Time is an Athlete; Donkey is Not.

The week has sprinted past me, raising its eyebrows as it swooshed by, shrugging its lean shoulders over my sluggishness, and leaving me wondering how on earth it's Friday already.

Therefore, in lieu of an actual post made up of thoughts and words and effort, here are just a couple of photos from the first of the month, when we went to check on our cottage:

A rocky shoal exposed at low tide

Layers of rock at the far edge of that shoal

Standing near the furthest edge of the shoal

A closer and fuzzier look at the gull perched on the rock in the previous shot

A tiny crab in a tiny pool of water - he was stranded on a rock so I put him back in the pool and hoped he would live

The drive home

I am ever hopeful that by Monday I will catch up to the week as it launches itself once again.

Hah.

Worn to a Frazzle

I have been helping family move.

The good news is that my back/hip is feeling okay.

The bad news is that I am f-r-i-e-d.

I am a tired donkey.

I think I could sleep on concrete right now. (Photo courtesy of Pixabay.)

And in the middle of the moving, I took a day off for my father's burial service. More on that to come.

Regular programming will resume Friday.

By then, I hope to report this (maybe more than once):

Someone has to do it. Otherwise, what would the trees live on? (e card courtesy of somecards.com)

Hope your week goes well.

Double Dog Dare Ya

I've been travelling to the nearest town the last few days to help family pack for a move, and the first night when I drove home the sun was just setting.

I pulled out my camera, opened my window and aimed behind me - blindly - and clicked.

I was quite happy with the result of that wild shot:

Now, taking a photo while driving probably wasn't the most brilliant thing I ever did, but I made sure there was no traffic around me, and I used the Smart Auto feature on my camera so I didn't have to think about focusing.

But it made me think about taking chances and risky behavior and dangerous activity, and I thought - not for the first time - that there are things I would do in a heartbeat IF I knew I would not die or be seriously hurt. Things like bungee jumping, parachuting, riding full out on a motorbike, driving a race car, riding shotgun in an airplane with a stunt pilot (since I can't fly myself), snowboarding, windsurfing - things that have a very good chance of killing or maiming me, given my age, general condition, and lack of coordination, and I'm not willing to pay that price.

So tell me, if you are so inclined: what is the most dangerous thing you've ever done? What would you do if you knew you'd live and be fine afterward?

The Butterfly Bush

Last summer we were forced to admit that our  lilac tree was dead. It was a hybrid - a lilac bush grafted onto a dwarf tree (fruit tree, maybe?), a part of the original landscaping when we built our house in 1988. It was planted in a small area surrounded by the house, the driveway, the brick walk and the concrete step. We are not good gardeners, I must confess, and the only food it got was the occasional layer of mulch.  In 2003 it was half uprooted during Hurricane Juan, and it never fully recovered after that. Two years ago it bloomed on only one side, and last summer there were no leaves at all.

And yet, for those 26 years, it gave us incredibly fragrant blossoms every spring. Every fall, its leaves would drop as Hallowe'en approached, and I'd prune it back so the branches wouldn't poke at little trick-or-treaters coming to the front door, and decorate it with ghosts and witches. When our kids were growing up, we decorated for Christmas, too, and the lilac tree was hung with mini-lights and tiny red ribbons.

So it was sad to see it die (shocking conclusion: we should have fertilized it!) but by that point there was no going back to do things over. I went to the nursery to select a new victim, and came home with a butterfly bush.

Here it is last spring:

And now it looks like this:

It has been blooming steadily for weeks. Here's a bloom up close and personal:

They have a very sweet, fermented smell which I suppose is a part of how they attract butterflies. I have yet to see any butterflies on it, but the hummingbirds have visited a few times.

And it's deer-resistant!

Not ant-resistant, though - see the holes in that leaf in the last picture?

Ah, well, can't have it all :)

Grampy Already Covered That Ground, or At Least It Seemed Like He Did

A couple of months ago, I signed up to receive a weekly email from the BBC website. It's called "If You Only Read Six Things This Week ..." and it provides links to intriguing articles on events and ideas that I'd probably not encounter otherwise.

Last week's links included a fascinating discussion on the idea that we could be living in a simulated world where nothing is real, even though it feels real to us, along with the question of whether it matters if it's real or not. The piece is titled "We might live in a computer program, but it may not matter," and was a good read. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you may enjoy it as well.

My grandfather thought about a similar concept around fifty years ago. He always talked to my brother and me as if we were adults, and during one visit when I was about ten years old he speculated about the possibility that the earth was merely a project on the mantelpiece of a vast being who, from time to time, peeked in on us to see how the experiment was going.

I've thought about that idea many times since. I don't know if it was an original thought or whether he simply read about it and wanted to share it. But it tickles my fancy to think that he was wondering about those things so many years ago, and that I've run into the concept again.

"What if none of this is real?"

As long as we feel it's real, does it matter? Pain still hurts, and joy still uplifts.

I watched the cloud formations in the video below shortly after I'd read the BBC article. This seems like a good time to share them. Note the banks of white clouds that hardly move, and the grey puffy clouds that travel along at a good clip. It was a windy day along the river, raw and refreshing, and it made me feel connected to the world and beyond. Illusion or not, I was happy.

You may wish to leave the sound off, as the only audio is wind noise. On the other hand, it does add to the ambience, making the video, on the whole, only slightly less boring than watching paint dry :)

And a photo of the same thing, for those who don't "do" videos; you can see the two layers of clouds, white and grey, the leaves bent by the wind, and the ripples on the water:

 

This was too far for me to walk, so I drove to the trail and hobbled to the lookout shelter. Illusion or not, my hip still hurt! (Update: since then, my physio person and I have made inroads on my issues - turns out my back is involved, and as that resolves, my pain is greatly decreased. Illusion of joy! and it's pretty nice, I have to say.)

Do you have a place where you connect with nature? What kind of weather makes you feel alive?

Happy weekend, folks!

Visitors

One day last week I arrived home early from work, as I had a meeting in the evening. There had been a sudden downpour not ten minutes before, and the sky was still dark and the ground was steaming as it was a very warm day. As I turned into our street I realized there were two small deer grazing in our front yard. We have been occasionally having deer visitors in late afternoon but I am not often home at that time, so I was delighted to catch these two in broad - although gloomy - daylight.

They watched as I drove slowly into our lane; then they began to drift toward our back yard. Carrying my camera with me all the time is beginning to pay off; I turned it on before getting out of the car, walked quietly to our veranda and very quietly to the end of it in order to see around the corner ... and this was my reward:

 

They didn't seem all that disturbed by me standing there and filming them. 

The larger of the two was a nursing mother, and I assume the smaller one was her baby from this past spring - it still had white spots, although they don't show up well in the video. The doe wasn't very large, so it pulled at my heart a bit - like seeing a teenage mother with a toddler.

Other than that, I was very happy to finally capture some of these graceful, beautiful animals on film in good lighting.

Elephant's Child, this is especially for you; an exchange, if you will, for all the lovely kangaroo shots you've shared on your blog and which I've enjoyed so much. It's been well over a year since I started my quest to get a picture of some of these guys. I suppose now they'll be standing six deep in the driveway every day just clamouring to have their pictures taken ... if so, I'll be sure to document it :)

Formatting Lessons? Why Would I Need Those?

This week I thought I'd use Wednesday Words as inspiration for my Friday post, which appears on Saturdays in some parts of the world.  Not at all confusing, is it?

Wednesday Words began with Delores (whose new blog is here), and it's being hosted this month by Elephant's Child. The words this month are provided by Margaret Adamson and Sue Fulcher.

To start, I'll just copy/paste the second list of words from Elephant's Child's blog.

Child's play!

1. Staggering
2. Lies
3. Art
4. Naked
5. Preposterous
6. Windmill.      
7. 
   
8. 
   
9. Crap how do I fix this auto-numbering??
10. 
    
11. Grrrrr!
12. Guess I'll just write my little paragraph as number 12 then. Here goes:
13. 
    
14. AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!! Every time I hit Enter, I get another number! I CAN'T STOP THE NUMBERS!! THEY ARE LIKE ZOMBIES ... ZOMBIE NUMBERS THAT WON'T DIE!!
15.  
16.  
17.  
18.  
19. *sigh*
20. 
    
21. Okay then, my paragraph follows ...
22. Blogger's promises of "easy set-up" that I relied on when starting my blog have proven to be a staggering bunch of lies! The art of writing is being constantly undermined by the need to figure out how to format my naked thoughts. It's preposterous! I'm ready to go find the nearest windmill and jump off. Fortunately, I believe there's a rather wide ocean between that windmill and me. 
23. 
    
24. 
    
25. *whimper*
26. 
    
27. P. S. Have a good weekend, and thank you for visiting ..... :)
28. (illustration courtesy of Pixabay)
29. 

Rise Again

Last week Jono, at Ottoson, posted about a Canadian folk singer whom I'd heard of frequently, but never actually sat down to listen to. The song he included in his post was "The Mary Ellen Carter," written and performed by Stan Rogers, and had as its refrain "Rise again! Rise again!" It has lingered in my head ever since; it was well sung by Rogers, with an intriguing story and meaningful lyrics.

The refrain also reminded me of quite a different tune called "Rise Again," written by Leon Dubinsky and performed by The Rankin Family, a band of siblings; both the songwriter and the band hail from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia - my backyard, so to speak. It's a moving tune, just like the Stan Rogers song, not just for the music and lyrics, but also for the back stories of the artists. Stan Rogers was killed in a fire aboard an airplane in the US at the age of 34. Raylene Rankin, soloist in "Rise Again," passed away at the age of 52 following a ten year battle with cancer. Both singers were huge talents whose lives ended far too soon.

"Rise Again" was just becoming well known around the time that our son and daughter were in elementary school, and one year in the mid-90's the music teacher at the school took on the project of teaching all her classes the sign language for the tune, in order to present it at a special assembly for parents. I was a stay-at-home mother and fortunate to be able to attend daytime functions. This particular one blew me away; it brought tears to my eyes and gooseflesh to the rest of me.

As you listen, imagine watching five hundred children, ages five to twelve, using sign language in unison to "sing" the lyrics, as this haunting melody was played in the school gym, with the afternoon sunlight slanting in through the high windows:

Lyrics:
(Source for lyrics:  http://www.songlyrics.com)

When the waves roll on over the waters
And the ocean cries
We look to our sons and daughters
To explain our lives
As if a child could tell us why

That as sure as the sunrise
As sure as the sea
As sure as the wind in the trees
We rise again in the faces
of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again

When the light goes dark with the forces of creation
Across a stormy sky
We look to reincarnation to explain our lives
As if a child could tell us why

That as sure as the sunrise
As sure as the sea
As sure as the wind in the trees
We rise again in the faces
of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again

We rise again in the faces
of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again

..........................

"Rise Again" is one of my favourite songs - ever - and I hope you enjoy it, too.

Additional notes from Wikipedia:  "Rise Again" was written  as " ... an anthem of resilience and hope at a time when Cape Breton Island was going through an economic crisis. According to Dubinsky, the song is about "the cycles of immigration, the economic insecurity of living in Cape Breton, the power of the ocean, the meaning of children, and the strength of home given to us by our families, our friends and our music."" And: "Because of Dubinsky's Jewish faith, it has also sometimes been performed by Jewish groups at commemorations of the Holocaust."

Procrastinating Donkey has a Lazy Friday

"Lazy Friday" refers to the content of today's post. I procrastinated writing until it was time to panic; then proceeded to read everything I've written in the past (not for the blog) and decided there was nothing appropriate, thereby killing two hours and still being post-less .

However, being stubborn I want to keep to my posting schedule.

Therefore, the Procrastinating Donkey leaves you with this, and hope it is at least as good as boxed pasta dinner (you know, cheap but filling, and will do until the next meal):

INNER PEACE

Honestly? I don't remember where I borrowed this from. Might have been the internet. Might have been an email. If anyone knows the source, I'd be happy to credit it properly.

More Inner Peace! ... oops, I meant Dinner Peas ... that's very different ... (image courtesy of Pixabay)

Writer's block ... how do you break through it?