A Couple of Bests

Best year ever for iris! Seriously they are gorgeous and everywhere.

I am always looking for a good Veggie Burger Recipe  or at least I tell myself I am when I can find time to be in the kitchen.

Teaching my public class on Monday nights is so enjoyable. I am so glad I took the chance and risked the financial aspects so I could teach into this population. Best part of the week!

Burgeoning Light Seeking Beauty

I'm on week four of this public stair climbing challenge and it gets me out of the house early five days a week. It's spring out there!

My new word for the week is tropism. “ The turning of all or part of an organism in a particular direction in response to an external stimulus.”

Language

Took this shot this morning on my way through the PSU campus. We have light! Blessed glorious light. I am attempting to soak it in and not take it for granted. Just like my ability to speak and read and communicate.

Such Tangled Webs

Yeah yeah, it has been a good long while. I have been focusing on my yoga teaching and not so much my photography lately... The other thing is that I am getting more picky about my pictures and only want to put up the very best and they are rare.

(Did you know that Dante only used one ellipses in The Divine Comedy? When I am not taking pictures I am taking a class on The Inferno and am enjoying the audiobook version as well as the Pinsky translation.)

This shot is from last Friday, a week ago and I took it with my phone. There had been a big storm a few days before and there was this massive seaweed extravaganza on the beach near where we were staying for our semi-annual getaway to Pacific City.

It was so lovely to get away...

Amazing Arrives in Many Forms

In my next human incarnation (if I am lucky enough to have one) I'd love to paint. This dahlia with its water droplets would be so wonderful to paint. (I took this with my phone this afternoon.)

Speaking of painting, I am reading The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal, which was recommended to me by both my sisters and I keep having to stop and look up paintings. Some of the descriptions in the book are a poet's dream come true.

And I didn't think I was interested in Japanese art particularly. He makes it come alive as well the mania for it in France after Japan was opened up to Europe.

I am reading a quite beat up library copy. You know when you read a real book when it is dark out, you actually need to have a light on. Amazing!

All Along the Watch Hour

My hard drive failed last weekend on my personal laptop and the whole week has been consumed with adventures in technology.

My home office looks a bit like a hacker's dream. (If they were a neat hacker). But! Almost all my files have been recovered and I have the software I need to do what I need to do.

I participated in a Kickstarter crowd fund for a movie about the amazing W.S. Merwin and received this link to a collage of projects that have been funded this way.

This would be a great thing to watch on the brand new HD monitor (that is way better than my television) that I currently have on loan. That and Disc One Season One of Game of Thrones. :)

Accelerated Time on the Flower Clock

For a world in the throes of climate change we are having a remarkably "normal" June here in Portland. The mornings are dark and gloomy and full of glare and the afternoons are either like that too or beautiful. Today we are having rain squalls. I was glad to have my rain pants on over at the track just a little while ago.

We are getting ready to run away for a few days to Camp Sherman. I can't even begin to say how much I am looking forward to the get away. Oh yeah.

Daisies and Lilies and Summer Oh My

We are just short of hydrangea on the flower clock as we move closer and closer to summer here in the Northern Hemisphere.

The fleet is in, we watched the sailors deploying out to Voodoo Donuts and the old town bars last night on the way home from my yoga class. The hookers were definitely ready. It was interesting to watch. Lots of female naval officers this year.

Both S. and Kes have fallen in the last two days. I am blaming it on allergens and the older inner ear. No more falls guys, okay?

All the work my teacher Olga is doing with videos and her online sequencing program seems to be paying off. Her latest video is here.
 

Perfect in the Language of Flowers

I need to learn all the Spanish terms for basic body parts, directions, and points of reference so I can give some instruction to my caregiver students that speak limited English. I am going to try Duolingo which is so cool. While one is learning a new language one is also helping translate all sorts of things on the web.

Not that I have time...

I am going to do this fun 5K walk/run on Saturday morning. It's a way to get my activity in early in the day and I get a whopping 75 points for participating from my work wellness incentive program. Sweet!

The Wild Heart Indeed

I went back for this shot this afternoon. I had noticed the poppies coming home on the bus from the store on Saturday but they are master light twisters and I was not happy with the shots I took Saturday at all.

"He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.” James Joyce said that. :)

The Lady of the Lines was Marie Reiche. I have been thinking about the Nazca Lines a lot lately and it wasn't until I posted the poem yesterday over on my sister blog Meander and was walking across the river that it occurred to me that  poems have lines too. Duh. 

Life is full of mysteries.

Some More Green

I love the mash up of the clarity and the blur in this shot I just took across the street in the wild garden of the house no one lives in. I thought the page needed some more green.

Not sure if you can only hear this radio magazine of TED Talks here in the United States but I am enjoying the show very much.

Oh and one more link for Valerie June, she is playing here tonight at Waterfront Park. At first I wasn't sure but I have decided I adore her. :)

Onions and Asparagus Related??? Get Friendly with the Monocots

Picking up some fresh asparagus at the farmers market this weekend I starting thinking about what family it belongs to, like birds have families based on genetic similarities...

Turns out the taxonomy of this glorious spring vegetable has a story. Onions and Lilies and Aloe Vera and Agave used to all be lumped under Lilaceae. A story with a poem in it I bet.

Onions have recently been moved to Amaryllidaceae and asparagus to Aparagaceae. 

Whew! I am allergic to onions but that doesn't mean I can't photograph them. :)

Always It Is the Color

I went back for this shot of an orange rhododendron. For me it is always about the color. Right now I am looking out the window at all the various shades of green on all the street trees and the white and red rhodies planted out there.

This weekend other than teaching I am very much looking forward to puttering and hanging out with my cat man Sam, who is the very best color of orange there is. :)

My Camera Will Be With Me

While cruising through my recent pictures last night I decided that I just plain like this one. Yes there is an iris picture about 4 posts ago but there is just something about the composition here that makes my eye happy.

I won this odd sort of secret award at work for a project I have been nurturing and protecting for the last few years that is manifesting and my prize is a free day off. Kes and I are going birding tomorrow out by the cemetery where we buried Mr. Finch almost exactly four years ago.

By Any Other Name

I posted a shot of this same rose last May but I like this one better. Taking a break from fast track walking and powering up Marqaum Hill and practicing yoga for myself I just went out after work today and wandered around with the camera.

Me thinks I need to do that more often.

You already have enough links. Carry on. :)

Going Gluten Free?

This was last Friday in Pacific City in the afternoon. Ah.

My link today is the great interview with the Test Kitchen Folks about gluten free cooking. I still eat some gluten but Kes and I were having a discussion about whole wheat pasta and it reminded me of this fascinating interview.

Anybody want some fresh dill? I have extra. :) I made a light soup with peas and a carrot and very fresh local asparagus.

Out on the Edge

Out at the Oregon Coast on our semi-annual vacation. Gorgeous weather the first few days. Now it is raining and blowing but Patience and Bob, our loyal house Western Gulls are out there begging for a snack. We don't feed them, except maybe some leftover salad greens on our last day, so they eventually go off to greener pastures so to speak.

We've been eating pistachios and have discovered this clever way to open pesky nuts that pose challenge (we are calling them distachios) without messing with one's nails or doing dangerous things with knives... Very cool.

Can Something Delicate Be Spectacular?

These peony tulips are just appearing in the neighborhood this year. I wish this were a better shot of this most spectacular flower. But you get the idea. Hopefully I'll be here with the camera to try again next year.

Impermanence is on my mind today.

It is a perfect fit between the tulips and the roses.

No link today. Too much to do in the midst of all this moody spring weather.

How About Never?

I am not sure why but I have officially decided that yellow is the color of this Easter. Just took this out in the neighborhood. If you have any familiarity with Portland Oregon you will know that it is practically unheard of for us to have a dry Easter.

This week marks my 16th year here and I remember one other dry relatively warm Easter Sunday.

I was thinking about this interview with Bob Mankoff, (the cartoon editor of The New Yorker), this morning. It is worth listening to because besides being funny (and apparently laughter is good for the aging brain, Facebook told me so) it is also interesting.

To me that is an intoxicating brew. But then I am addled by unexpected natural light. Happy bunny woven basket, colored eggs in the grass, resurrection and renewal day!

The Iris Hour

If you were to go back and quickly look at all the pictures posted here on this space you would see that I am a woman who lives in a world that is demarcated by the flower clock.

Now is the sweet window between tulip and rose where there are blossoms swirling everywhere in the damp cool wind.

My link today is about a fellow in England, not afraid to say what I find myself thinking sometimes lately, that this very well might be the end of the world as we know it, that it is too late, that there is not enough will to turn the ship around and do enough to save us from the absolute ravages of climate change. While I ponder all this I continue to try to celebrate in every way I know how the beauty that surrounds us and the abundance I was ever so fortunate to be born into.