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Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts

Saturday, April 11, 2020

The Greening of the Mountains

 Tuesday, April 7, Black Mountain NC, looking south from State Street (aka Hwy 70)

This shows the tufts of green trees only go about halfway up the mountain.

 A cloudy day gives deeper color green, and looking through the bare maple to the dogwood and some more colorful ones on the other side of the building. But the sides of the mountain are very grey still!

April 9, Thursday, sunshine and a clearer view of the colorful trees in the valley.

 Dawn on April 10.
 The early light makes everything golden.



Today's Quote:

Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames.

Who gets up early to discover the moment the light begins?
What was whispered to the rose to break it open last night was whispered to my heart. 
You’ve gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine. 
Taste this. It won’t make you wild.

It’s fire. 
Give up, if you don’t understand by this time that your living is firewood. 
Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames. 

The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same. 
To change, a person must face the dragon of his appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of the soul. 

What is the body? 
That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe. 
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. 
Welcome and attend them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight. 
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. 
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, and then are taken off.

That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief.
You haven’t dared yet lose faith - so, can faith grow in you?
Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. 
If these poems repeat themselves, then so does Spring.

 
—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
this being human is a guest house

Saturday, April 14, 2018

A new bowl...where can I put all this pottery?

Get out the bubble wrap and tupperware tubs!




My Easter/spring celebration
Opps, here's another one...



 I enjoy these looser forms, especially the creativity they pull out of me.



Today's quote:

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
John Muir


Thursday, March 22, 2018

It was Wednesday - it must be snowing

Just yesterday, Wednesday we were on the southern edge of another storm that swept across the eastern side of our USA.

March 21, 1:30 PM 2018
 It might have been just at freezing temperature, and the snow flew horizontally in the wind for hours, but it didn't pile up here in my neighborhood in Black Mountain, NC this time.


March 21, 2018
Yes, the new plants came inside over the night before and during Wednesday March 21.



Just a week ago, the Wednesday before it, more snow had fallen. And then spring came back the next day!
March 14, 2018


March 14, 2018

March 15, we woke up to enjoy spring's return.

There were canoes out on Lake Tomahawk (for the first time I've seen them!)


   
March 16, I enjoyed the Quaker Meeting house gardens




March 17 I went plant shopping with a friend at Painter's Nursery in Old Fort, and walked around the greenhouse then came home and potted plants on my porch.

March 18 was warm enough for shorts and sitting out on the balcony reading in sunshine!

This is one of those yo-yo springs. I'm beginning to expect this kind of weather. 

Friday, May 5, 2017

The greening of the mountains

For just a brief while more, you can climb above springtime...go up the Blue Ridge Parkway (for instance) and find the several hundred feet of transition, a cusp of springtime.

 That's where down below is lush and green, and in the middle the little sparkling blossoms of dogwood against bare trees which have just tips of green on the branches...and then up to further elevation and the only greens against grey are those firs and hemlocks and rhododendrons.


So let's find how it looked on May 3 this year.


At about mile marker 367 to 371 was the transition on that day.  Remember each day it will be traveling higher up!

And where dogwoods have all but finished blooming in Black Mountain, at Craggy Gardens picnic ground turnoff, they are still in fine fettle.

By the time I got to the Craggy Visitor's Center and looked down on Burnett Reservoir, it was so amazing to see that green/brown line.





And returning to full blown springtime I came down the Parkway...


Today's quote:


It takes a person of great heart to see…the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.
Kent Nerburn