Road Flowers

 Wild flowers growing with reckless abandon at the side of the road

 

 

 

 

 

Nature always finds a way of inserting beauty into the most unexpected places.

Focus

Focus is everything.

In photography, it is the difference between a good shot and a great shot.

     The same is true for life.

 

 

Everything has two sides.

Everything. 

It's a law here where we live.

 Focus is what makes the difference.

It's always a choice. 

 

 

Today I am choosing to focus on the exquisite beauty of the small.

 

 

Because I can.

 

A Weed by Any Other Name

 My yard is currently covered in these:

And also these: 

It is literally covered in dandelions

 in various stages of birth, growth and death.

They are beautiful.

I looked up the definition of  'weed' and found it to be simply this:

"A weed is any plant out of place."

These particular plants do no harm to their surrounding environment.

And, for example, they can be harvested for both food and medicine.

Every part of the dandelion is edible.

So it's not so much that these plants have no intrinsic value,

but the fact that they are displaced and plentiful makes them unwanted.

Valueless.

 

 

 When I think back over my life I can remember times where I have also been a dandelion:

Wild, prolific, plentiful and.... out of place. 

Rich in resources, but unharvested and therefore unappreciated. 

In that way, we are kin...me and the dandelions.

 So today I am paying a little tribute to this beautiful spring rose.

Komorebi

 I recently discovered a new word: komorebi

 It is a Japanese word that refers to "sunlight shining through the trees"

 

Related, but less often used, is the word hamorebi

which refers to "the sun peaking through the leaves" instead of the branches or trunk

 

 

What strikes me most about these words...the mere fact of them....is that they indicate that these are things people actually talk about, or have needed to talk about. 

Otherwise these words wouldn't exist. 

 

 

 

I would like to know the word for "sun shining through long grass".

 

 And also the word for 

"accidental discovery of small new lives in nature you hadn't encountered before"

 

 

And finally: what is the word for "sunlight falling on new green shoots"?
 

These are a few things I would like to be talking about.

And then there was colour

 

 

 

Some things need no explanation.

Small Lives

This morning I went out into nature to look for colour inspiration for painting, and I was struck by all the many small lives that exist together to make a forest.

Right now there are new green shoots turning up everywhere. Small little lives, that are just beginning their journey.

It made me think of how many small lives exist in each of us, and how delicate they are when they first begin to emerge.

 

What really caught my attention this morning was 

how many of these small lives are intertwined.

 

And how they all seem to gather around each other:

their journeys are both sympathetic and independent.

 

 

We are the same.

Spring

 

When I am outside at this time of year I can remember springs all the way back from when I was a little kid. 

 

 

How good the air smelled, and how light my feet felt outside of heavy winter boots.

It felt like freedom.

 

 

I remember how we'd spend hours and hours outside in those early spring days: light as air without heavy coats, soaking up every ounce of warmth from the sun.

When we finally went back inside my mother would always greet us with big hugs and bury her face deep into our hair and inhale deeply. 

 

 

"You smell like fresh air and sunshine" she'd always declare.

 Today smelled like fresh air and sunshine.

Chasing Beauty

 It was a rough winter and the signs of struggle are everywhere.

As the snow continues to melt it begins to reveal the damage:

months of snow and ice have ravaged the forest leaving branches torn, splintered and bare. 

Eventually another layer of beauty will begin to emerge: lush, green, soft and full. 

Covering over, filling gaps, softening edges. Transforming.

Until then, my camera will strain to find what is beautiful in the tattered wreckage that is the forest in early spring. 

 

 

The truth is that my camera is complicit in the lie I am currently telling.

It is a lie of light, composition and texture.

Nature is not always beautiful.