SERENDIPITY

Marilyn Armstrong — Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Category Archives: Nature

In the woods

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TheWoods

In the woods, the colors are muted. You have to look around you with care to see the interesting stuff … but also to make sure you don’t sprain an ankle falling over an unseen obstacle.

The forest floor is deceptive. It looks soft and smooth, but that’s just the surface, covered by leaves. Beneath that are rocks, trenches hollowed by rain or the burrows of small animals.

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If you can ignore the insects who are busily biting you as you walk (slathering yourself with bug repellant only slows the attack), there are fascinating configurations everywhere, soft greens, grays, browns and blacks. A small bird’s nest in the hollow of a fallen tree. A strange fungus growing on rotting wood, and everywhere, leaves fallen from oak trees covering everything.

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Daily Prompt: I Want to Know What Love Is — LOVE IS

Together

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Love is.

Love wants not to be defined.

Love defies explanations.

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Do you breathe? Live under God’s light?

Then you know love.

It’s in your bones, your blood, your soul.

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Love is feeling.

The more you try to imprison love in walls of words,

The faster it will run from you.

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Trust is the food of love.

Trust love, that you know when you give it, know when you get it.

Mated Swans

Embrace it when it comes.

Share it.

Bestow it freely, in joyous abundance.

Love given away never diminishes the love you have.

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Love is for sharing, not saving.

Is it love when unshared?

Then it is, I think, an idea only.

Love thrives in light, withers in dark.

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There is but one kind of love.

Its expressions and objects vary, but love is, of all things, the simplest.

Love is.

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Garden on the Deck

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(c) 2013 - Marilyn Armstrong

Each year I’ve lived in this house — except for one — I’ve put flowers out on the deck, hanging fuchsia and bright begonias.

The hummingbirds love fuchsia. If you are quiet and patient, you can sit, sip you coffee or lemonade. You can watch the hummingbirds busily drinking from the fuchsia and the red or violet begonias too. Last year, I missed getting some fuchsia.

(c) 2013 - Marilyn Armstrong

Several local nurseries have closed and the few that remain only grow a limited number of fuchsia. They take up so much room in the greenhouse, you see, they can only grow a few dozen.

(c) 2013 - Marilyn Armstrong

I knew today was the day they would put the fuchsia out for sale.There were 40 at the start of the day. By the time I got there at a little past noon, there were 6 left. I bought two. I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer!

(c) 2013 - Marilyn Armstrong

Only one year, the year after I had my bilateral mastectomy, did I put no flowers out. It was less a sign of how sick my body was than how depressed I was emotionally.

(c) 2013 - Marilyn Armstrong

This year I vowed, we’d have our garden on the deck.

I kept my word. This year, we have flowers.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern — River Runs

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A trick of the light … a strange play of reflection of trees along the banks produced these patterns on the Blackstone River.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern — Water Lilies

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Water Lilies on a small canal

On a small canal by an old mill, tens of thousands of water lilies form a rich tapestry on the dark, smooth surface of the water. Why the lilies so favor this narrow canal above all other water in the area … water lilies not being as common as reeds and other water-loving plants … no one knows. Perhaps it’s a perfect acidity level or it’s lime leaching into the water from the granite lining the waterway, but lilies almost cover the water’s surface.

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