A Weekend For Remembering

THIS three-day weekend has been full of weeding, working, laughing, hoping for sunshine and counting blessings. Oh, and eating strawberries.
Here's a picture and a word or two to keep my hand in this "blogging thingy."
Today we went to the cemetery to say hello to Mom and Dad and my Uncle Frank and Aunt Mildred. Small flags on the veterans' graves. We walked around the old country cemetery to see the hard work others had done cutting the grass and raking up fallen limbs. On every tombstone in the cemetery there were flowers on the graves.
I know some of the people buried there probably don't even have relatives who remember them any longer, but the local church must have some really good people helping out.
Our section of the cemetery was overflowing with flowers. You could really tell my parents and grandparents were well loved!
Today was a good day for gathering flowers - remembering my mother's favorites. This calla lily we got from her garden and brought home to flourish in ours - femminismo
p.s. Check out the pistil, especially at the bottom, and the fluted, rippling petal edge!

Lilies of the Field ... and Garden.

THESE lilies don't toil, but we surely do. The Mister and I have buzzed like bees all day long and it's hard to calm down now, at 8:30 p.m., and force myself to slow my mind and body. There is so much I want to do ... and so much we had to do earlier.
Tomorrow is another day, I know. It's just difficult to get everything done. Someday we will have all the time in the world to lay and do nothing, but this summer day we found plenty of something to occupy us.
I am posting flowers today since I want to remember the lilies of August. While working in the yard, the scent of the stargazer and calla lilies flowed through a section of the back yard and made every trip that way a pleasure - even though my knees were aching!

While I was googling sites for composting our fir tree's needles - don't know whether they would make good compost or not - I came on Blessed Gardens. The author of the site said in a section on lilies that the tiger lily is "powerful" and the orange color symbolizes power, too. Some people and pets are allergic to them, however. I didn't know that. Calla lilies symbolize "female magnificence" - I'd go along with that; they're pretty lush - and the pink lilies symbolize "female coquetry." Ooh la la!
These tiger lilies have company: shorter yellow daisies that come up in abundance.
I hope your day today has been a good one and that you got some ART accomplished in addition to any gardening chores you had. I had planned on doing art all day long, but that didn't happen. I painted a couple of pages in my journal and painted the cover for my Daddy Journal. I must find the "filling" for that book. I know what will go on one of the pages, and that's a reproduction of a love letter he sent my mother. A pretty innocent, but important letter: He told her he was coming home and asked if she was ready to get married! That will most assuredly have to go into the Daddy Journal - femminismo

Is It Really Wednesday?

TIME, time, time! Trying to take it one day at a time is a good thought, but often it seems they are rushing by two or three at a time instead.
Monday night I caught up with a writing buddy in the vegetable aisle of a local grocery store. Stuck without my trusty digital camera I had to make do with taking a cell phone photo (actually a stranger pitched in and took it) and then e-mailing it to myself. Here we are, CJ and I. After a good talk together by the lettuce, about how life goes by fast and doesn't always turn out the way we'd planned, she has inspired me to send out some of my writing. And maybe even check in with some of my story characters that have been sitting on the page waiting to see how their lives turn out. Thanks, CJ! (Let me know if you are a "lower case" cj.)
I have also been visiting a friend who is very ill. She is 98 years old and as her nephew says, she has "had a good run." In her years as a teacher she gave so much of herself to all her students. She will live on through every good thing we do.
Her nephew, Dennis, and I were in the same high school class together and he is lucky enough to live in Alaska and sent me this photo which he took in his back yard. (Big back yard!) He put out a salmon carcass hoping to invite a bald eagle and got one. (Look sharp!) A loon paddles in the background. Can't you just hear its lonely cry? There was also a fox running around, but Dennis wasn't quick enough to get a picture of that fellow.
So much has been going through my head regarding living and dying, celebrating and mourning, and I've been considering how I spend - or mis-spend - my time. Sometimes it doesn't seem my brain is big enough for all the thinking I do, so maybe it's time to slow down. Any suggestions on how to do that? Maybe meditation.
Here is a journal page I have begun. With matte gel medium coating the picture, I stuck it face down on the book's photo of two boys fishing in a stream. My mother used to tell us that she always knew where we were. I wondered how that could be when she was always at home and we were traipsing through the woods and all over, up and down streams. So when I found this woman's photo it just seemed to belong watching over these boys.
One more photo and then I'm off to bed. It's newspaper production day tomorrow and there are plenty of loose ends to tie up bright and early.
Here is a calla lily after yet another of our Oregon rainstorms. I hope you are dry and warm tonight with someone you love close at hand - femminismo
p.s. Happy Birthday to Pat who doesn't have e-mail ... or, as far as I know, a computer!