“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”

- Saul Bellow

Bill Coats (pedestrian) Bridge over Brays Bayou (and a cyclist) in Hermann Park. Houston, Texas.

Life’s a waiting game

When we gonna see that life is happening?

And that every single body bleeding on its knees is an abomination

And every natural being is making communication

And we’re just sparks, tiny parts of a bigger constellation

We’re miniscule molecules that make up one body

You see the tragedy and pain of a person that you’ve never met

Is present in your nightmares, in your pull towards despair

And the sickness of the culture, and the sickness in our hearts

Is a sickness that’s inflicted by this distance that we share

Now, it was our bombs that started this war

And now it rages far away

So we dismiss all its victims as strangers

But they’re parents and children made dogs by the danger

Existence is futile, so we don’t engage

But it was our boats that sailed, killed, stole, and made frail

It was our boots that stamped

It was our courts that jailed

And it was our fuckin’ banks that got bailed

It was us who turned bleakly away

Looked back down at our nails and our wedding plans

In the face of a full-force gale, we said

“Well, it’s not up to us to make this place a better land

It’s not up to us to make this place a better land.”

Justice, justice, recompense, humility

Trust is, trust is something we will never see

Till love is unconditional

The myth of the individual has left us disconnected, lost, and pitiful

Kate Tempest - Tunnel Vision

These rocks have been smashed by waves like this ever since Bass Strait was flooded at the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago. And we worry about miniscule rates of sea level change and tiny increases in temperature.

[Don't forget to enlarge this one to see the sea birds.]

I love to get close up to the structure of flowers with macro photography and discovered this about the sunflower. Each petal on the outside of a sunflower is a flower and is called a Ray floret. This inner part are the Disc florets which are the flowers tightly clustered together inside the ray florets. After pollination these are the flowers that will produce the seeds. It was fascinating to see the complex structure of the inner part of the sunflower close up and to watch as the tiny flowers unfurled.

It's almost bedtime down here in Oz, but I'll check out some MM pics before I go...and here's a song or two for the groovers:

Modest Mouse "Float On" www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTAud5O7Qqk

Flume "Holdin On" www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_H3cIsenBQ

Macro Mondays - "The Blues". HMM!

7 Days With Flickr - "Anything goes Mondays".

Plumbago are everywhere and the flowers are such a pretty shade of mauve, but what grabbed my attention was the forest of little green 'hairs' with their sticky droplets along the bottom of the stems of each flower. They are so willowy and delicate. Nature is amazing.

Macro Mondays - "Less than an inch"

7 Days With Flickr - "Free Theme" (Mondays)

I have no idea what these flowers are, but they are miniscule in size, grow close to the ground, and paint acres of flooded wetlands at Sacramento NWR in the colors of sunset.

This miniscule mushroom looks quite remarkable when viewed up close. Always found fruiting from well-decayed wet wood, those bright orange cups are fringed with long dark hairs - the eyelashes!

White coral jelly is another one of those wonderful rubbery mushrooms. This particular species grows right out of the ground rather than on dead wood like many of its kin. Not known to edible, likely only because it looks so tasteless, it does appear that all those pale little Gummy Bear look-alikes have been chewed on by some brave or famished miniscule critters.

I am always amazed at the intricacy of the Zinnia flower or should I say flowers since it is really a composite of ray and disk florets. The yellow stigma in the center reminds me of teeny yellow palm trees in the center of a tropical island surrounded by a sea of red. Without realizing it I am transported to this miniscule paradise. Lost in my backyard away from all stress and Covid-19 with only my camera in one hand and a glass with a tiny umbrella in the other. For just a fleeting moment…..Cheers!

A miniscule patch of moss begins life on the charred remains of a gum.

I love that end-of-the-day light as the sun begins its descent. The angle of the lowering rays make everything ordinary look magical.

I love the colorful foliage that changes through the seasons and the miniscule flowers

UP MRVHK-22 rolls east through Biggs Junction. Towering above the train is a large, vacant grain elevator that once served as a loadout for farms in this part of north-central Oregon. Even this grain elevator is miniscule compared with Mount Hood, which towers over 11,000 feet above the river level here.

I'm not sure how I spotted these tiny plants growing out of a cork. The cork is about the diameter of a penny. Just goes to show that life is irrepressible!

This is likely some sort of fungi. I have two small wasp trappers that are corked at the top. One of them had sugar water in it (which did NOT trap any wasps) and the other did not. One cork grew this and the other did not. It's hard to describe just how miniscule these little plants are...

Happy Macro Monday!

Correction - these are lacewing eggs and I think they're dead :) Thank you to Mary Wolfe for the identification!

Always helps the medicine go down, that sugar. I love it. Bad sugar...naughty sugar.

7 Days With Flickr - Macro or Close-up (Wednesdays)

Bokeh Wednesdays

Macro Mademoiselle - Macro Bokeh (Wednesdays)

The (miniscule) delta of the Seebach (Lake Creek) that flows into lake Lunz.

Cabo Espichel, Portugal.

The nature is really surprising on this magnificent wild cape. A veritable garden of miniscules wild plants of all colors line the rocky walls of the cape.

Here the sublime little thistle erects these strong stems against the often very powerful winds. In the background you can see the Santuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel.

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La nature est vraiment surprenante sur ce magnifique cap sauvage. Un veritable jardin des miniscules plantes sauvages de toutes les couleurs tapissent les parois rocheux du cap. Ici le sublime petit chardon dresse ces fortes tiges contre les vents souvent très puissants.

The tree I often photograph looks miniscule here at the bottom of the frame. Taken from side of Anglesey Mountain, near Newry, at the Northern Ireland and Ireland border

The shining magenta Face on this Anna's Hummingbird is not created by pigments, but by the structure of its feathers. There is a microscopically thin translucent coating on the surface of each wing scale and light reflects off both the front and the back of this layer. This layer also causes refraction (light travels slightly slower through it compared with air). But because the layer is so thin the light waves interfere with each other causing distortion of the colours, albeit pretty distortion. The same principle applies when a microscopically thin layer of oil floats on water, and you get a spectrum of colours. If the layer were just a few millionths of a millimetre thicker, the feathers would appear a different colour, just as the swirling colours of an oil sheen are caused by miniscule differences in the thickness of the oil layer. And if you view from the "wrong" angle, the shining colours disappear and the face just looks dull and dark. Incidentally the word iridescent comes from Iris, who was a Greek Goddess, and the personification of the rainbow. That is why the word iris is used to describe colourful things like eyes and flowers.

Anna's Hummingbird was named after Princess Anna d'Essling the 19th century Duchess of Rivoli, wife of Prince Victor Massena and son of one of Napoleon's Marshalls. It was named by René Lesson, a French naturalist who also had the Pool Frog (Pelophylax lessonae) named after him.

I photographed this male Anna's Hummingbird by the banks of the San Diego river in California, just before we set off on the Baja cruise.

This whimbrel was picking up these miniscule crabs, one after another. Seems like a waste with such a giant bill. I'm sure they're tasty though...

Semiahmoo Spit (Blaine, WA area)

It smelled oppressively syrupy, like the bastard offspring of cotton candy and every gummy flavor known to man. Or like a theme park’s candy store, like all the walls were covered in miniscule sticky handprints and the occasional odd smear. The space, dark save for a strip of light allowed in by the open door, had all the chemical, inviting charm of a Twizzler.

For a long minute he seemed consumed by the task at hand, unperturbed - plucking what looked like globs of bubble gum off his gloved hands without looking up. The only sound- the stick-unstick of his diligent picking until he paused. Sniffed. Then sniffed again, as if to make sure of something.

“You smell sour,” he eventually concluded impassively. “Third door to the left. Ask for Arty Fischel. He’s your guy,” he added. And with that, he resumed his plucking.

____________________________________________________

Outfit: Bhite Wlack Outfit by [The DeadBoy], now discounted for the TMD Weekend Sale at [The DeadBoy] mainstore.

Shoes: The Killoafers by [The DeadBoy], available now at [The DeadBoy] mainstore.

Hair: Bangs Set 1 by Modulus, available now TMD, and afterwards at the Modulus Mainstore.

Glasses: Sin City Glasses by Garmonbozia, available at the Garmonbozia Mainstore.

Pose: from set 226 by SAPA Poses, available now at The Warehouse Sale, afterwards at the SAPA Poses Mainstore.

Unlike plants, lichens do not have leaves, stems, or roots, or a waxy outer cuticle to control body water content. Lichens continue to grow during periods when dew, mist, and rain water are present but a summer dry period can cause them to become dormant until the next rainfall. Miniscule mineral particles that are carried by the wind during wet conditions are dissolved and absorbed by the lichen.

Lichens produce their own food using sunlight energy and do not feed on the tree bark. The lichen bodies are attached to the outer tree bark and remain on the surface. Their rhizines typically do not penetrate deep enough into the inner bark, and cause no harm to the trees they inhabit.

Taken in the grounds of Llanerch Vineyard, Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales

We had the first snow of winter here in Yorkshire today so I spent a while trying to photograph garden birds in the snow. In Russia and Northern Europe Starlings are summer migrants and fly to places like Britain in the autumn to join our resident Starlings. After an autumn moult the feathers all have a pale tip giving the birds a spotty appearance like this. But these tips wear off by spring leaving them largely spotless. The dark bill will also be bright yellow by spring. The beautiful blue and green iridescence is not formed by pigments, but by refraction of light through a microscopically thin transparent layer on the feathers. Light reflects off both the front and back of this layer and the light travels slower through the layer causing minute phase differences in the light which creates colours. Miniscule differences in the thickness of the layers create different colours; blues or greens in this case. The same thing happens with a drop of oil on a puddle. Each rainbow colour is created by tiny differences in the thickness of the oil layer.

The original Old English name for this bird was "Stare" and from the eleventh century the "ling" part was added, but only for young birds of this species. The name Stare persisted in the literature until the late eighteenth century, after which the name Starling prevailed. Its scientific name Sturnus vulgaris translates as Common Starling, and it is still common, but is red-listed because of a more than 50% population decline in Britain.

As bagpipes were playing and the sun was still peaking over the roof the chapel, these three men made their way across the golf course to fire Civil War cannon sitting along side the world-renouned wedding chapel at Top of the Rock near Branson, Missouri, in the beautiful Ozarks. They fired it towards the Lake of the Ozarks (a miniscule portion of which can be seen in the distance) at dusk to celebrate sunset. In this case, although I would have loved to have seen some cloud coverage in the sky, it was the end to a perfect day!

DSC_3297

© Stephen L. Frazier - All of my images are protected by copyright and may not be copied, printed, distributed or used on any site, blog, or forum without expressed permission.

Looking for Steve Frazier's main photography website? Visit stevefrazierphotography.com. Contact me at stevefrazierphotography@gmail.com

This is where the two hours of lost time began (A couple of posts ago). With native Bluebells (Wahlenbergia sp.).

On the sidewalk of a suburban street, in the nature strip, there survives a tiny patch of Bluebells. They have been there as long as I can remember, year after year, on that same corner, their purple bells brightening up the patch of grass and introduced streetscape.

My suburb was once covered by the sprawling Volcanic Plains grasslands, once home to Wahlenbergia and a myriad of other grasses and flowers upon which an entire ecosystem revolved around. There is now less than 2% original volcanic plains grasslands remaining in Victoria and they are listed as critically endangered. Fortunately our suburb has a number of grassland conservation reserves, though miniscule in terms over-all area that has been lost, they are vital for the protection of these communities and the associated fauna that relies on them such as the Golden Sun Moth and legless lizard.

These Bluebells are a tiny remnant of what once was, somehow surviving in the urban jungle.

Quietly, I proceeded along the new birding trail I discovered. Blanca remained unseen down below while I could stretch just tall enough to look out over the top layer of shrubbery. We had only a few more minutes before the evening sun would be gone.

Then I heard something. It was familiar but I couldn’t place it at first. Somebody with a high-pitched voice was excitedly chattering away. Finally, beyond the range of my optimal eyesight, I recognized a shape crowning a twig. I could make out what looked like the gleaming lance of a medieval knight angled upwards in resolute readiness – and that’s when it struck me who you were!

I’ve had encounters with you in the garden where you suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hovered 4 feet in front of me, buzzing at me like an oversized bee, challenging me. You’re so popular with gardeners and photographers, it’s easy to forget that you are free and wild, roaming the wilderness. I didn’t realize this, but every spring you fly from Mexico northward up the coast as far as Canada and even Alaska and then back south along the Rocky Mountains to return to Mexico for the winter, an incredible journey of roughly 7800 miles! You memorize every garden feeder and every secret forest meadow along the way, and you’ll even pluck insects right out of spider webs. You live by your wits and your feisty personality. You truly are an iridescent little jewel on wings, and I love you and admire you.

Obviously, you could see me but you still remained for a long time, chirruping along. I think perhaps your song told of this beautiful and timeless truth: Nobody is ever too small to carry themselves with kingly self-possession and accomplish heroic deeds.

Be full of miniscule magnificence!

Claudia

plants are growing with various degrees of success. if i don't cause root rot by too much watering the slugs, snails and white fly finish the job! i'm not defeated :)

i've replaced three lavenders, one fern and a couple of other plants. more plants were on the edge of obliteration but have survived, thank goodness!

one of my big upsets was an evergreen clematis named 'avalanche' bought from b & q www.primrose.co.uk/50-90cm-clematis-cartmanii-avalanche-3... and planted next to the back arch. the flowers were absolutely stunning, but once they had finished for a long time nothing happened. i was despondent. i thought i'm messing everything up :( i stopped the watering and waited, waited, waited ... suddenly one day i spotted what looked like a miniscule shoot. it was! i now have five healthy shoots coming off from the leaders :)

i've planted a yellow berried pyracantha to cover the back fence and another for the side fence at the back on the right. it will take some time but they're both healthy, at the moment

rocks, stones, broken crockery and canes surrounding the plants to help prevent pet damage - works to a certain extent :)

i still have a couple of problem shrubs but i've stopped worrying. what will be will be :)

for many years my garden was a shrubbery flic.kr/p/Lhv9ag which i loved. a picket fence covered in an ivy hedge coming down in a storm meant that over time changes had to happen flic.kr/p/2mn2x8a i'll be glad when the trellis is covered in honeysuckle and jasmine. that's the plan ...

www.flickr.com/groups/gardening_is_my_hobby/ helpful for ideas. thank you for sharing

Les Escoumins

Male Starlings sing to attract a female, but when one appears they start showing off by waving their wings like signalling semaphore. The wing waving isn't vigorous flapping, it's like slow motion flying. I captured this one on St Kilda in the spring and this was the first time I have managed to isolate a displaying Starling even though I have seen it many times. The glossy black plumage has almost lost all of its winter spots which wear off by spring as fragile feather tips. Here's a spotty bird in winter plumage: www.flickr.com/photos/timmelling/50858871707/in/photolist The iridescence is created not by pigments, but by refraction of light through a microscopically thin transparent layer on the feathers creating colours. Light reflects off both the front and back of this layer and the light travels slower through the layer causing minute phase differences in the light which creates colours. Miniscule differences in the thickness of the layers create different colours; purples or greens in this case. The same thing happens with a drop of oil on a puddle. Each rainbow colour is created by tiny differences in the thickness of the oil layer. But if you catch the bird at the wrong angle the colours disappear and the bird just looks black, exactly the same as the iridescent colours on hummingbirds. Incidentally the word iridescence comes from Iris, the personification of the rainbow in Greek mythology. That's why beautifully coloured things like eyes and flowers are named iris.

The original Old English name for this bird was "Stare" and from the eleventh century the "ling" part was added, but only for young birds of this species. The name Stare persisted in the literature until the late eighteenth century, after which the name Starling prevailed. Its scientific name Sturnus vulgaris translates as Common Starling, and it is still common, but is red-listed because of a more than 50% population decline in Britain.

This was a quick phone snap from my long awaited visit to the Sky Garden at the weekend. A fantastic place where the views over London are immense, and the wine rather expensive!! (I did not indulge at £9 for a miniscule glass, perhaps that's normal London prices but I got a whole bottle for a tenner at Pizza Union afterwards!)

I'd highly recommend a visit if you get the chance, photography is a bit tricky as once the interior lights come on there's a lot of glare on the windows, but regardless of that it's an amazing place to sit and watch all the lights come on as London gets ready for dark.

Edited in Snapseed to disguise the glare and bring a bit of drama and texture to the sky, and because I just can't help myself 😂

What I hadn’t realised yet, was quite how much of a headache this was going to turn out to be. Earlier, on the cobbled beach at Cala Barril, I’d experienced one of those moments when everything slows down yet speeds up at the same time. Twice, three times I thought I’d caught it as gravity took its toll and my prized, loved, most often used of the lot of them six stop filter headed towards its fate. And what’s so flipping annoying is that there’s only the tiniest mark on the filter. Really, it’s quite infinitesimal when I look at it. Hard to believe that those two unsightly blotches that look like raindrops have hit the front element can come from such a miniscule blemish. All of this at the very first scene on the very first day of shooting. Folder number one of many to come on this adventure. And of course it was one of those nice magnetic filters that didn’t come out of a Christmas cracker or the bargain shelf on Amazon or eBay. Replacing it was going to be a tedious and expensive exercise. It was still just about usable in the right lighting conditions, but the removal tool was going to be busy in the rare instances in which it came into play.

We’d come to the north coast a couple of days after arriving on the island, once the standard period of settling in on the local beach at our resort under a warm October sun had been observed. It wasn’t a long drive - nowhere really is in Menorca - along the main road to the inland town of Es Mercedal, from where we headed towards the sea on a quiet narrow road flanked by low rounded hills and small pine forests. A long bumpy track led us to a rough parking area where just a handful of cars had been left waiting for their owners to return. Over here, away from the tourist havens of the south, the landscape was wild and untamed, and the tail end of a storm that had crossed the mainland was whipping up a sea that I’m more used to seeing on wintry days at home. It’s an island of contrasts, and if you’re prepared to put in the shoe leather you’ll find some splendid isolation on this sparsely populated northern expanse of empty beaches on a windswept afternoon.

From the car park we walked towards the west, following the long distance trail, the Cami de Cavalls that traces the circumference of the island, slowly making our way towards Cala Pregonda and its unmistakable sea stack that protruded from the shallows like a huge sharkfin. We’d stop here on the way back, but for now we’d keep on walking towards a place where I’d hoped to find another sea stack I’d spotted in the magazine that had been left in our apartment. It turned out that the location tag it had been given, Cala Barril, was a red herring. Half an hour later we stood on the empty stony beach watching the waves race in. An average day for one of my local haunts at home, but a feisty one for this gentle sun kissed Balearic haven. There was no sign of the rocks I’d been led to believe were here (we’ll come to those in another tale of modest disappointment), but this large wall of sandstone, a couple of hundred metres out to sea looked pretty good as the sun pierced its way through a gap in the sky and lit it up against the greens and blues that surrounded it. It’s just a shame that after this episode, my filter choices became a bit more limited and I spent most of the rest of the trip improvising with a three stop and a beaten up polariser that I really should have replaced some time ago.

Despite the irritation caused by damaging the filter that goes everywhere with me, one thing was already abundantly clear. This isn’t a place that’s immediately synonymous with dramatic landscapes such as Iceland, the Faroes, Lofoten or Madeira. But there are images waiting to be found all over the island by those who look for them. Sea stacks, abandoned beaches, quiet coastal inlets, a sea arch, olive groves and huge inland caves. Even a wetland reserve. And lighthouses of course. If you’re in the right place at sunset, the Tramuntana mountains of Majorca come into play too. Above anything else, this island made me wonder about all the other places that go under the tog’s radar. I didn’t come to Menorca expecting a landscape photographer’s paradise. We were here for a holiday - three weeks in the warm sunshine as the mercury began to drop at home. But it’s pretty good you know. You could easily come here on a photography trip if you don’t mind a bit of a walk now and again. And if you bring some spare filters for when one of them makes a sudden bid for freedom on a stony beach.

Amidst the vast expanse of land, sea, and sky, a lone sentinel stands defiantly against the elements. Split Rock Lighthouse, an architectural marvel perched upon the rugged cliffs, appears diminutive in comparison to the titanic forces that surround it. Like a speck in the grand tapestry of nature, this humble structure is dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of its surroundings. The land stretches out in an unyielding embrace, the sea crashes against the rocks with a primal roar, and the heavens above boast an infinite canopy of swirling clouds. In this juxtaposition of the minuscule and the majestic, one cannot help but marvel at the audacity of human ambition in the face of nature's relentless power. Split Rock Lighthouse, a testament to man's resilience, forever etched in the annals of time.

Actually "by lake" but its a body of water nonetheless. I've had these two photos around for a while and thought they were somewhat complimentary and similar in feel, but did not want to use the now miniscule comment photo for either. Thus the idea of a collage...not an ideal nor my favorite format but it serves fairly well in this particular circumstance.

Hathian has always been home to the homicidal. A homing beacon for those whole lack impulse control and a host to genetic anomalies. Any sensible person who found themselves in this shit hole would escape by any means and as soon as they could. The lack of real government oversight and miniscule funding make this little parish a hotbed for the depraved.

A new session of water drop shots, this time experimenting with 3 drops, which I found to be very tricky. Getting the timing just right so that the third drop hits short enough after the second AND before the whole thing collapses is, well...yeah, I think you get the idea. By using my phone to record in 240 fps I managed to get a rough idea of the timing but still, the tolerances and miniscule, so getting it right is not easy. I managed to get a few shots where you can actually see the third drop creating an effect, but not exactly what I was aiming/hoping for. Drop size, timing between them and the delay before the camera fires are all factor that influence the result and I still haven't quite understood the relationship between them. I use the Mirror Up function in the camera to avoid having to deal with shutter lag as well.

I used milk for opacity control and I went crazy and added many different food colours to the mix as well as yellow colour in the drop. No thickening yet; I still don't have the strength for that!

I used 2 Godox speedlights off-camera on 1/32 power. One had a red gel mounted and illuminated the background and another, with a softbox mounted, illuminated the drop. The background was simply semi-transparent plastic binders in front of a white background. ISO 100, 1/200 or 1/250 shutter speed and varying f-stops.

Focus was achieved by standing a pen attached to a bunch of Blu Tac in the bowl so it was completely stable. With the camera switched off I fired the MIOPS Splash to see where the drop landed and then positioned the pen accordingly, with the drop landing slightly off-center towards the side facing the camera. Then I focused on the pen using autofocus to get perfect focus. I use back button focus so the camera doesn't try to focus with each shot :)

"Disclaimer": I totally forgot to clean the filter (good thing that was on so it didn't get to the lens) and background regularly so there might be some slight spots here and there. Sorry about that! :D

Again, please get in contact with me if you have any advise and/or experience you'd like to share. I am aiming for shots with 3 drops, crisp sharpness overall and even a soap bubble bursting. Maybe even the liquid going through the top of that from the bowl below. Perhaps in a year or so? Heh!

In the next drop-session I might use some opaque liquid in the bowl below and hopefully get a "plastic'y"/CGI look. I might also vary the camera angle and lighting to get some reflections and/or shadows as well BUT! Next photo shoot will NOT be drop related.

---> Need. To. Do. Something. Else. Next! <---

miniscule blue flowers close up :)

This miniscule woodpecker is only found in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and even within its limited range it is uncommon. We managed to find a nest and here is the female paying a visit. The male has a red crown but I didn't manage a decent shot of him. They inhabit high altitude Juniper woodlands, which is exactly the habitat where this was taken at Dinsho nature reserve. I have just typed in the scientific name into Flickr's search engine and only 16 photos appeared, with only one at a nest hole, so I thought this was worth sharing. I hope you agree.

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Soundtrack : www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t_9J-rGB6M

LET ME FALL – JOSH GROBAN

I am human

I am imperfect

I make mistakes

I am not a robot

and I am glad about that

because it is through our human condition

that we grow and become more enlightened

what is the light without the dark

what is happiness without sadness

what is calm without the storm

and I can endure this pain

because I am made stronger by it

because I experience more empathy by it

because I know what it is to be hurt

so I can enjoy the freedom that happiness

brings to my spirit

because I can fly

I can dream

and when I die

I will not stop to question why

but I will look back and be glad

I will not feel sad or bad

because I know I did my best

before my eternal rest

and if I ever let you down

I thank you for the lesson taught me

I thank you for making me a better person

I thank you for the time you gave me

before I sleep; before I dream

I count my blessings and all it seems

to me, to be, is a gifted life

not free from strife

but a life rich with experiences

some good, some bad

a rich tapestry of being

an open-eyed; freewheeling and all-seeing

roller-coaster ride that often left the tracks

but something in my soul would always bring me back

that little spark of life

that little spark of love

that never ending spark of hope

that's how I coped

just a tiny spark is all we need

to cast off the weight of shackles

that pull us to our knees

listen to the silence

listen to the sounds

of endless love

of eternal life

of all the things you held so dear

a gentle caress; a delicate tear

a fragile nature; a tender ear

everything that made you YOU

is in there somewhere

and no-one really leaves

those who are meant for you

we carry them in our hearts

we respect them;

let them shine like morning dew

a little spark again

a little spark in gentle rain

a little spark that softens pain

and eases all our burdens

until here we are at journey's end

the earth stands still; it is our friend

healing us; feeling us

our ancient arcadian circadian rhythms

connecting us; resurrecting us

life is a cycle that never ends

round and round it goes again

and each new incarnation brings

an older, wiser soul that sings

of life; of love

of all those miniscule precious things

in this moment I am complete

made whole again; firm on my feet

I toppled many times before

you let me fall; you loved me more

because you knew what it is to be me

you opened the cage and and set me free.

- AP - Copyright © remains with and is the intellectual property of the author

Copyright © protected image please do not reproduce without permission

My artwork is a compilation of two of my photographs

In the scheme of things, my problems and stressors are miniscule, but they're mine so they matter to me. Mack's quality of life is important to me and I know that wearing a cone really cramps his style - he can't go outside on his own during this gorgeous Autumn weather we're having. I'm incredibly busy right now with work and I spend well over an hour outside every day with Mack so he can enjoy the great outdoors. However, yesterday evening, I was in the middle of something I really needed to get done and Mack wanted to go outside. George had just gotten back from walking Sadie and I heard him say, "OK big guy, let's go out." After a few minutes, I looked out the window and there was George "walking" Mack.

After we finally found our cute little cabin we decided to explore the nearby town of Marion. We "found" this beautiful train station that had been converted to hold shops. The arched door on this end was a barber shop and of course Anita went in to have a chat and get some shots! Haven't seen those yet! I'm including a photo of our cute little cabin in the woods. It had a tiny living area, a miniscule kitchen and Two bedrooms with complete full baths! Each had 2 bunkbeds and that took some getting used to but we really enjoyed that place! It had the name of Sycamore Lodge. :)

This favorite heron blended SO well with its environment I probably wouldn't have seen it had I not accidently flushed it and managed to see where it landed. Even then, I had trouble finding it with the naked eye. It was definitely one of my more rewarding sessions with a greenie although its breakfast catches were miniscule little fishies.