Soaking up the sun...

Many plants were still in bloom around here just a few days ago.

Leaving the local library loaded down with books to while away the cold, wintry hours, I halted traffic in the middle of the walkway when I caught sight of one such plant.  In front of the old, sagging house across the street stood an eight-foot tall rose pillar literally covered with clear pink flowers, still as lovely as though it were midsummer.

At the nearby botanical garden, the reblooming azaleas were having their day in the sun all over again, as though Easter were just around the corner.  The only clue to the season in the picture above is the light, which looks distinctly darker and richer now.

In my own garden, the pineapple sage decided it was time for a last fling, throwing out a spate of red tubular flowers just in the last three weeks.  It’s planted very near my front door and is visible from the window where I work, so that I could easily appreciate the ruby-throated hummingbirds’ visits to sip its nectar.  Pineapple sage is a hummingbird favorite here.  (The hummers all migrated a couple of months ago, however.)

Those tiny blooms were like a flag in the greying landscape, a rebellious banner holding out against the world’s inexorable dying.  Perhaps a hundred times in these weeks when I glimpsed them, I thought, “I really should go grab the camera and snap a few pictures.  They won’t last long.”

But they kept going, braving night after night of increasing cold.  Each morning, the faded leaves of the butterfly bush would be painted with white whorls of frost, and the few unharvested mustard leaves would sparkle in the dawn light.  Yet still the pineapple sage glowed scarlet, defying the weather.

“Good job,” I whispered to it as I passed.

But I never remembered to get out the camera.  I think I got complacent as it continued to brave it out, seemingly impervious to whatever temperatures came our way.  This plant was like The Little Engine That Could — only wearing the traditional scarlet of the caboose.  Appropriate, in a way, since these tiny blooms were the very last to grace my garden.

Of course, now they are toast.  We’ve been having some truly bitter cold these last few days.  Today we’ll barely top 42° F (6° C).  I miss seeing those defiant little red blossoms outside my window.  And I really wish I’d taken the time to get those photos.

Just a few minutes, that’s all it would have taken.  Why did I put it off?

In honor of the pineapple sage, may I suggest we each do one small thing today that we’ve been putting off?  Something meaningful, if possible.

We won’t regret it.

Namaste, y’all.

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It’s been so hot here the last few days, I haven’t felt like doing much.  I daydream of going to the movie theatre, just to sit bathed in that ultra-cold, air-conditioned air.  But I don’t go and do it because, you know, the price of a ticket would be a luxury expenditure right now, and I’m trying to be a good girl.  Plus, it would feel all the more hot once I returned home.

In this heat, I haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping up with e-mails, comments, or posts on the blog.  To give you an idea, I’d uploaded these photos far in advance, planning for the end-of-the-month Hot, Loud, & Proud meme, hosted by my friend Noel Morata over at his beautiful blog, A Plant Fanatic in Hawaii.  But then when it came time to write it yesterday, I was limp and listless and not in the mood to do anything much but sit on the couch with F. and a tall glass of lemony ice-water, watching sci-fi reruns with our little window unit blaring at full blast.  (He’s recently gotten me into the Babylon 5 series.)

The garden is surely showing my neglect and lethargy, but I don’t seem to be able to muster the energy to care.

I guess this is the dark side of hot.

But there’s a bright side, too.  Take, for instance, this flower bed, my favorite “hot spot” at the South Carolina Botanical Garden.  Isn’t it lovely?

When I originally uploaded these shots for your consideration, I was planning this long, detailed post about how I go about photographing a particular scene, inviting inspiration to come to me.  I’d received a couple of e-mails requesting some guidance on photographing garden scenes that truly made me blush.  (Y’all are too kind, really.)  And although I’m no expert — not even close — I was planning on sharing precisely how I do it, and what seems to work for me.

Now I’m pretty much ready to just show you the pictures.

Every artist has to find their own path, after all, and discover by trial and error what works for him.

Even so, I suppose I could rally the energy to share my top three photography tips, the things I consider essential for my own process.  What’s the worst that could happen?  I could melt into a puddle as I type.

Number 1:  Be open to the moment.  If you go out there really determined to get a great shot of a coneflower for this specific post you have in mind, your single-minded focus will prevent you from seeing the awesome way the light is shining through that sassafrass tree, or the metallic green bee perched just so on a brilliant orange petal.

I guess what I am trying to say is:  Don’t be too sure you know in advance what your muse is trying to tell you.

This posture is essentially hostile to any creative process, and that attitude is the one that results in frustrating photo expeditions — not to mention overworked watercolors, collages that morph into busy messes, short stories destined for the wastebasket, and poems that are so convoluted even your creative writing teacher shakes her head in confusion.

Why is that?

Hmm… because I think when you get down to it, Art is about not knowing.  About being as open as we can be to this incomparable Reality, in whatever guise it comes to us.

For me, that often looks like wonder.

Number 2:  Take lots of photos.  And I mean lots.

Whatever number you think is enough photos of your subject, double that.  Most of them are the photos you will need to throw away to get to the good ones.

Now, this would have been tough advice to give a new photographer a few years ago, when the photographers I knew personally had invested in serious equipment, darkrooms in their houses, purchasing canister upon canister of film, and the best print paper they could afford.  But you really have no excuse in the digital era.  (Philip over at Capturing Beauty has a wonderful article entitled Simple Advice where he explains this better than I could, by the way.)

Take lots of pictures because… get ready for it… Practice makes Perfect.  And that advice really goes for all the arts, writing included, as I personally can attest.

I am allowed to pass on such miserable clichés because my sister is a classical musician, and if you have ever observed a musician in training — and I mean a good one, or one who becomes a good one — the first thing you will realize is that lots of would-be artists give up way too early.  Whenever I lament the development of my own writing skills, all I have to do is remember my little sister, practicing seven hours a day at the height of her learning curve.  The vision of that kind of determination makes me get back to work.

Or rather, to play.

Because making art, any art, has to be a playful act.  Or, in the case of a dark or serious piece, we might say that one has to be free when making it.  Free to see it from another angle, free to break the old rules, free to blaze a new path, to explore other options.

So that’s my last bit of advice.

Number 3: Take it lightly.  Take yourself lightly.  I hate the stereotype of the serious artist, and I have never actually met a succesful artist who wasn’t playful and endowed with a great sense of humor, which allows, among other things, a gentle receptivity to their own fledgling ideas.

This is not rocket science we’re doing here.  (Thank God.  Because F. does rocket science all day long, and I have never seen an ounce of humor in a physics equation.)  When you go out with your camera — or with your pen or paintbrush or instrument — you are supposed to feel a little bit giddy sometimes, a little bit free, like a kid with a big deluxe box of crayons and no parent staring over your shoulder.

I grant you permission to have fun.

Wonderful things lie ahead on this path...

Namasté, y’all.

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~Norman Douglas

No.  Although flowers in winter, dormant or still only a sleeping seed’s dream, may say “not yet.”  They might not be ready yet.  But the great wheel will turn and their time will come around again.

It really is never too late to act on your dreams.

So you haven’t done it yet.  So what?  That sleeping seed’s dream within you is still precious, and the flower you envision may yet open from within you.  It may have needed to wait until conditions were just right.

I just felt that someone out there needed this reminder today.

And if that someone isn’t you, well… I hope you enjoy the photos of the coneflowers, at least.

Namasté, y’all!

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~ Hafiz

Dedicated to anyone out there who’s going through a rough time right now.

I know it hasn’t been easy.

Some friends of mine are going through tough stuff right now.

Really tough.

Sometimes it seems to be everywhere simultaneously.  So many things are going wrong.  So many problems, everywhere you look, sprouting up just like mushrooms after a long, soft, autumn rain.

Our ideas of how things are supposed to be, well, they end up being as short-lived as the morning glories who spiral open so triumphantly as soon as the sun clears the horizon — and then they’re finished by noon.

Finished.

The conditions that were perfect for them before are no longer what prevails.  Yet everything keeps on going on, singing, stretching, unfolding… creating fruit where there was nothing before, spreading more roots to be able to stand taller than ever, bearing seeds, those tiny miracles… soaking up the sun, swallowing the rain, growing.

Things change.  Our ideas change.  We change.

The path can look so scary in places, I know.  Believe me, I know.*

But I also know that one day you’ll look back on this part of the journey and be grateful you were here.  You’ll see that it was important for you to become the person you could be.  The even more beautiful and amazing version of you than the one you are living now.

It might be impossible to believe that now, to hold that place in your heart open.  You know the one.  It’s the place that forever cradles hope, the place that sees possibility and opportunity in absolute disaster, the place that knows you are fabulous and that you always — always — deserve love, exactly as you are.

Its voice sounds a little bit like Pollyanna sometimes.  And that’s cute when things are looking up, or just so-so, or just bad enough that a pep talk can make a quick attitude adjustment.  But when you’re really suffering, sometimes what you really want to do is scream at it, tell it to shut up, lock it in the closet, and get on with your dark night of the soul.

Panic tends to shut off our connection to that place.  Not that your fears are illegitimate.  On the contrary.  I’ve heard many of them, and I’ve got my own share, believe me.  I’m the last person to discount the things that keep you up at night.  But whatever it is, you are more than this.  You are being given these precise challenges for your own highest spiritual growth.

I hesitated to write that last part.  Some of you might get mad.  But honesty is part of the package here .

Should I instead have given you clichés, soothed you by telling you it will all get better soon?  That you’ll certainly come out smelling like a rose?  That might not be true, I’m afraid.  It might even get worse.  I am no prophetess, and I cannot see the future.

Besides, most commercially-grown roses have had the scent bred right out of them.  They smell like the plastic in which they’re wrapped, with a lingering whiff of the fungicide in which they’ve been dipped to pass through a Customs inspection.

Hey, we’re being straight with each other here; right?

That is why you need access to that place in your heart.   It doesn’t do plastic or fake, ever.  And it won’t ever lie.  It will carry you through the darkest days.  It is on intimate terms with “the astonishing light of your being.”

And if you cannot get there lately (or for a while now), if that place seems closed off, the doors padlocked, the lights shut off, as if everybody has gone home for the off-season, or as if maybe it’s been abandoned for good, then that is the magic I have for you tonight.

I am your placeholder.

I am holding the door open, as someone once did for me when it all got so very lopsided and confusing, so terrifying and sad.  I am the one holding a candle there inside, showing you that all is safe, and that you can trust in the process of your own unfolding, no matter what.

If you look very closely, you will see that my “candle” is actually a mirror, reflecting your very own light.

Namasté, y’all.

*Someday I may tell my own harrowing “story” on the blog.  I am not quite able to be that vulnerable in a public space yet.  However, I can assure you it was not a pretty, easy, gentle path… and I’m now so grateful for every gut-wrenching step.

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