Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

Let's see:  Consulting my Field Guide for the Metropolitan Area: how to identify trees,  clearly our tree is in Group 12:  "Leaves alternately arranged, compound".  Definitely, our tree has arranged its leaves perfectly! Dark Grey Bark:  "Scaly and fissured".  I mean, our tree is still young!  But it is fissured, as we can see from the tomato leaning against it!  There you go!

Rain, rain, rain. Malaise is nibbling at my fingers. It’s been fall for days now, but not a single leaf is falling. Night is falling early that’s for sure, But why no red and gold? I don’t care, really; what difference does it make? My mood has mesmerized the evening. I know it passes; all things do, but why not let us keep the candied moments? I need a summer full of ribbon grass and blue. I’d like to put a footprint in a new dimension, I’d like to empty out its time and space and plant fall promises. I’d like a little color. Would you like to share the yellow with a side of mottled green? We’ll take some fresh ground red, and could you hold the misty peach? For desert, we’ll split the rosy layer iced with burnt sienna. Cerulean to drink, I think, and don’t forget the henna.

Twiddle die twiddle dum twiddle dee I’m so happy to be A harvesting bee It’s so good to be me To be joyful and free With blossoms to sip on And pollen to nip on The sun at my back A full pollen sack There's no place that I'd rather be.

The calm rhythm of a windless rain brings shelter for our growing twins.   

Rain, rain, rain. Malaise is nibbling at my fingers. I know it passes; all things do, but why not let us keep the candied moments? I need a summer full of ribbon grass and blue.      I’d like to put a footprint in a new dimension, I’d like to empty out its time and space and plant fall promises. I’d like a little color. Would you like to share the yellow with a side of mottled green? We’ll take some fresh ground red, and could you hold the misty peach? For desert, we’ll split the rosy layer iced with burnt sienna. Cerulean to drink, I think, and don’t forget the henna. A Second Magic Tree Reveals Itself 

I barely escaped with my life! It was an innocent evening of surfing, when lo!  My domain was hijacked by GoDaddy.com, and there I was  in the horrific clutches of the help forums!   Trapped, was I, within Vague Shapes and eerie Inscrutable Abbreviations.  The landscape, haunted by bad jumpy music site after site, was interrupted only by promising threats like "your call will be answered in the order it was received..."   Fearing the worst and dodging the deadly searching tracker-phaser, I ran towards the nearest spiral of barbed wire.  Clawing, I threaded my way back through the enemy URLs to my happy home here at DiscoveringMeaningInLife.    More amazing still, I have returned with the only known  photograph of the terrain  and the pulsing, punishing Tracker-Phaser bolt!  Do not be deceived by the pale colors and apparent serenety....

Balto the Heroic Sled Dog Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the Winter of 1925. Endurance · Fidelity · Intelligence

Late afternoon.  Grey.  Reflected sun. Behind the Metropolitan, near Squiva's territory

Wait a year, I hear, for the wreckage to clear Before launching another endearing career. Wait a month at least before choosing a beast to replace the lover who’s passion has ceased to enchant or entice or enliven the feast. I meant to be rigid and buttoned up tight. I meant to go slowly and wait for the right time to notice another or care for a night full of brightness and lightness and fervid delight. Let's follow the trail with our watering pail, and we’ll see how it plays in a couple of days. North East Ramble

What if nothing ever happens, will there still be time for wishes? Will every hand I hold be fleeting? Is it too late to grab the strings that brocade life into a silken cloak? If I could find the words, would I put my wish into a sentence, Or would I try to pull the ink back out of the page in fear of never? What if instead I pull the edges in around that glossy wish And turn it into damped down hammered gold? It’s a wish for heaven’s sake, Why not? I miss the simple act of presence. The Golden Apples of Central Park

What are these tangled whites?  Perhaps a bush of daisies?  A gathering of zenias? White corn flowers, bunched? A fall full of chrysanthemums? A snowy drift of weeds?     Or perchance a charm of humming astors, vibrating over a bush.

I asked for Squiva for this particular shoot, but since we needed two subjects, the National Union of The Squirrel sent over Squiva and a Sibling.  Nevertheless, even in makeup this off-the-set photo is identifiably our Squiva.  Notice the care given to the tail, the attention to sunlight splashes and the ability to create a beautiful composition in the tiniest split of a second.  North of 79th Street, South of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

There’s an old glove I had that summer When the weeds were eating up the flower beds. We had a broken patio, and a fence with spirea.  I looked up from my work that day, and there Mom was, dressed in polka dots and yellow. A broken thing by then, our life. But one time there she was, S tanding in yellow polka dots, Happy as a dandelion. Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, August 2010

Elegant New York City visitor on her way to Central Park admires the beautiful clock in Grand Central Station's grand concourse.

Look at the beautiful red New Tomato One against the grey bark of it's New York sidewalk Kentucky Coffee Tree! We let New Tomato go to a passerby, by accident really. It revealed itself to a person while I was at the store, and it was gone.  Before New Tomato One left, though, it led us to an amazing new discovery:  Our very first Tomato Twins!

Here's Ounce once again, trying to hide behind a reservoir leaf.  It is not easy to catch a glimpse of a little Ounce determined to hide.  Ounce knows he ought not to go too near large bodies of water, because he (or she) cannot swim!    Reservoir, September 2010

Cannas in the  Conservancy Garden, September 2010

Catch anything? Nope. Harleem Meer, September 2010.  "I'm gonna go fishing" by Duke Ellington and Peggy Lee 

It was so clear in my mind, It was as if I saw it.  It was! Do you know what? I wish I had a photo, I could show you what it was like, To laugh at nothing. As real as pie, as high as a kite, and as happy as a gladiola. Bud after bud. It was as clear as if I saw it. Almost a gladiola in the south Conservancy Garden, July 2010

An early end to a late summer day, rounded out with a sun rimming rainbow Looking South toward Turtle Pond, September 2010

When did it go away, that blue of summer. A circle drive with white paint and bubblegum, Grass green with red brown leaves, velvet sided. My childhood lover out back playing. Basketball! Yes, on a lot of dried and cracking mud Dusty with bouncing. Do you feel it now sometimes? Of course I don't, we can’t read minds, I don’t allow it! No, but once upon a time, a focus crystal turned our intersecting worlds to liquid color, A blue-green dress with daisies, The crinkle of an unwrapped piece of time. A fortune in a cookie, A dribble and a showoff shot, Barefoot summers, aware beyond perceiving. Across 5th Avenue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Our magic tree has had a wonderful summer showering blessings over beings great and small, seen and unseen, who dare pass  through it's shadowy aura. Magic Tree on Reservoir Path near East 95th Street

This great,  sheltering London Plane acts as an antenna for those designated undercover joggers, who must regularly check in with headquarters. 

"No more beauty could be added to this perfect afternoon" said I.  Then fountain Rainbow came to play. South Western Reservoir Path, September 2010

It takes a quick eye and an opened mind to find a rainbow resting in a sprinkler's moving  waters.  Keep a lookout, though, for a honed eye will find the golden sap among the rainbow shavings. Shakespeare Garden, September 2010

It’s a dangerous game, nostalgia. A distant house and a time long passed away to misty recollection, I take no trips to that far country, planned at least. Yet as I walked along my happy here and now, An unkempt patch of lofty sunlit flowers snatched my mind. And as I stood martyred to the place, a quiet aura caught me up. I thought to hear that distant sidewalk, Listening, working apart the ropey threads of sound, A purring shifting car on Hanson Street, crunching gravel as it comes along, into our unpaved drive, The August locust pulsing, pulse, pulsing, Bobby's dog panting, barking once or twice, The mellow squeak of the screen door slamming softly, The stopping sounds of the four-door Nash Sedan, Slide and swish, “Who is it, Honey?" "It’s Aunt Marcie.” The slowly developed smell of bleach and dust and drying sheets, Sun, sweet peas, hot sidewalks, It’s a bumble bee that comes to take me back, riding on the prime meridian of home. Conservancy Sout...

Standing alone on Cedar Hill, dripping beauty