Shades of Pink

Favorite Places

This is one of my favorite places. It combines a book store, a tea, coffee and pastry shop, a small antique store and a small plant nursery.


Marie is always ready to help find a book or, if she knows your reading preferences, alert you to the latest book published by your favorite author.


For a tiny village bookstore, McCabe's has a wonderful selection of books and if they don't have it they will order it for you.

There are comfortable chairs by a fireplace. These two women graciously consented to let me take their picture, even though I didn't know them. But by the time I left, I'd made two new friends. Look closely at the lap of the woman in the foreground and you'll see the most important person at McCabe's: Miss Bobbi the Bookstore Cat! (Sorry she's so hard to see. She was in one of her pertinacious moods the day I took these photos).

Blue

Flowing blue distance

Tells tales of eternity

To those who listen

So Near

Yet so far. This cloud was actually dropping rain but the rain was evaporating before it could hit the ground because the humidity is so low up here. This phenomenon is called "Virga," and it's immensely frustrating.

I could smell the rain in the air and I bet the animals in the forest could, too. I wonder if the trees could somehow sense that the rain which they need so desperately was near? Sometimes it seems that Nature has a really twisted sense of humor.

They're interesting and pretty to look at, but I wish the water that they're laden with could have made it down to the ground. There hasn't been a day since the beginning of June that has been completely cloudless, but we've only had one day that it really rained. Unfortunately, it didn't last very long; a little over a minute and it was done.

If science figured out a way to put men on the moon, why can't they figure out a way to make it rain? Now that would be truly useful!

Wordless Wednesday

Memory...What's That?

This is one of my favorite little nooks in my back garden to sit and dream. (Note to self: Trim the greenery, it's swallowing the Reading Fairy). I had just finished watering; sadly, I have to water the in-ground plants twice weekly and the potted ones every day. The green plastic hanging pot in the upper right did have some wonderful deep pink double-ruffled Impatiens in it, but the baby Steller Jays kept using it as a resting place and finally squished it out of existence. Ah well, all in a good cause. I have some beautiful hanging planters that I kept meaning to transplant the Impatiens into, but I would usually think about that in the middle of doing a million other things and then I would forget. I'm getting just a little too good at this forgetting thing, but I'm not having much success in combating it.

There are not many blooms on the Hydrangeas, but I was surprised that they bloomed at all this year. Normally I mulch them heavily, then put black plastic over the whole thing. It's really too cold in the winter to grow them easily up here, but I have a couple of protected spots where they do okay along as long as I remember to coddle them. I mulched them last winter but forgot the black plastic. I've now made up a list of things that need to be done in the autumn so here's hoping I won't forget where I put the list!

My Mama told me that with age comes wisdom but she didn't tell me that wisdom pushes memory right out. She probably forgot...

Just Drifting

Waiting for the food he knows I'll give him...

Evening Songs

For the past four days I've had a really nasty gastrointestinal bug. I think the 4th of July doesn't like me, because this is the third one in a row that I've missed.

Anyway, this evening I felt well enough to sit outside and watch the sun set behind the ridge as I listened to a symphony provided by nature.

Our creek has stopped using its noisy, rushing, roaring voice of spring which sometimes grates on my ears. It is now speaking in soothing liquid gurgles, punctuated by the occasional loud, joyful "PLASH!" as it leaps off a rock to continue its downward flow to the lake.

A gentle breeze wends its way though the pines, cedars, dogwoods and oaks, coaxing a comment from each branch it touches. Every tree has its own distinctive voice; the pines and cedars speak in a soft susurrant rush, while the oaks and dogwoods speak in a quiet swish and rustle.

The birds are making their last visit of the day to our feeders. I can hear their various trills, warbles, chirps, and whortlings as they reach their homes. The last rays of the sun are gilding the tops of the tallest pines on the ridge behind me when I hear the high, lonely call of a hawk far above me. I look up to see it riding the thermals, its feathers blazing red and gold against the deep purple blue sky.

I feel so blessed to live here. Later, hopefully, I will feel well enough to go down to the lake and watch La Luna pour her silver light on the water.