After the Rain

Thunder rolled in the distance, some lightning flashed and a gentle rain fell for a short time. Precious raindrops last evening making the garden inviting this morning. Camera time instead of having to water with the sprinklers and hoses. With cooler nights creeping closer the trees will soon start to turn. These lovely greens will change and fade into Autumn's golden shades.

A gentle Sunday morning garden. Humidity has been literally breath taking these past few days. Today should be the last unbearable one..........a perfect day forecast for tomorrow's holiday. Enjoy the fruits of your labor on the holiday.

Pink Saturday

Pull up a chair and sit a while.....................it's Saturday, PINK Saturday. Your week has been busy, perhaps hectic, possibly chaotic. For many of you it required getting the children back to school after the long Summer vacation. Are you breathing again? Are you happy they're gone from under your feet for a while? Or are you worried because they're no longer within earshot and view all those hours of each school day? I hope all the children will have a great school year.

Truly a 'shabby chic' chair from SuzAnna's Antiques

While you're taking a breather why not have fun filling out a "happiness card"..........................

...........................and then stop over to visit Beverly our hostess at How Sweet the Sound to see the long list of Pink Saturday participants.

Round Every Corner

Rounding the corners of life can bring one face to face with many surprises.

Sometimes you turn to the left and there spread before you are cold hardscapes, concrete jungles, pavements, winding gravel paths, rocky roads and stony byways, colored grey by mist and rain................

.......................or you may turn right and feel the sun on your face as it warms a generous landscape made up of meadows painted with wildflowers, grassy pastures, rolling green hills, fields of golden grain and tall primeval forests.

Corners, whether hard right angles or soft rounded curves, are always interesting. Turning them can determine your pathway in life, similar to reaching that fork in the road where you hesitate before deciding whether you should go left or right.

Personally I'm of an age where hopefully I will no longer have to make such an important decision, turn left or go right. I feel my turns have all become straight lines, a road whose perspective disappears into infinity......................and I'm following it joyfully.

I hope you enjoy life's journey no matter which corner you round or road you take.

Corners and edges around my home.

In a Rain Storm

"Anyone who thinks sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain."

~ Anonymous ~

A beautiful watercolor found tucked away in an antiques shop. I have yet to frame it, perhaps never will, but today it stands on the mantel as it feels like the day.

The rains came..........................yesterday light and drippy, this morning heavy and saturating. The parched earth is soaking up each drop, manna from heaven, nourishment for all that struggles to grow, flower, feed and share its beauty....................unattained in any other way than that given as a gift by Nature.

"And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without rain, there would be no rainbow."

~ G.K. Chesterton -1874-1936 ~

All Creatures Great & Small

There have been dragonflies this Summer.................but butterflies have been sparse. How I've missed them flitting from plant to plant in the garden.

The parsley, usual depository for the beautiful Monarch's eggs, has been munched on by just one lonely green and yellow striped caterpillar - usually there are dozens.

The weather conditions are to blame for our gardening woes this year. No beans or peppers made it. Tomatoes just now turning red for picking but not by the pound as in other years. Cucumbers not bad, but not many. Eggplants? Well there's one hanging on waiting to be harvested - eggplant Parmigiana for one perhaps!

Lack of rain, unbearable heat..................how the farmers make it remains a mystery. How grateful we are to them for bringing their vegetables and fruits to the weekly market.

Decoupaged pot with dragonfly.

Do you have butterflies in your garden this year?

Not Far From the Tree

"When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze."

Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian and Essayist ~1795-1881)

Yesterday I noticed a true sign that Summer is on the wane and Autumn is imminent. Not only do I see them, I hear them falling on the roof with a clatter, then rolling down and bouncing off the back deck. Some are still attached to sprays of leaves like this, bright green acorns stuffed into their little rough textured cups. Some years we have thousands fall from several mighty oaks on our property - they'd be ankle deep if we didn't sweep and blow often.

The first acorns of the season.

Background is Edith Holden's beautiful watercolor illustration in

The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady (1905).

"If the 24th of August be fair and clear

Then hope for a prosperous Autumn that year".

Pink Saturday

Blooms in the garden are few now ~ the torrid heat and almost non-existent rain have wreaked havoc....................Nature struggles to put forth anything fresh, new or colorful these past few weeks. But I do love green! When permitted we water. Still restricted to a few hours a week but this does enable the many shades of green, from chartreuse to hunter, to fill in the bare spaces.

But this is PINK SATURDAY so I had to find something pretty and PINK. Here is the Mandevilla vine making its way up the gazebo and blooming in the heat because it's tropical.

The flowers start out pointed, somewhat like a Morning Glory bud, then slowly unfold and open in their stunning pinkness, surrounded by a backdrop of thick, leathery, dark green leaves.


The Mandevilla is an annual here so I plant a new one each year after the last frost ~ must have something pink throughout the long, hot Summer.



Be sure to visit Beverly at How Sweet The Sound our Pink Saturday hostess. There you will find the list of this week's participants and I'm certain many of them are surrounded by every shade of pink imaginable!