Late bloomer

"Remember to be gentle with yourself and others.

We are all children of chance and none can say

why some fields will blossom while others

lay brown beneath the August sun."

-- Kent Nerburn

Self portrait with Leo's wildflowers 11-7-13

"Silencing the brain's ramblings

gives the chance for wonderful thoughts to bloom."

-- Steven Redhead, The Solution

These wildflowers were growing in a pot out back.
My son Leo planted them in the spring, but they didn't grow.
We thought they were a lost cause.
We figured they were dead.
Bad seeds, maybe?
But Leo didn't give up on them.
He kept watering them until finally, when summer was nearly over, they grew.
Long and tall, awkward and spindly, with big fluttery pink blooms.
The harsh wind and rain have been beating them up pretty bad, and some were getting awfully tattered.
So I plucked them for a portrait.

Like a rock

"Life is mostly froth and bubble, 

Two things stand like stone -- 

Kindness in another's trouble, 

Courage in your own."

-- Adam Lindsay Gordon, "Ye Wearie Wayfarer"

Cemetery statue with flower garland 9-17-13

"Cold as winter, strong as stone;

She faced the darkness all alone."

-- Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Shattered Mirror

"The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands,

its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves,

was like a theater after the performance --

all strewn with crumpled playbills."

-- Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

Now you see me

“A tangled forest and the feeling of hidden eyes watching.”

― James C. Christensen, Voyage of the Basset

Self portrait with black paper flowers 5-14-13

 

"You are like a chestnut burr, 

prickly outside, but silky-soft within, 

 and a sweet kernel, 

if one can only get at it.” 

-- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women 

Self portrait with black paper flowers (2) 5-14-13