It's Another Year of Challenges/Opportunities Says Pollyanna

Hoping 2015 is full of golden happiness for you!
(May you live in interesting times.)

But also hoping that you are smart enough in your resolutions
To have given this Mother Earth her due
So that she will be around for another
Four and a half billion years.

The Lighted Day

Cold mornings, sometimes drizzly and sometimes with fog, keep me hunkered in my living room with hot coffee.  Yesterday I glanced out the kitchen window to see a brilliant sunrise greeting me over the tree tops.  I put on slippers, and while still in pajamas and robe, grabbing my new point and shoot Canon camera (Christmas gift) which replaced my 6-year-old one with the scratched lens, and I started memorializing the event. 

That early morning light began to grow even more lovely as I leaned across the deck railing with my arms held high.

Truly this is Mother Earth's reminder that the days are now going to grow longer.

What was even more amazing was the view behind me where the sun began to spill its red across the river facing the west.  This is very unusual and it did not last long.

My Wish for You

Please forgive my editing of Luke.

Masked in Deceit

Yes, the photo below has had the spirit photoshopped out of it!  But it is near my birthday, so I do not care.

A Nexus

Perhaps I should have brought this geranium in from the deck, but then I would have missed this beauty!  I was thinking of networks, paths, nets, systems, structures and hierarchies during the time I was fiddling with this photo.

Painting a Walk

My world in winter can be damp and gray and dank and cold.  Yesterday it rained all day.  Today the fog hangs thick and close in the yard.  I took a neighborhood walk two days ago and today I spend the hours ignoring the outside and re-painted what I saw digitally to create my own little fairy land.  What do  you think?

I had to trespass on a vacant lot to get this photo of a nearby marsh above.

I made it into a blurry painting because it was already a little blurry.

This was a photo of ornamental grasses planted outside a nearby millionaires lovely, but all too often vacant, home.

Fancy Dress

While walking in a suburb of the city the other day I passed this tree with the most fascinating bark.  I do not know what it is but the photo does not do it justice.  Can you see the nail some idiot used? Click on the photo for a closer look as all I did was sharpen it.

Splash!

Busy with the coming holiday season so all I have are these blurry photos through the window!!

"Do you mind?  I would like some privacy...!"

"You are not going to go away...are you?"

(Since Anita asked below:   this is a House Finch, Haemorhous mexicanus,an introduction from the south and now fairly common in my area.)

Mining for Gold

If you have the miner's eyes you can see rivers of gold just outside your door in the fall.  Go ahead and click on the photo and go for a swim!

Ignore it?

I have word verification turned off and yet you may still see the window below when you wish to comment.  Ignore it, and it is my understanding that your comment will go through!

Jaws

Are you trying to tell me something?

Doppleganger

It was first seen through binoculars, through clouded window glass and past the dancing distraction of feathered feasters on the lawn below.  It resembled a forgotten rose, brown petaled, a perfect circle of design rolled out like stale pie crust on the top curve of an alligator-backed resting log, dull but intriguing.

Later in the day I was close enough to inspect both pattern and color and shape more closely, and was surprised to see the familiar image of a female pine cone with its distinct scales smashed firmly against the rough bark wood as if raped by some autumn monster and left for lost.

But wait, neither pie nor flower nor cone is this object.  It is soft and pliable, if still firmly attached, and is indeed a fungus playing hiding games in the fall light.  It is a cabbage fungus in its normal costume, pretending it is something else.

Disguises

Moving into the season of sharp shadows 

And electric droning winds

Winds that tear the tears from ones eyes

And slice open the tufted cover across your chest

Moving into the season

Where warm colors to the eye are a pretense

That the earth is not sleeping

But just being cozy and quiet for a day.

A season where noise is

Crackling like a crazy fire

Where things fracture and splinter

Making you ever alert for intruders

And the only softness 

Is a winter's dried seed bouquet

Brought indoors and set on the side table