 For liturgical churches, purple is the color of Lent, the season we are now in, the forty days plus Sundays leading up to Easter. The word itself comes from the Old English word for spring, and is related to various Germanic languages meaning the lengthening of days. These crocus celebrate the purple and glow with the spring light.     
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 A few lady's slipper orchids from the collection at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. Most of these make me chuckle -- I see goofy faces and a flock of odd-looking birds.      While reading another book, I came across this quote from Innocent Blood, by P.D. James, and remembered a winter day a few years ago when I took delight in the geraniums on my windowsill, with the help of my camera. She fixed her eyes on the geranium on the windowsill. Why had she never before realized how beautiful it was? She had seen geraniums as the gaudy expedient of municipal gardeners to be planted in park beds, massed on political platforms, a useful pot plant for the house, since it throve with so little attention. But this plant was a miracle of beauty. Each flowerlet was curled like a miniature rosebud on the end of its furred, tender stem. Imperceptibly but inevitably as her own breathing they were opening to the light. The petals were a clear, transparent pink, faintly stripped with yellow, and the fanlike leaves, how intricately veined they were, how varied in their greenness, each with its darker penumbra. Some words of William Blake fell into her mind, familiar but new. "Everything that lives is holy. Life delights in life." . . . Everything living was part of one great wholeness. To breathe was to take in delight.      Early fall -- September sunrise on the Three Sisters in Canmore, Alberta, flowers from the St. Louis Botanical Garden, and an Indiana leaf, catching the light.      More from 2015 -- summer months, with Virginia skies, Michigan beach stones, and Indiana flowers.      I've been going through my 2015 photos, planning on a retrospective of the year to brighten up this colder, often grayer season. I found that the pictures that caught my eye varied depending on the theme or title I had in mind. So we may have several retrospectives in the weeks ahead. Today is the first installment on the theme of Catching the Light, mostly taken during the first quarter of the year.      The interplay of light and shadow -- fascinating! I like that little round drop in the shadow of the big drop above, and the subtle play of light and shadow that allows us to see it. And then there's the pattern of light and shadow cast by the dewdrops below. And the patterns of light and shadow on flowers, and through flowers.       In the dim light of this foggy, foggy morning the morning glories glowed and the spider webs were outlined with dewdrops.        An early August visit to the DeFries calendar garden and nearby Baintertown wetlands. . . . I've been pondering the question "What is the value of a mosquito?" I could certainly do without the bumper crop we've had in the past few weeks, but a narrow focus on that seems a bit anthropocentric. I read recently that one side effect of the thriving crop of mosquitoes is a bumper crop of flourishing dragonflies, who feed on them. We saw plenty of feasting dragonflies hovering over the wetlands, and this one clinging to a seedpod. Elsewhere some seeds are wind-blown, others not yet formed by their flower, or gathered up and stored in glass.        Bergamot in shadow and in light, yellow coneflowers near and far, pink coneflowers with friend and on fire -- the wonders of a summer day.       |
My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Tesserae: small cube-shaped tiles of ceramic, glass or precious stone used to make a mosaic, or in this case, brief essays on some element of lectio divina with Luke 10:38-42. Archives
February 2019
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