love pours from heaven....

perhaps they are not the stars

but rather openings in

heaven where the love of

our lost ones pours through

and shines down upon us

to let us know they are

happy.

~ eskimo folklore

basking in the glow of love from above..........

hello my space cowboy......

...i would pick more daisies

If I Had My Life To Live Over

I'd dare to make more mistakes next time.
I'd relax, I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances.

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles,
but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who live
sensibly and sanely hour after hour,
day after day.

Oh, I've had my moments,
And if I had it to do over again,
I'd have more of them.
In fact, I'd try to have nothing else.
Just moments, one after another,
instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I've been one of those people who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat
and a parachute.
If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over,
I would start barefoot earlier in the spring
and stay that way later in the fall.
I would go to more dances.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.

Nadine Stair,
85 years old.

an insatiable thief.....

"age is an insatiable thief.

it steals the pleasures of your youth...

then locks you inside your own body

with your desires

still

glowing...."

~james lee burke

the glass rainbow

mr. burke....

truer words were never spoken.....

reminiscing....

“life: a cycle.

a series of events…

meetings…and departures.

friends discovered…

others lost.

precious time wastes away.

big droplet tears

are shed

for yesterday…

but are dried

in time for tomorrow…

until all that remain

are foggy…

broken

memories…

of a happy

yesteryear.”

~daniela gallo

yesteryear is much on my mind lately

a byproduct of aging...

probably

so many memories...

regrets...

loves...

playing...

like an old 8mm film...

scratching...

and popping...

behind closed eyes...

as i sit

quietly

sipping wine...

reminiscing....

wassail and pumpkins....

i woke up this morning to a beautiful...crisp...fall like day....drove up to windy hill orchard and bought some wassail. evidently... before the shelves held the bottles of cider and wassail they were the proud nesting place of one 'henny penny' cause we had to keep shooing her away as i made my purchase. maybe she was the welcoming hen....or just trying to help me make up my mind between the cider and wassail....

on the drive to the orchard i passed our local produce stand and.........PUMPKINS! it sooooo feels like fall today. after a lunch of carolina barbeque and potato salad i'm retiring to the couch with a wonderful smelling cup of joe (does anything smell better than a fresh cup of coffee...organic peruvian...YUM) to watch a christmas movie i found on the dvr....that's right...CHRISTMAS....and last night i worked in my studio on some halloween goodies.....

can you tell this is my FAVORITE time of the year?

happy labor day

have a cotton picking safe and happy labor day!

stone me to my soul.....

Happy Birthday Van Morrison!

after all these years....

you still

STONE

ME

TO

MY

SOUL...

she slipped on her wings...

" having tired
of the negative words...
she laid them down.
being finished
with the weighted boots...
she burned them.
touching a feather to her tears…
she slipped on her wings…
turned to her sky….
and flew…."

~terri st. cloud

memories....

sunbeams filled with fairy dust....the sweet smell of fresh cut hay....laying in a secret hide away... under the creaking ....popping....tin...reading.....daydreaming....just... being.........memories......

a flash of harmless lightening

“a flash of harmless lightening…
a mist of rainbow dyes…
the burnished sunbeams brightening…
from flower to flower he flies…”

~john banister tabb

two bare feet on the dashboard....

"two bare feet on the dashboard

cheap shades and a tattoo

and a yoo-hoo bottle rollin' on the floorboard..."

~kenny chesney

pencil art

someone sent me these pictures in an email...

i think they are awesome!

there was no info about the artist....

dear artist...

who ever you are....

you do amazing work!

they teach me how to listen.......

“i pray to the birds

because i believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward.

i pray to them because i believe in their existence...

the way their songs begin and end each day...

the invocations and benedictions of earth.

i pray to the birds because they remind me of what i love

rather than what i fear.

and at the end of my prayers...

they teach me how to listen.”

~ terry tempest williams

Turtle helps friend who's flipped over.

always trust your cape......

"life is just a leap of faith...

spread your arms...

hold your breath....

and always trust your cape....."

~eric bibb

dear melancholy.....

i love reading leah dieterich's daily notes.....

this one is so true.....

thx leah..

offer myself humbly........

in the name of the daybreak

and the eyelids of morning

and the wayfaring moon

and the night when it departs...

i swear i will not dishonor

my soul with hatred...

but offer myself humbly

as a guardian of nature...

as a healer of misery...

as a messenger of wonder...

as an architect of peace.

in the name of the sun and its mirrors

and the day that embraces it

and the cloud veils drawn over it

and the uttermost night

and the male and the female

and the plants bursting with seed

and the crowning seasons

of the firefly and the apple...

i will honor all life

wherever and in whatever form

it may dwell

on earth

my home...

and in the mansions

of the stars.

~ diane ackerman

happy birthday big brother.......

my older brother's birthday is this monday......tomorrow there's gonna be a surprise party for his 60th birthday...... like most of us of a certain age......he seems to be hanging on to his glory days........

he was one of the few....the proud.....the marines.........

now he's a harley riding old fart.......


happy birthday...brother
i don't think i've ever told you this...but....
i love you.....

inspiring.........

the money i spend on books and magazines......it's a shameful thing.....but a price i willingly pay to connect with "my kind of people"......artists.....junkers....dreamers......all soooooo inspiring.

i love...love.....love...being invited into their creative spaces....seeing their art....reading how they always felt like outsiders until they connected with others like themselves thru blogging.

none....NONE.....of my friends and family....GET me.....me...the one stopping in the parking lot to pick up rusted washers...."special rocks"....fallen bird nests....THRILLED to find an old cracked teacup in the junk store.....a musty smelling book from 1911....grungy rolls of ribbon....

i'm thanking the universe and the powers that be for the internet...and all the intricate... spidery trails on the web... that link me to my "pack".........

when all the birds are faint...

“when all the birds are faint with the hot sun
and hide in cooling trees
a voice will run from hedge to hedge
about the new mown mead
that is the grasshopper’s
he takes the lead
in summer luxury
he has never done with his delights
for when tired out with fun
he rests at ease
beneath some pleasant weed.”

~john keats

unnoticed......

"that proves you are unusual

returned the scarecrow...

i am convinced the only people

worthy of consideration

in this world

are the unusual ones...

for the common folks

are like the leaves of a tree...

and live and die

unnoticed..."

~lyman frank baum

UP

last night we finished up our bible school with hot air balloon rides......there was so much excitement while the children watched and waited

for the balloon to be inflated....all the kids......young and old....braved the heat for their own version of "UP" lots of smiles....and laughs...
i think the look on this child's face says it all.......

stitches

”One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die.

In Stitches, Small, the award-winning children's illustrator and author, recreates this terrifying event in a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. As the images painfully tumble out, one by one, we gain a ringside seat at a gothic family drama, where David — a highly anxious yet supremely talented child—all too often became the unwitting object of his parents' buried frustration and rage.

Believing, as most parents do, that they were trying to do the best, David's parents, in fact, did just the reverse: Edward Small, a Detroit physician, who vented his own anger by hitting a punching bag in the family's basement, was convinced that he could cure his little son by shooting him up with heavy doses of radiation, yet with near deadly results; while David's mother, Elizabeth, a tyrannically stingy and excessively scolding parent, ran the Small household under a cone of silence where emotions, especially her own, were hidden.

Depicting this coming-of-age story with dazzling, kaleidoscopic images that render nightmare in a form that becomes a fairytale in itself, Small tells us of his journey from sickly child, to cancer patient, to troubled teen, whose risky decision to run away from home at 16 — with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist — would become the ultimate survival statement.
A silent movie masquerading as a book, Stitches is as much a memoir as a tale of redemption that informs us that things can get better, that good can emerge from evil, and that art has the power to transform. It is a both a profound gift and a remarkable achievement, a book that renders a broken world suddenly seamless and beautiful again.”

~ http://stitches.davidsmallbooks.com/

it's shameful to see so many people rationalize their bad behavior

on painful childhoods when there are some... like david small...

who are resilient and go on to touch the lives of

some many.....

thank you for sharing mr. small.....

the choice is ours.......

“all of life is a journey…
which paths we take…
what we look back on…
and what we look forward to…
is up to us.
we determine our destination… ”

~unk

namaste....

rock on dude!

punk is musical freedom.

it's saying, doing and playing what you want.

in Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain,

suffering and the external world,

and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

~kurt cobain

i love this tree!

every time i ride by

it just puts a big ole grin on my face.....

rock on dude!

other imperfect birds....

"each has to enter the nest

made by the other

imperfect

bird..."

~rumi

....color me happy

i have been DROOLING over beach cruisers for a long time now. i check out craigslist several times a week.....stop in bike shops.....oh....i've found ever so many that i wanted....but the price....well....right now....they were just beyond my little county check! but today....i had to pick up something in our local walmart and what did i spy???? OMG! it was love at first sight....and my new "vintage" bike was about one fourth the cost of the ones i've been pricing. well...let me tell ya....that plastic jumped right out of my pocket book. we'd found each other at last! the colors don't show well in cyberspace but it's mint green (the color of the vintage t-birds)... with cream fenders and chocolate grips and seat......LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!

now i'm dreaming of a big funky basket... and a bell......LOL. i never had a bike as a child....how sad is that? well...i got one for christmas once and someone stole it before the new wore off....and i never got another until i was an adult. this is a part of my 'looooooooong range' retirement plan...to go along with my 'sometime in the future' vintage travel trailer. ooooooh yeahhhhhh.....color me ...HAPPY!

want! want! want!

"the snail he lives in his hard round house...

in the orchard... under the tree...

says he... "i have but a single room...

but it's large enough for me."

~anonymous

i've got a little single room home....just large enough for me...

on my wish list.....want! want! want!

the chit chat of birds....

how cute is this aviary? it's made from recycled windows and has casters so it can be rolled around....

this was the creation of one of the many talented crafters employed by martha. i borrowed the picture for this post. head on over to martha stewarts website and get the directions for your own little bird palace.

i've got an antique armoire.... where my television currently resides.... that i've been thinking of making into an aviary.... hearing the chit chat of birds in the home....one of lifes simple pleasures.....

natures stained glass........

i haven't been a part of shadow shot sunday for a while but when i shot this

butterfly this afternoon and saw the shadow of the flower thru it's wing

i just couldn't resist. it was like looking at the world thru natures

stained glass.......

head on over to HEY HARRIET and check out some other great shots.....

happy fourth ya'll.....

Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!