for what we give

the Alnwick rose

the Pat Austin rose

the Heritage rose

As far as photography, I’ve been feeling a little stale lately, like I don’t really have anything new to offer. You know a few vintage finds here and there, some clearance score or favorite meal of the week. But maybe I’ve been thinking about it the wrong way. Maybe the trick is finding new ways through familiar things.
And most of my weekends feel decidedly less than glamorous (think: catching up on the laundry, watering the plants, hitting the grocery, and other sundry and not very exciting errands… like spacing around the garden.) I am growing 40 variety of roses right now, mostly the English and the antique roses. And the best thing that happened to me this week, despite the heat wave, they blooms.

Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give. ~ Edward Arlington Robinson

I am content

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I’d call myself a fool to ask for more…
~ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.

Well I don’t grow strawberries, I plant hydrangeas. I love the apple green foliage, the blue blooms and the bushy shrubs. I dug a bed for them, I moved nearly every. single. piece. of rock and stone friends…
I am content with my ‘blue bed’.

I like your mouth

“As it so happens, I like your mouth.”

“It doesn’t — ”

“Challenge me?” He set the bottle down and moved to the end of the bed. “An outspoken woman makes the world a livable place. You have fire in you, and I would never put that out.”

~ Dannika Dark, Twist

Weekly photo challenge Face

the opening of tea rose

Even the unexpected fits the plan
All works of days a network meshed so fine
that even accidents assume their fitted place
the unknown, gambits predesigned.
the uninvited, already registered
What I have done today
was launched at birth
not mine alone but everyone’s
back to the single strand.
One more, one less, unthinkable
fulcrum for toppling the universe.
Nothing means that wasn’t meant
Nothing meant that doesn’t mean.
My touch upon your hand this morning
confirmed ten billions souls in balance
explained five million years of standing up
justified a million galaxies
and the opening this afternoon
of that tiny tea rose near the window.

~ ‘Cosmos’ by unknown

Weekly photo challenge Earth

five

five things that have made her week

1. this thrifted sterling brooch

{sporting an umbrella brooch on rainy days; she is dressing for the occasion ;)}

2. these sprouts

{of fuchsia, that survived the frost season}

3. these vintage cameras

{$5.00 each from the church thrift store. It’s just one of those things that are pretty to look at but doesn’t have much use.}

4. this sandwich

{she has been noshing a chicken salad w/havarti on rye bread when she got home from work, three days in a row}

5. these blooms

{the first spring harvest from her own rose garden}

the honeysuckles

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Weekly photo challenge Admiration

to walk between the raindrops

I love you
because no two snow flakes are alike
and it is possible
if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops

~ ‘Resignation’ by Nikki Giovanni.

the unnoticed & the necessary

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.
~ Margaret Atwood, Variations on the Word – Sleep

Weekly photo challenge Abstract

when one dined well

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Weekly photo challenge Dinnertime