Mushrooms for St. Valentine's Day

This is what living on the coast for a few years has done to me....

I don't plan to eat any of the mushrooms, but after every rain shower they pop up everywhere and they are so varied and fantastic looking that they have invaded my imagination.  Couple the daily mushroom surprises with discovering the fun of the "paint" program on my computer and this is what happens.

Happy St.Valentine's Day. February 14th

a post script added 15 February

  I have fielded quite a few email questions about the microsoft paint program after posting this painting.

This is a picture I drew on a blank screen, no photograph was used.  It is a representation of many common elements in the environment where I live, but not any particular spot or certain tree.  Please remember not to use any of my work or images without my express permission. Thank you.

A Collage

I was invited to a 2 hour make a collage gathering. 

I could have poked along more slowly but there was a time limit to find, cut

and arrange images.  Of course I can figure out what it  all means at my leisure.
A click will enlarge this photo if you'd like to see it larger. Your back button will then return you to the blog.
Thanks for the visit. Leave me a hello so I can come find you too.

Mushrooms, Books and a Backward Look. I'm on a Roll...

I took a little time this morning to scroll back though this web journal of mine.  I started it exactly thirteen (13) months ago on January 10, 2009.  On a near daily basis I have to reject automated comments with  strange advertisement  for products I would never discuss here, and occassionally get nice comments from friendly folk that actually read my blog, but I can only actually sit down to create post in those rare moments of confluence when both inner and outer contraints allow.  And of course, given all the things there are to do in the world, in a life, in a day, sometimes quite a few days pass without me writing or posting photos here even when I have scrawled away in my handwritten journal...well, you don't want to read that.  I'm a believer in making things fit for human consumption, so to speak.

But perusing  my archives this morning I find that I'm glad that I have stopped to leave this little trail of some of the places where my feet, mind and heart have trod.  So I will carry on...randomly spilling out on odd subjects.  This week I have been photographing the various mushrooms springing up all over the land outside my door. Want to see a picture?  I'm fairly certain that I have properly identified several  accurately, but I still won't be eating any of them.

Western Amethyst Laccaria ?

What else have I been up to...working of course...walking in between rain showers.  I did post  recently over in my write purpose journal.  I've been hand quilting a few nights a week.  I  have identified some fabrics to make some additional cloth bags, to remember to take to the grocery store.  I remembered three times to soak beans the night before I want to cook them  since I decided to eschew canned beans to avoid BPA.                                                                                                                                                               

I've been enjoying the hummingbirds in the flowers outside my window, the Pride of Madeira and Wild California Lilac. I planted some heirloom tomato seeds in little pots in the greenhouse even though I said last season that I should give up growing tomatoes on the coast. 

 I finished reading If You Want to Write A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit written and first published in 1938 by author and teacher Brenda Ueland (1891-1985) and wrote a little about it here.
 

 

That little label on the tea bag...it reads:"The whole life of man is but a point in time; let us enjoy it." Plutarch 46 AD -120 AD

Moonlight on the Water

Early rising has its gifts

 All right, I will tell the truth, I went back to bed after I took these pictures, just for a little while.  It is Saturday after all.

Quick Cure for Cabin Fever

Cabin fever can set in suddenly in the winter months. I stepped outside just to get some air and walk. My little cat followed me, but of course that really means getting in front of me and then turning away if I open the camera lense.

~high seas, rogue waves, thunder in the night, sudden hail ~

 the trees will soak up the water

~  aeonium ~ bigger than the circle I can make with my arms

 Phoebe stops to listen.  More rain is coming. 

Back inside feels like a good idea now. Cabin fever cured...

~~~

Color by Sunset

A sudden afternoon rainstorm, fast large drops, has driven me in doors long enough to down load a few photographs from yesterday.

This first  photo was taken on an afternoon walk up in the hills where I saw just the beginning of the clouds that would make for a spectacular sunset.

The colors just kept coming.

Reflections...water sky...sunshine's goodbye.                                                       

  

                                                                     Nightfall...

New Year's Greetings... 2010

Happy New Year Greetings
May new energy infuse the best of all that you already have and know...and may more of what you truly need come into your days.

It's been lovely to have holidays, time off, time to watch the birds ...

 

Flight of Pelicans


Already it is the third of January.
If you read the news, you know that trouble doesn't take much of a break, that painful realities fill the new year's headlines...
 The late J.R.R. Tolkien (whose birthday is today) wrote in The Lord of the Rings

"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

May love grow the greater in your life and may you know with certainty what is worthy to put your heart and hands to.
Happy New Year
~~~~


Reaching into the archives, you  might enjoy  Busy Being Born