I love the detail and the unhurried, sleepy quality of this Mexican scene. I’m not sure whether the amount of detail removes it from the “Landscape ” category or not.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/11/reminder-for-ccy-photo-challenge-21-landscapes/
Click on photos to enlarge.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/11/reminder-for-ccy-photo-challenge-21-landscapes/
This is the second flower brought to me by the hummingbird lady. I can’t get over the pattern on the front part of the flower and I’m wondering if it was caused by being wrapped around the pistil. The other part of the flower doesn’t seem to have the pattern on it, so perhaps it was wrapped around it on the outside. I’ve never noticed this in any other flower before and it makes it look artificial, but it isn’t
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/10/flower-of-the-day-may-11-2016-bearded-iris/
Truth
I fly on wings through morning dew
to try to get away from you.
I cry in vain, I kick and scream
to slip away—but still I seem
in spite of anything I do,
still to be caught up in you.
So I give up to float the stream
flowing from this morning’s dream.
Let all that it may generate
flow through me to create my fate
at first for minutes of my day
then hours and days that float away
to lose themselves in clouds of dreams
that leak out from the day’s stitched seams
conceived to keep reality
of other worlds inside of me.
I pull at threads and slip between
into the universe’s scene.
There thoughts float free in eddies of
creation that consist of love
and hate and light and dark and all
that generated our earthly ball.
We seek to have just part of it.
Impossible from the start of it.
We do not know the why of it,
but we are born and die of it––
that paradox of evil and good
made tragic by our parenthood.
That truth born out by earthly schemes
we seek to comprehend in dreams.
We are not meant to understand
by what generative hand
life flowed into the universe.
But still we’re fated to rehearse
the truth of light shadowing dark,
in novel, painting, play and quark.
Dramas in the world around us––
the sounds and sights that still astound us––
contain these opposites within––
light versus dark, yang joined with yin.
These ironies of life and art
are, in the end, what create heart.
The prompt today was “Generation” which of course means not only a generation, but also the act of generation. That prompt led me to this poem which is really about some hard truths of life that we all face but few of us, if any, really understand. Nonetheless, the truth of the world is something that we all hold within us.
The hummingbird lady brought me this bloom when I was manning the information booth at the Lake Chapala Society. I once knew what it was and I remember it has a sinister association, but I can’t remember what it is. It is an exotic and for some reason I associate it with a Venus flytrap..Perhaps a flower that puts out an odor that attracts flies and then devours them? This is all on the edge of my mind, and I may be totally wrong, but in any case, I think it is interesting against the blue of the counter and the blue of the wall. If you are curious about the hummingbird lady, click on her name above.
5 minutes later––Ha!! Mind like a steel trap! I was right! This flower is a STAPELIA GIGANTEA–one of a few flowers that smells like rotting meat and so attracts mainly flies. The purpose, however, is not for the flower to feed on the flies, but rather for the flies to pollinate the flowers.
Bare Necessities
I scream, I cry, I moan, I curse.
My pleas for help are curt and terse.
I look around for something worse,
then lift the sofa just to rehearse.
I quote the Bible–both psalm and verse,
request a doctor, request a nurse,
predict they’ll need to call a hearse.
Why must its contents be so diverse?
I grit my teeth. Then lift my purse!
Even the blandest flower can be spiced up. Take for instance this unspectacular shot of dahlias:
I had decided to throw it away, but instead transferred it to a folder on my desktop that said “Flowers Unused.” It’s where I put things I have considered using in my blog but haven’t—either because I found one I liked better or meant to use but lost on my desktop or ones that I’m just saving. Sometimes I put things there just because I don’t know where else to put them… or they wind up there by accident when they should have gone into the file of photos already used in my blog.
I checked and found it was fair game. I’d never used it in a blog post. On the other hand, it was so unspectacular that I was a bit embarrassed to use it, even when cropped down to a single flower. So, I played around a bit and ended up with this:
Pretty fuzzy, but some interesting shapes, shadows and shades. Still not blogworthy, though, so I played around some more and got this:
and this:
and this:
and finally, this:
All of these photos came from the first photo shown, making use of only cropping, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, temperature, tint and sharpness settings—the basic tools in the edit function of Photos—the app on Mac that replaced iPhoto. Pretty fun. Like making a tasty new dish from leftovers in the fridge that anyone else would have tossed out.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/09/flower-of-the-day-may-10-2016-bearded-iris/
Oops… Looks like I used the incorrect prompt stanza for today’s Tan-Renga. Here is the one I should have used, by Georgia. Hers are the first three lines, mine are the bottom two. (A Tan-Renga is a poem written by two people. The first issues a challenge, the second answers it)
Dykstra-Brown photo
a dream in a dream
sand slipping through old fingers
autumn leaves turn red
replaced in time with green
and sandcastles shaped by a newer touch.
http://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.mx/2016/05/carpe-diem-tan-renga-challenge-month_8.html
The idea is to take a three-line stanza, written by one poet…and write a two-line stanza to complete the Tan Renga. The first three lines were written by Chiyo-Ni (1703-1775)
morning glory!
the well-bucket entangled,
I ask for water.
and my answer is given
in rain.
In her Share Your World Challenge, Cee asks questions and we answer. I don’t usually do it because I reveal so much of my world in my blog that it doesn’t seem necessary, but I was so intrigued by the picture of the monkey that she used in the prompt this time that I decided to answer her questions this week. (I gave a link to that money picture at the end of this post, by the way. You must see it.)
Here are this week’s questions:
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
If I were to win a trick monkey, the trick I would love to have it do is to have it house train itself to use the potty so I could let it roam free without worrying about having to clean up after it. Such a boring, practical answer, that I’m going to give another one as well. I think I would train it to sit on the backs of my dogs and remove fleas from their coats. The very expensive formula I applied seemed not to work, so perhaps the monkey could be a system of earth-friendly flea removal!!
The caring thing I did for myself today was to make a smoothie out of homegrown papaya, organic blueberries, 1/2 of a frozen banana, mango juice, lactose free skim milk and ice. It was delicious. Ooops. I forgot the bran. Well, tomorrow.
I most often wear black, but I love wearing vivid green and hot rose/pink as well. I can’t wear subtle colors like white, tan, gray or pastels.
When I travel I love to have no set agenda. I like to wander, both down roads and through the day, not knowing what will come next. I like to stop whenever my curiosity is piqued and stay for as long as I wish without meeting a schedule.
I am grateful that our fundraisers raised enough money to send a music student from San Juan Cosala to music camp in Huntsville, Alabama. Within the next few days I look forward to starting the fund drive for our summer camp for kids in our pueblo.
I’m also grateful for Yolanda, who comes to help me out three times a week and who today found all my extra hangers, which had mysteriously migrated to my upstairs casita!!
Now, go HERE to see that monkey! You won’t be sorry.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 