The Minnesota State Fair starts tomorrow. This event always signals the end of summer to me. It ends on Labor Day and typically school starts in many local schools the day after Labor Day. I always feel as if fall begins after Labor Day with all of the new activities that begin then. Our grandchildren are marking off another year in their rapid growing up, one will be a senior in high school, the other a sophomore. Tomorrow I’m heading over to their house to take senior photographs for my grandson.
It has been an amazingly beautiful summer here in Minneapolis and I am still
Savoring Summer
every day that I can. This morning I made some photos of my flower pot on the deck. It’s full of bright beautiful blossoms and brightens my day every time I see it.
I also went out to make more photographs of Queen Anne’s lace flowers this morning and I brought a few home to make closeup photographs from many different angles. (There was a huge area of flowers blooming along a fence-line in a ditch. And I made sure to take only a few from the myriad of flowers blooming in that area.)
I love the lacy light feeling of these flowers and I’m also fascinated by the way they fold in on themselves to form seeds after their bloom is finished. Such amazing details and delicate beauty! On my way to the Queen Anne’s lace flowers I found other interesting masses of blooming flowers, texture and color that I stopped to photograph.
What a gift it is to be able to walk in wild areas and enjoy the lush green things growing all around me. And then to come home and play with photographing the lacy delicate beauty of Queen Anne’s lace flowers. Are you also savoring summertime and soaking in all it’s beauty?
Gratitude
What did you notice?
The dew-snail;
the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod.What did you hear?
The thrush greeting the morning;
the little bluebirds in their hot box;
the salty talk of the wren,
then the deep cup of the hour of silence.When did you admire?
The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;
at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;
then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.What astonished you?
The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.
What would you like to see again?
My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,
her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap.What was most tender?
Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
the tall, blank banks of sand;
the clam, clamped down.What was most wonderful?
The sea, and its wide shoulders;
the sea and its triangles;
the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.What did you think was happening?
The green beast of the hummingbird;
the eye of the pond;
the wet face of the lily;
the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—so the gods shake us from our sleep.
— Mary Oliver
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