Potpourri

Yesterday I moved from one creative endeavor to another. All were done with a spirit of play. It was a

Potpourri

sort of day.

All of the dahlias that I bought at the farmers market on Saturday had faded so I cleaned out the vase and left the one sunflower from the bouquet in the vase because it was still fresh looking and beautiful. Then I saw how lovely the gold of the sunflower looked with the cobalt blue of the vase. So I photographed it.

Both Jon and I have been a little bit under the weather this week. He first became ill late last week and was uncharacteristically miserable for about 4 days. Then I guess my body decided it was my turn. Though I’m mostly dealing with a bit of digestive discomfort along with fatigue, yesterday felt like a good day to go slowly and do only as much as I felt like doing.

On my walk in the morning I picked up a couple of small twigs of leaves that had fallen on the path. In the afternoon I made sun prints of them.

As the summer wanes there are more hummingbirds finding my feeder in front of the kitchen window. Despite their tiny bodies, their high activity rate means that they need to replenish their energy frequently. Because they require so much nourishment, they protect their food sources mightily. Yesterday I witnessed several territorial air battles outside the kitchen window. Every single hummingbird wants to claim the feeder as his or her own personal pantry.

I put my long lens on my camera, sat on a high kitchen stool in front of the window hoping to photograph the next skirmish. But my patience wasn’t long enough. It seemed that the female hummingbird won out through sheer persistence because long after the battles ended she came to the feeder and had her fill while I was still waiting for the next skirmish. Though I had difficulty getting her in focus for all the shots, I liked the story these four shots told:

Female ruby throated hummingbird

Finally, the last photo I made showed most of her body and one of her eyes. Look at those delicate feet clasped around the perch and her tiny delicate feathers! In the second photo you can see that she already is clasping her feet around the perch while her wings are still wide.

And finally if you have 40 minutes to spare, watch this video of anthropologist, Wade Davis speaking about why ancient wisdom matters. The photographs in this video are stunningly beautiful. But I also found Wade’s vast experience with different native communities around the world fascinating. His premise that each and every culture has evolved a wisdom and knowledge that may be crucial for the survival of humans and that there are no less developed cultures, only different cultures rang true for me.

As a teenager I devoured anything I could find on anthropology and Margaret Mead was my hero. So listening to Wade speak took me back to earlier dreams. Though I decided against becoming an anthropologist (somehow it seemed impossible to me that I could actually do the things I read about) I still love to live vicariously through reading and hearing about the adventures of anthropologists.

May you walk in beauty.