A Little bit of Beauty in the Place of Someplace Dark...

Reach for One Another.....across all differences....Love is all that Matters

Really...what is Life all About anyway....

Find beauty and you find joy, peace, happiness, contentment, meaning, and even purpose.....no matter what fires may be raging in your life..let your sight be set upon that which surpasses, that which continues and even endures....beauty..... peace....love.....

A Matter of Perspective

Sometimes I need to scale down the view to keep myself from over focus on things I can not change. Things that I am not at all in control of in any way shape or form. Finding amazement in that  flowers continue to grow, bees pollinate....even as helicopters dip down right in front of me to scoop a bucket of water to bring to the fire burning just a scant distance away.... this keeps me sane, even joyful. The buckets on those helicopters really do appear to be minuscule...but then look at the legs on those bees...and they keep working  whether or not  fires are flaring...however teeny their efforts might seem....they keep on...they visit blooms, take pollen, nectar...go on with the business of being alive. And so we can...no matter what fires rage in our lives....nectar is around us....all the time....

Looking for Beauty

A compulsion to walk out to the garden and look at the orange trumpet vine in profuse bloom came to me yesterday afternoon. I picked up my camera and went to sit for a while by a large old vine at the edge of the garden. The hummingbirds were fighting over who gets to drink of her sweet nectar. I counted four and snapped photos of all of those I saw zooming in and around radiant blooms.

Joy began to creep into my heart once again. The simple (?!) act of focusing on what is good and true and beautiful shifted my vision from the smoke plumes, where the latest fire front is ravaging the forest, the engines coming and going, the terror of
back burning or back firing or firing or whatever new term is used to set the mountains on fire in an experiment to contain large scale fire events that won't be extinguished until large rain events occur....whenever this may be in a decades long  drought trend in California....to sit, to notice, to FOCUS on beauty is a choice which brought an enormous measure of relief to my heart. This is something I CAN do.

Orange Crowned Warbler

I was heading outside (so glad I grabbed the camera!) to watch the thunderheads tell stories. I heard the tap on the window and the white cat jumped off the chair at the sound. I found this little being on the deck. It let me hold it for 15 minutes, standing in my hand before hopping up onto my sleeve and then to my heart and eventually my shoulder before it flew away. What joy to have extended time to marvel at the delicacy of the eye lash feathers, the chartreuse of the body mingling into a soft milk chocolate brown. As we sat together the entire forest was alive with bird symphony. Everyone calling from raven to red wing blackbird. I love when the jays do the call that sounds like bushmen speaking. When the wind added a soft lullaby through the trees I wondered if life could be any sweeter. I watched the small head follow the song. Is it listening for it's kin? I imagined breathing all the love of the forest to this gem, wanting it to fly to whoever might be waiting for the return. I am so very grateful it did recover and fly away, leaving me with a sense of magical encounter.

Small Miracles

There are times when I feel drawn outside. When this call is followed little surprises wait. And if I grab my camera...sometimes I have the happy chance to record what is waiting.

I've been watching the side of the house for weeks now. I wash my dishes and stare out the window. Chickadees built a nest in a hole drilled by a Red Headed Woodpeckers. I've never really understood how dedicated birds are to finding and delivering food. I found a myself uttering small prayers for the life of the food gatherer. They land on the apple tree or the lilac just outside the nest, perched with the latest food find. They deliver and race out yet again.


This last week there have been many peeps form the wall as I walk by on my way to the front door. Today I felt that particular summons and went out to see a tiny head poking out of the hole. I have not seen the babies looking out before. It sat there for some time. I wondered at the miracle of the first flight. Never done before, into a world it has not seen. What inspiration! I noticed one of the parents in the apple tree for a moment. The fledgling peeped a bit, looked around, and then popped itself to the edge of the hole and flew to the rooftop before moving again to the branches of a nearby oak where it sat and peeped. A few minutes later I heard one of the parents join it in the invisible shadowy places behind foliage. I watched the wall for some time and never saw the parents return to the hole. Is it that simple? Maiden flight, off and running?