picture summer- day 28 {spin on summer}

Roses spinning.

picture summer- day 12 {simple solitude}

picture summer- day 18 {play time}

Blueberry season!

picture summer- day 20 {order}

Drying red clover for winter teas.

picture inspiration- week 21 {From the Heart}

Garden Fuschia.

picture summer- day 16 {friday lights}

picture summer- day 7 {so subtle}

Playing around with the changing blueberry colors, I found this guy taking shelter on a few of the pinker berries. Samuel is in the background checking out a baby garden spider.



On the way to *blue*.



I love the delicate peachy-pink of these succulent flowers, particularly with the vibrant purple in the background.

picture summer- day 3 {get centered}

(Gosh- I took so many different photos for this prompt and nothing seemed quite right. {From lined up Sprite cans to little Buddha figures to guinea pigs to hats.} One thing led to another and I ended up here. Not at all what I had started out with. Or where I thought I would end up. I like how that can happen sometimes. And how at other times, I choose the first shot I take. Or how other times the photo takes itself. Or how other times I look up and it's a perfect surprise. Or how other times, nothing happens until the next day. I love all of that.)

picture summer- day 1 {here comes the sun}

So I had so much fun with Picture Color that I decided to sign up for another class with Big Picture Classes. Picture Summer is another email-a-day class but this time self paced and with a focus on summer rather than color.

Here we go. Day 1.

picture color- day 2 {iconic color}

picture color- day 20 {corrugated color}

(Fresh hamster nibble sticks.)

picture color- day 17 {color of light}

Catching the light. It was a good day for it too!

picture color- day 16 {nothing but blue skies} addendum

Favorite blue. I meant to take a photo of these yesterday for nothing but blue skies but didn't. Decided to go ahead and do it today.



{And} favorite blue jeans.

picture color- day 16 {nothing but blue skies}

picture color- day 14 {statement of color}

picture color- day 9 {texture color}

Eva and I had a lot of fun with this one as well. We spent quite a bit of time one afternoon checking out the textures of different colors, particularly those of the plants in and around our front yard. Then on our walk that evening. Then the next day. And the next.



I actually took this one a few days later because texture was still on both of our minds.

picture color- day 5 {comfort}

Picture Color- Day 3 {Changing of the Guard}

Noticing how one color shifts to another.

Today I leave you with flowers for Mother's Day...

weed, weeded, weeding

I spent a good bit of the day weeding (i'm generally opposed to the word weeding {for myself} because it holds so many assumptions, but for the life of me I can't find another word for the job. tidying up? two words. yard work? possibly, but still two words. i'm working on it. i have resorted to using the word weeding over the last two weeks for lack of a better word and because I think it is fairly descriptive of what I have been doing, whether I like it or not...) again and am glad to see that my back and neck aren't having quite the same problem they did a few weeks ago when I first began tidying up the back garden area in earnest. I keep doing it because I really want that area cleaned up and logistically easier to care for, but I won't say I wasn't concerned my body wasn't going to be as into it as my mind seemed to be. My mind jumped at the chance. And the two of us- my mind and I- have been working on the garden area one thing at a time (i keep reminding my mind when it gets ahead of me and i feel overwhelmed with the task. one.thing.at.a.time. don't look beyond that lest i feel too overloaded to tackle any of it.)

(and why divide us all up like that- body, mind, me?- just for the fun of it. and frankly- to account for some of the disparity i experience when i try too hard to sum things up into one experience.) (and to sort of indulge that disparity a bit. i read somewhere a few years ago that one way we as a culture are dysfunctional is that we are taught we shouldn't feel more than one way at a time and as a result, we have a difficult time reconciling different and conflicting feelings....)

I'm happy with how it's going. I spent quite a bit of time with the strawberries and am pleased with how many we now have. I transplanted a few and cleaned up around most of them. I'm now trying to decide how to keep it um weeded more easily. The nursery people suggested cardboard around the plants and then dirt on top of that. It seems like that would work well with rows but my berry plants are all hodgepodge like, with very little rhyme or reason. I don't really want to go the way of hemlock mulch around them because I don't believe it really is sliver-free (and eva walks out in the garden a lot. it has to be eva-friendly.) I'm not sure which way I will end up going. One project at a time. Right now I'm working on the area in between the raised beds, covering it with newspaper (i actually bought one!) and then medium cedar chips, with rectangular pathway slabs on top of that. Eva is thrilled and mentioned how fun it will be to walk around under the sunflowers later in the summer.



I love how the purple kale has yellow flowers. It's such a nice contrast. Never fear- this kale is from last fall. There is more spring kale in the other bed. Always plenty of kale.