Shadows

Woman Before Rising Sun
Poll Friedrich

Woman Before Setting Sun

I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you,
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

from, The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot

Daisy times

I locked John in the basement yesterday afternoon :-) and invited some special barn friends over to hang out in the garden. It was a perfect warm day, instantly making up for so many dreary ones this summer. Everyone brought gourmet snacks-- with wine, lemonade who could ask for anything more? They're a camera-shy bunch, but I'm sure you get the picture.

To the Daisy
William Wordsworth

Child of the Year! that round dost run
Thy pleasant course,--when day's begun
As ready to salute the sun
As lark or leveret*
Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain;
Nor be less dear to future men
Than in old time;
Thou not in vain
Art Nature's favourite.

*a type of rabbit

The best gifts

The most thoughtful presents are the things you've wanted all along without realizing it, or else were too lazy or clueless to buy them for yourself. Like this used, 1969 reproduction of the Duc du Berry Book of Hours John found for me on the Internet. The calendar pages are a feast to the eyes compared to the dinky, low-res images I've been downloading for the blog each month.

The 8x10 pages are about the same size as the 15th century masterpiece, so it gives a sense of the original scale and color. In medieval times you had to be fabulously wealthy to commission such a book for personal use, and the Duc du Berry owned a large part of central France in the 1400's. He was a great art collector and loved fine things like luxurious buildings, jewels, art and rare animals. He spent his time moving between his 17 residences with a large retinue of servants and followers.
After the Duc's death in 1416, the book was "lost" for almost 300 years while it bounced around Europe in private collections. In 1897 it was returned to France where it remains the most precious treasure of the Musee Conde:

It would be great to see the original someday-- but since it's a bound manuscript only two precious pages can be displayed at once. It's pretty nice riffling through my own personal, annotated Book of Hours. Thanks, John!

Nature girl Nova

Riding Flo

I haven't mentioned Flo lately, but my partial lease is working out and I get out to the barn twice a week or so. Sizzle left behind big chunks of empty time, but over the winter those chunks gradually filled up with other things. Funny how that is. So after months away from a horse routine I'm glad it's part of my life again, although with the long drive two days a week is just about perfect.

Sometimes I take a lesson on Flo in the arena, but on nice days I ride alone around the property and trails, just as I did with Sizzle. Of course it's nice to ride along chatting with a friend, but solitary riding lets you pay attention to nature and focus on your horse without distraction. After hours and hours of this in different situations, you learn to "trust" each other.

Trust is a word you hear bandied about with horses, but if you just "trust" your horse to always act like a horse you'll never be let down. That's the best lesson Sizzle ever taught me. Horses are mysterious and complex enough without giving them human relationship characteristics. Or expect them to act like Lassie in a pinch. The important thing is, Flo was well trained way back when, and she's the right combination of fun-to-ride and responsive.

I like these vintage cowgirl postcards, even though racing around on terrified looking animals has nothing to so with horsemanship. Of course the horses were just a way to show off the pretty cowgirls.

Fine weather, good friends and food

You couldn't have asked for nicer summer weather in Seattle. The clouds are rolling in this morning, but the weekend was sunny and warm from start to finish. We watched the West Seattle parade on Saturday like we've done for, oh-- about the last 30 years. Too bad Nova wasn't here to hide from the Seafair pirates like Amanda used to. Some things never seem to change.

Like the disciplined Chinese girl drill team...

Dancing and fancy costumes...

And motorcycle displays...

For the first time this year, Sunday was warm enough to have dinner in the garden. So we put Terri and George to work setting up the table and had a great picnic supper of ribs, salad and corn.

Hope you had a nice weekend, too.

Things bright and beautiful

Right now the hollyhocks are prettier than ever before, and I guess we can thank the rain. By mid-July, the bloomed out stalks are usually drooping over like dry scarecrows. The flowers were gleaming like jewels in the sun yesterday. After so much gloomy weather, we finally have a beautiful weekend ahead-- sunny and warm but not hot or humid. Who could ask for anything more in Seattle? When the sick lady finally jumps out of bed, she's stunning.

The common name for hollyhock comes from the words "holy" and "hoc." Holy suggests a blessed healing herb, and the word hoc means mallow, which is a type of plant. Hollyhocks have been used medicinally for diverse ailments, including reducing swelling in a horse's "hock." So the origin of the name is a mystery according to my favorite flower reference book, A Contemplation Upon Flowers.
For many of us, hollyhocks are an evocative childhood flower and we remember playing with them in some neglected corner of the yard or alley. No one cared if we pulled them apart to make dolls, because they were tough plants that came back every year. On our old Pennsylvania farm, hollyhocks grew along a fence between the outhouse and the barn.

Nothing fancier than a stick and childhood imagination is needed to make a hollyhock doll:

78 minutes of summer

"Living in Seattle is like being married to a beautiful woman
who is sick all the time."

If you define summer as times when the temperature reaches at least 80 degrees, it's only happened in Seattle twice since June 1. On July 2 for 12 minutes, and on scorching July 6, for a whopping 66 minutes. Poor Everett, just north of Seattle has not been above 75 all summer.
This is all according the Scott Sistek's KOMO TV weather blog. Here's what he says about the upcoming (mostly sunny) weekend:

NOAA computer models say there is an 18% chance the heat index will make it feel like 80 degrees on Sunday in Seattle -- and a 1% chance it'll feel like 90.

Are you hot today? If you don't live in the Northwest, this probably sounds like a cool slice of heaven. But we're feeling left out of the party.

Hummingbird photography

OK, what sort of bad person curses at adorable little hummingbirds? Well, just try taking a picture of one through this open window. I sit at the desk keeping an eye out, but by the time I snatch up my camera, fumble it open and zoom in, he's already looked me in the eye and flicked off.

Of course they keep coming back because that red Crocosima Lucifer is like opium to hummingbirds.

I finally got a few shots by pointing wildly and then cropping the image way down on Photoshop. But I don't think National Geographic will be knocking at the door. I'd rather photograph flowers-- they hold still.

How about a picture of my back?
Nah, nah, nah!

Babes in the wilderness

Here's some photos from Amanda and Tom's hiking adventure in the Okanogan National Forest. These pictures were taken by their friends Michael and Gina. Their daughter Adelina is the same age as Nova, and the little girls are best friends. The families hiked an 8-mile trail to the top of Tiffany Mountain, starting at 6,000 feet and climbing to 9,000 feet high above the valley.

Starting out with Nova piled on Amanda's back.
Traveling light, Tom?
:-)

Michael, Gina and Adelina

Lunch on the summit

Not too tired to climb another mountain!

Gina, Adelina, Amanda and Nova

Nice view from the top

More mountain exploring

Nova looks ready for a high-altitude nap

Thanks for sharing these! For more of Michael's great photos, click here.

Art in the rain

This past weekend was another cool washout in Seattle. The sun came out for just an hour on Saturday afternoon, and John rushed outside to block the raccoon's porch tunnel with some heavy lumber he bought at Home Depot. So their stinky house under our house is now off-limits, unless they care to do some serious digging. While he worked on that project, I took luscious pictures with my new digital camera and ran back and forth to the computer to see how they turned out.

On Sunday morning, after eating a high carb breakfast (hey, it's cold!) we left the house early and drove downtown to visit the Seattle and Frye Art Museums. Under the gray blanket of clouds, downtown was almost deserted except for a few chilly looking tourists who actually packed shorts and flip flops for their Seattle summer vacation. Ha!

Looking Down Yosemite Valley
Albert Bierstadt

The current Seattle Art Museum exhibition is called Beauty and Bounty, American Art in the Age of Exploration. We had the gallery almost to ourselves, and those big landscapes sparkled in ornate gold frames under perfect museum lighting. We liked the paintings, but it made you think about the rough wilderness camps where they were created. And how did the artists manage to get them back to civilization?

Leaving SAM, we drove a few blocks to the Frye Art Museum on Capitol Hill. Of course we were hungry again and had lunch with a peaceful indoor view of the drenched courtyard and a big round sculpture we always call the "mossy rock." My new camera has a "gourmet mode" for food shots, so I gave it a try:


The Frye was showing an unusual exhibit called Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul. Max (1840–1915) was an artist, spiritualist and Darwinist and a remarkable 19th century German character. He was a highly educated naturalist fascinated with evolution, and over his lifetime collected a museum full of objects in the fields of anthropology and zoology. At the same time he created paintings with Christian and mythological subjects with themes of religion, death, spiritualism and the afterlife.

Outside the Arena
(A pensive and pretty Christian waiting to be martyred)

Portrait of a "Seer" having a vision

Religious angst and ecstasy

Toward the end of his life, his focus moved toward science. He collected pet monkeys, and his portraits of them became artistic metaphors for human behavior and personality. A fascinating and complex man.

And a good way for us to use up a rainy Sunday.

I'm in love...

With my new camera! The white trumpet lilies were posing in the rain and I had a garden full of other wet flowers to practice on this weekend-- it's show off time!

A rain drenched red rose...

Peruvian lily close-up...

A glamorous fuschia...

A sopping wet petunia...

"Just Joey" rosebuds in the rain...