions stink like a salt marsh at low tide. People here joke that it's the smell of money, but to me it truly smells like the sea. I can't shake the feeling that I'm perched on the glittering edge of a continent. This is liminal light. I am poised on the brink of wonder.

all y'all

I was given something precious recently, an unexpected boon. It's a syllable. A sugarplum of a syllable. Specifically, a syllable in my own name. Here in Louisiana, my formerly curt “Kim” sounds as if it tastes good, its lone vowel pulled like taffy into a leisurely extra beat.

As a lover of words, I am in love with these words around me. They ooze through the humid air, one eliding into another, more like songs than sentences . . . sometimes unintelligible. The vowels pause to sunbathe, and all the endings are soft. Demanding consonants are massaged into submission, oppressive prefixes and endings simply dropped. It's all about the flow, and the conversation lilts along to its own indulgent rhythm. I had to try it. It tastes like blossoms on my tongue.

In Louisiana, I am a woman called “Keee-yim.” I like her quite a lot.

tea in the garden at midnight

-->-->One teacup, blue-and-white. (One saucer. One willow ware plate.) Two chairs with baroque red curves. Three trunks of a sheltering palm tree. Four: the numerological equivalent of my new address. Five fingers of my open hand, where I trace the evolving lines of my palm. (That word palm again—I may be a bit obsessed.)
This is how I count, these days. The blessings follow one upon another, bright beads slipping off a silken thread. The drowsy heat, the ecstatic light. Exotic, erotic flowers, and trees I've never met. Crawfish and catfish and Tabasco on my tongue. Greetings sung out by strangers, who savor each elastic vowel as it lingers in the air between us.

Boundaries and borders and transitional zones are fecund places. Look to the edge of the forest, the edge of the sea. As I move through my own transitional zone, learning these new languages, counting these lightshot beads, everything, everything is illuminated. How do I merit such flamboyant gifts in the ordinary moments of my days? It begins to rain and I run to the window to see if gold coins are falling from the sky.

1,500 miles from home and I know I should be lonely. But here in the dark is this soft, soft air, a lingering caress. I sit alone in the garden at midnight and know myself beloved.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
thank you for sharing my journey.

Yankee Backyard

I love to see laundry on the line. There's a dreamlike, ethereal quality to those disembodied garments fluttering in the breeze. A touch of sunlight momentarily transforms the humblest t-shirt into cloth of kings, and I feel a comforting, domestic sense of things-as-they-should-be when I see a full clothesline on a sunny day.

It feels like home.

This photo was published in JPG Magazine.

Crabapples

A recurring theme for me. I love them.


Equinox Approaching


Crabapple Kaleidoscope

one more--I just had to share

I needed a pic for Photo Friday. This week's theme is "Friends". This particular shot makes me cry...

serendipity

Sun Dancers


August Light


Daisy Daze


Buddy the Mighty Hunter

I must confess, I have a new obsession. When I looked for an online gallery for my vacation pictures, I discovered Flickr. I'd had an account there for some time, but I had never taken the time to explore the site. Once I started exploring, it took over my life! After spending a week drinking in the images upon images at Flickr, my vision has been forever changed. I'm on fire for photography, and I also want to paint and paint.

Here are a few photos I've improved with some newly acquired photoshop skills. I'm looking at things in a whole different way.

See my Flickr page here.

enchanted August

We took a walk last night at a favorite place of mine, Beatty Point. The sun was angling down behind the trees, a light mist was rising, and the fields were filled with Queen Anne's lace. It was magical. Miraculously, my camera saw it the same way I did!

Here are a few pics. You can see all of them on my Flickr page.

Niagara Falls photos

I'm back from our trip and finally have the photos processed and posted. It took me a while--I shot over 500 of them! It was a fantastic trip--one of those times when everything just flows. Daniel enjoyed it as much as I did.

Now he has gone back to his dad's and it's time for me to get back to work. I'm dealing with the post-visit, post-vacation letdown. I need to get painting again. Art cures all.

Here are a couple of my favorite photos from the trip. (I love my camera!) You can see more of them, with commentary (no, not all 500, I have a little bit of self-control!) on my page at Flickr.

I'm still working...really, I am

My son is here for the month, so I'm spending as much time with him as I can...but I'm still working at my art, taking pics, sketching, etc. Tonight, while we watched a DVD of the first season of "24" (what a cool show--I'd never seen it before!), I cut paper from my roll of beautiful Wallis Museum, toned it with acrylics and stretched it to dry. Now the curl is out of it and it's ready to go! Here's a pic for proof.

I wanted a dark neutral color...we'll see how this purply shade works out.

Since that's not a very pretty pic, I thought I'd post one for Susan, who is still waiting for her roses to bloom. This is our Queen Elizabeth hybrid tea, which blooms its guts out all summer long with only the most minimal care. I planted this rosebush when I was nine. You do the math (it's not a young plant!).

Crabapples

My crabapple tree (known as "Kimmy Crab" to my loving family since I planted the tree at age 9) is in full, glorious bloom. The sun came out for a few brief moments today and I was able to get some lovely photos of her abundant blossoms. I cut a couple of branches to do some quick pastel sketches.

Can you smell it?

Amish Country #2

These shots convey some of the local flavor: hand-lettered signs; impossibly narrow, winding roads; and a typical one-room Amish schoolhouse. I didn't take any pictures of the ubiquitous Amish buggies because it felt somehow intrusive. Maybe next time I'll get some shots outside one of the stores, with the horses tied to the hitching rail. It was too darn wet this week to do a lot of prowling around in the open!