Month: August 2005

Painted Ladies

Despite Leslie’s recent denial, summer is, indeed, nearly at an end as indicated by my Thursday visit to the Pt. Defiance Rose Garden, where the bloom is definitely off the roses.

Though there are a few delicate beauties still clinging to the vine, the garden is spent and no amount of water poured on it will change that fact. Most of the roses have long since been plucked, and most of those left are drying out rapidly. Even the best of them

are looking stressed.

Luckily for the garden visitor, though, those painted ladies of late summer,

these dahlias, are in full bloom.

Though I’ll have to admit that many of these flaunt their beauty too much for my taste,

the camera lens still finds it difficult to turn away, though I certainly won’t be bringing any of these home.

Big blooms are nice to look at, but at my age I prefer less-demanding, longer-lasting blooms in my own garden.

The Big Picture

Reading This Too this morning reminded me how easy it is to bring your old self with you when you finally manage to move to a new place, fully intending to leave the old self behind.

Even in the best of situations, not that I’ve ever been in such a situation, I suspect that no matter how fast or how far you’ve come once you stop you’ll discover much to dismay that your old self is right there with you.

My latest obsession is trying to get a picture of the elusive blue jay,

the one that despite nearly a week and a half and fifty plus pictures I still haven’t taken a picture I’m really satisfied with.

In trying to do so, I almost totally ignored the

moon that was merely a few degrees away from the Jay who demanded attention with his loud scolding.

Even worse, I nearly missed the miracle of

the small hummingbird suspended in mid-air simply because I already had a shot I was satisfied with.

If I’m not careful the delightful awareness bird watching has generated in me will be lost to the old self that drove me in the past, the one that constantly needed something I didn’t have, something I desperately needed to be happy until I had it and found that it really wasn’t what I needed after all, that it, like most of what I owned, was just one more burden to bear in a world already overburdened with possessions. I have to constantly remind myself that the point isn’t to get a “trophy” picture, well at least not the main point, but simply to enjoy the moment as fully as possible.