the blue muse

I am over at Vision and Verb today, with a different peony shot and some thoughts on clarity, depth of field, and life.

Would love to have you stop over and say hello!

Also, I am loving Kim Klassen’s class on the art of texture, I applied the first lesson to the photo above.

And Kelly Rae’s Flying Lessons class is off to a wonderful start, June is going to be a busy, busy month! Crazy busy, but good busy!

I wrote this, with paper and pencil, earlier this morning:

I am here this morning, here, and the only sound is birdsong, coming in through the open windows. You don’t realize how loud your house is until the electricity goes off, it actually woke me up, that sudden silence. Fans, air purifiers, appliances that hum, all the white noise that we tune out and forget about until it stops.

As I write this, all I hear are birds and the scratch of pencil on paper. What a wonderful, hypnotic sound. So peaceful, sitting here writing this way, not on a keyboard. I should do this more often, just me and a pencil and an open notebook. Before I started my blogs I always wrote this way. But with tea.

I am missing my tea desperately right now. I listen to the scratch scratch of my pencil, I listen to robins, chickadees, cardinals, the mockingbird, and the loud rumble of a hummingbird at the feeder just outside my window.

I should unplug more often, I know this, find the peace that comes with less. I should let my mind rest, my ears, my senses. So much of the time it is all on overload. This morning, that rest has been forced upon me, a gift. An hour of silence I would not have experienced otherwise.

I wonder if I could heat water for tea with a candle.

I wonder how much work it was, in the days before electricity, to get up and make tea, or coffee. It was not quick and easy, it was never there, waiting, the way coffee is for my husband every morning.

That tea, my first cup, is going to taste especially good today.

Meanwhile, I’m going to sit here and enjoy the silence.

It is quiet this morning, still. Cloudy, with the possibility of thunderstorms. We need the rain, but it is hard to give up the sunshine. I am up early and the day stretches before me with promises.

I should take photos, my garden is dripping with blooms, roses everywhere, lupines, peonies, clematis, all posing their best pose and calling my name.
All wishing to be stars.

This rose in my photo, a rugosa rose, is not so showy, it is happy to stay in the background and fill my garden with its scent. Oh, that scent. The scent that all other roses aspire to. I want to cut them and put vases all over my house, but they don’t enjoy being cut flowers, no long stems, they don’t last very long in a vase. And the thorns, oh my, they are the thorniest, these roses are not for coddling, not for primping, not for the tender-hearted.

There is rain in the air, I can smell it. The humidity clings to my skin, sticky, everything is sticky. Now, this early in the morning, it feels comforting. Later, when it is too hot to bear, it will be stifling. But still, we need the rain.

I could go for a thunderstorm. This afternoon I will be here, alone, husband and son going to do guy things, golf, camp out, rough it. I could curl up in a chair and listen to the rumble of thunder as I read one of my picked-out-for-summer books. Oh, how I would love to curl up in a chair and do just that.

You would think that winter would be the best time for reading, stuck inside so much of the time. But for me, summer and reading have always gone together, I spent most of my childhood summers doing just that. There were lots of kids on our street, lots of opportunities for play. But I was always the one on the porch, nose buried in a book, oblivious to the world around me. Oh, how I wish I had a porch, just now, today.

If it stays nice and doesn’t rain, I will sit in my garden. The birds will sing, and I will be there, but somewhere else. Someplace that exists only between two covers. I’ve spent so much of my life there, in those pages, gone so many places, loved so many characters, laughed and cried and lived so many lives that I never could have imagined. All while sitting in a chair.

A rose by any other name is, indeed, still a rose.

A book by any other name… well that is a different story.

A perfectly perfect peony bud, it makes me think of possibility, things to come, the potential for beauty, and … summer.

Sometimes I feel like this should be a gardening blog because I am always taking photos of my flowers, but there they are and they look so lovely and well, it is hard to resist. My peonies opened just yesterday, which is quite early, but it has been so warm here that flowers are popping out everywhere, and for me, peonies mark the beginning of summer. They just do. And I know they won’t last because it is just too hot, so I went out and cut bunches and bunches and now they are all over my house. They smell wonderful.

And then I have, in front of me, this plate full of possibility, new jewelry pieces fresh out of the kiln… this is how they look after I mold and press and collage and shape and sand and fire them, but before I tumble and oxidize and sand them again and tumble them some more…

Underneath that white coating is .999 pure silver. By the end of this week, they will be ready to make into jewelry and that is good because our first show of the year is rapidly approaching… June 5th will be here before I know it!

I love the first days of summer, the possibility, the promise, the anticipation, it must stem from those days as a child when school was just about to get out and I knew that soon I would be barefoot and carefree and riding bikes and going to the beach and reading lots and lots of books in a hammock beneath a tree in the backyard. All that free, unstructured time stretching before me…

Each year, I try to recapture just a little bit of that feeling. I can’t take the whole summer off, (I wish!) but I try to fit in a few of the things that make summer seem magical, Sunday afternoons reading in my garden, evenings outside in front of the fire pit, watching fireflies and listening to crickets, a long lazy day at the lake with a picnic basket full of fruit and cheese and lemonade, a stack of magazines and the sound of children splashing in the background… there is just something about summer that makes time go slower, nights last longer, books more memorable, music sound better.

Don’t you agree?

I ran out on Saturday and snapped this photo, the first rose bloom of the year! This is one of those roses that smells heavenly, that old rose scent, soon, after a few more blooms open, I will be able to smell it from my studio….

I love my garden at this time of year, peonies opening, iris in full swing, pansies still happy because it is not too hot yet.

I would love to spend an entire week out there tidying things up, but not yet, not yet, our first jewelry show is less than two weeks away! So my garden will have to stay slightly messy until then, good thing there are so many pretty things to distract your eye from the weeds…

But I just had to share this photo. By the way, I used several of Kim Klassen‘s new textures to make it even more beautiful. If you haven’t discovered her wonderful textures yet, you should hop over to her site, where you can find a few to try out for free, and look at all her incredibly gorgeous photos, and purchase her texture sets, and take classes on creating lovely textured photos and textures, and well, you should just go there.

Happy perfectly pretty Monday!

We are participating in two giveaways today, be sure to go and check them out so you can enter!

The first is over at Simply Hue, Vicki Dvorak’s lovely art blog. It is for this precious metal clay necklace:

The link to the giveaway is here, you must go there and leave a comment to be entered. Be sure to check out her wonderful artist spotlights…so much talent to be found.

:::

The second is over at Under the Table and Dreaming, Stephanie Lynn’s fun and lovely blog. It is for this precious metal clay necklace:

The link to the giveaway is here, you must go there and follow Stephanie’s directions to be entered. Be sure to check out her Sunday Showcase Party, looks like lots of fun!

Good luck everyone!

More glass, I have a thing for glass….

And for kitties…

And pansies…

And pattern…

And books…

And Russell Wright tea cups, filled with blue skies and dreamy clouds…

I have had such a wonderful time with this project. I did discover that I take way too many macro shots… I think I need to back away and expand my horizons.

Make sure to pop over to Curious Girl and check out the side-bar blog roll to see all the wonderful color week photos…

Jacob’s Ladder, laddering….

Lovely green hyacinth vase…

Shy little spider…

Rims of jadeite bowls….

Frilly, curly fern…

My favorite market tote…

See more thoughts on green as part of my color series in poetry and collage here.

Pop over to Curious Girl and check out the side-bar blog roll to see more wonderful color week photos…

My favorite purple blouse….

Little bee doing his job…

My antique purple bowl…

A lovely ruffled iris….

Pretty beads that will be jewelry, soon…

And oh, this wonderful clematis…

See more thoughts on purple as part of my color series in poetry and collage here.

Pop over to Curious Girl and check out the side-bar blog roll to see more wonderful color week photos…

Good morning happy pansy face….

Golden glass and pineapple quartz…

Gerbera in its glory…

Banana freckles…

Merry marigolds…

Sleepy orange kitten cat…

See more thoughts on yellow as part of my color series in poetry and collage here and orange, with that same kitten cat, here.

Pop over to Curious Girl and check out the side-bar blog roll to see more wonderful color week photos…