Summer Dreaming...

The last day of January is brutally cold and snowy, bringing dreams of summer flowers and dew dripping through green leaves.

Fruitless Lifeless Boughs of Time

In the last spring I ever knew,

In those last days,

I sat in the forsaken orchard

Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered

The hills at Miller’s Ford;

Just to muse on the apple tree

With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,

And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms

Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,

Never to grow in fruit.

And there was I with my spirit girded

By the flesh half dead, the senses numb,

Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth,

Such phantom blossoms palely shining

Over the lifeless boughs of Time.

O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!

Had I been only a tree to shiver

With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,

Then I had fallen in the cyclone

Which swept me out of the soul’s suspense

Where it’s neither earth nor heaven.

Edgar Lee Masters---Spoon River Anthology

Forest Mist

The January thaw has arrived and filled the forest full of mist....and mud.

Warm Up Monday

This Monday morning is dark and dreary--- with a delightful drizzle coming down. So here's the hope that this picture of a bee heading for a summer flower brings a bit of summer sun to the day.

Water Color

A water color sky is reflected into the water of the lake in the misty early winter morning. You only get light like this early in the morning when the sunlight gets filtered through the atmosphere.

Complimentary Bug

Here's a winter warm up picture from the archives. There was a complimentary insect (not a bug true bug) on this coneflower. He crawled out of the petals as I snapped the picture. Guess he was a ham.

Long Roads Taking Their Time...

Driving out through the windmills

And some of them were still

Sometimes it's hard to catch the wind

And bend it to your will

Even though it's hard to know

Just how the story ends

The road is long and it takes its time

On that you can depend

Lay me down in the river

And wash this place away

Break me down like sand from a stone

Maybe I'll be whole again one day

Lay me down, lay me down

Maybe I'll be whole again

Lay me down, lay me down

Maybe I'll be whole again

Somewhere between Heaven and Hell

A soul knows where it's been

I want to feel my spirit lifted up

And catch my breath again

Lay me down in the river---Crosby and Nash