Sunshine on our Path

"I wish you sunshine on your path and storms to season your journey.

I wish you peace in the world in which you live . . . 

More I cannot wish you except perhaps love to make all the rest worthwhile."

~Robert A. Ward

* * * * * 

The sun is gleaming this morning, although our thermometer says it is still a chilly 41°F.  A little too chilly for doing much more than walking around outside.  As I'm writing this, the sky is clouding up, however, and so I'm glad we got out early.  (We.  That would be George and me.)

This is our forecast for the next few days.  Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

It's hard to look at all the winter kill in the garden and not get my hands dirty cleaning it up, but I'll save that job for a day when it is warmer.  Cold weather is for cooking and sewing.  In any case, we found lots of wonderful things to look at.

Tulips!

Daffodils!

These are even heading up!  Hope truly does spring eternal.

George hates photography almost as much as he hates sewing.  He decided to sun himself on a flat rock like a lizard.

There were a few of these little blue flowers.  These are about as big as a pencil eraser.  They have both delighted and disappointed me for decades.  The ones that grow are a mass of these pretty little blue flowers.  The others die for no apparent reason.  I can never remember what they are called.

These always remind me of pussy willows, although that is not what they are.  They are one of my favorite things to see in the yard.

I can't look at them without remembering a time when I was four years old.  My family was at a Boy Scout camp where my brother was camping out.  My dad showed me the pussy willows and I was completely enchanted by them.  (I was born a cat lover, I'm sure.)  I really, really, really wanted to show them to my brother, and so I took off looking for him, pussy willows in hand.  I doubt I had any idea where I was going.  I decided to cross a rushing stream on a log.  Can you guess what happened next?  I fell into the stream!  I was a nonswimmer.  I don't recall whether I was in any danger, but it was snow melt, and I do recall how shockingly cold it was.  My dad pulled me out.

In a few weeks, they will look like this:.

What would it be like to live in a world that looks like this?

If you were a spider or an ant or a worm, you would know.

"What about me?  What about my needs?  Huh?  Does anybody ever think about me?"

In Oregon, anything that doesn't move has moss growing on it.  I'm sure I've told you this before.

It was windy aloft, although fairly still below.  I love it when it is quiet in the morning and the wind turbine is spinning.  It makes the most gratifying tickety-tickety-tickety sound.  Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night, I can hear it.  It isn't loud, but it's rhythm is very distinctive . . . and it is relaxing when one is trying to fall asleep.

We were getting cold, and I starting shooting random things.  I like it when the clouds look like this.

We sat on the front porch in the sunshine for a while.  This is the siding on our house.

I love how photography can make even the most mundane things interesting.  (And as I write that, I think I've said so before.)  We decided we'd had enough and headed inside.  I started shooting random objects inside the house too.  This is one of the blossoms on my amaryllis.

This is the orchid Mae gave me for Christmas.

This is a piece of Austrian crystal that my cousin gave me after Holly was born.

This is a glass float we received as a thank you gift for a contribution to Oregon Public Broadcasting a few years ago.

And this is the nose of a glass polar bear our friend, Chuck, brought back after spending a summer in Alaska.

This is an Oregon DuDrop.  I found this while we were in Rockaway, Oregon, one summer.  It's made from a recycled light bulb and a crystal from an old chandelier.  Supposedly, it has rain water inside that was collected in December, 2007.  The shop where I got it had these hanging everywhere.  It was quite delightful to look at.  One could request rain water from certain months and years.  I took no end of grief from some friends we were with about the sentiment.  Sentiment or no, I still like it.  And I don't care where the water came from or when it was collected.

This is some sort of fancy plate (you collectors might recognize it).  It belonged to Mike's Great Aunt Gwen.  Her name was Gwendolyn Konigmacher.  (I'm glad I don't have to go through life with such a difficult name.)  It would make a good quilt design, don't you think?

Mike and I didn't appreciate Great Aunt Gwen until once, in the early years of our marriage, we paid her a visit at her home in Fresno for an overnight stay.  We were living in Phoenix at the time.  She must have been in her 80's by that time, and she had been widowed for years.  She told us how she had a group of friends who all telephoned one another in the morning to make sure nobody had died overnight.  (!!!)  Also, her house was something of a museum with all of her pretties sitting around.  If we admired anything, she picked it up and handed it to one of us and said, "Oh, you can have it."  Obviously, she had reached an age where material possessions had ceased to be important, and she was more focused on health, friends, and family.

I'm so glad we spent that night with her.  She had always seemed sort of frumpy and boring to us, but after that night, we gained a fresh appreciation for her charm.  I've always said that the people we love and lose never really die because they live on in our memories.  Although Aunt Gwen has been gone for decades, I can call her to mind as if it were only yesterday that we visited her.

Let's see. . . what else?  Here are the tops of my bottles of cooking wine.

And here are the ends of the rolls of paper towels stacked in my pantry!

You know you've become a Desperate Photographer when you start taking pictures of paper towels.  I'll stop now.