birds

Art Challenge of the Week: Showing the LOVE

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Welcome, everybody, to this week’s art challenge. In honor of Valentine’s Day, our theme is–you guessed it–LOVE.

Meet Wendy and Peter, affectionately named for two of our most beloved storybook characters. They’re nesting in a fuchsia, alongside our front walkway.  At 19 and 20 days old, they’re still too young to fly; but within a week, they’ll take to the skies on shimmery wings, as hummingbirds are wont to do. Love, ongoing and everlasting.

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Vincent van Gogh once said, “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” That quotation goes to the heart of who I am: a child of God who views the world with a wide-eyed sense of wonderment. It also speaks to the joy that comes of taking field trips with my camera.

 

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Art Challenge of the week: LOVE

Once upon a time, a consortium of artisans (poets, musicians, artists, and the like) tried to translate this complex emotion into words. But as someone wise once said, the language of love has many dialects.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, our Art Challenge theme o’ the week is (cue the harp music) LOVE. And lucky me, I get to host it.

Here, an opportunity to translate your own thoughts into images, using your favorite art form(s) and media. I enjoy photography, so I’ll be working with my camera. But Art Challenges are for all-comers. Painting, sewing, drawing, cooking…express your creativity any way you like, so long as you share your finished work in pictures.

Let your imagination run free! Picture yourself and your beloved, for instance, doing something that sparks your inner passions. (Hint: It doesn’t have to be romantic.)

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LOVE isn’t all chocolate and roses, although it could be. It can be sweet as these hummingbird hatchlings, in a cottony-soft nest…

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Or as absurd as this peacock, oblivious to its surroundings.

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LOVE can be dangerous at times, and prickly.

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Clingy or trusting? Reveal to us your vantage point, in literal or figurative ways.

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There are countless approaches you might take, when it comes to this theme o’ the week. No rules;  limitless boundaries. But may I offer you one suggestion? Leave no stone unturned in your quest for LOVE!

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One last thing: Be sure to link your project to the blog entry I post this Friday.

Note: This Art Challenge is not a contest, and you most certainly don’t need to be a pro to participate. This is art for its own sake, no judgment or restrictions. So c’mon, share the love.

Can Spring be far behind?

“In the darkest nights of winter,” my Nana always told me, “watch the skies and listen for the robins.”

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I mentioned that very thing, in my blog post last week.

She was right, of course. Again. Because, oh hey, look who’s splashing in my birdbath!

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Rarely have I ever seen robins in this area, and only once before in my own garden. He perched on my soul fence for a single afternoon, and then vanished.

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Such cheerful birds, these harbingers of spring. I’m glad for their company, however long they choose to stay.

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Seems Edward Jenner was equally enthralled by their visits. Here, his love letter to these red-chested beauties:

Address to a Robin
Come, sweetest of the feathered throng,
And soothe me with thy plaintive song;
Come to my cot, devoid of fear,
No danger shall await thee here…

Hop o’er my cheering hearth, and be
One of my peaceful family
Then soothe me with thy plaintive song,
Thou sweetest of the feathered throng.

–Edward Jenner (physician, musician, balloonist, and inventor of modern-day vaccinations, 1749-1823)

Art Challenge of the Week: Amid waves of concern, a sea of calm

When was the last time you spent a relaxing day at the beach, completely unplugged–

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resting quietly at the ocean’s edge,

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utterly mesmerized by waves that froth and curl, and then ease themselves ashore?

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When’s the last time you saw a seagull take wing,

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or spied a honeybee, humming a song about sunshine as it collects pollen?

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Do you remember the last time you heard the ocean’s lullaby,

felt it ease the wrinkles from your worried brow?

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(Did you figure it out already? This week’s art challenge prompt is the word CALM.)

Want to see more? My responses to previous challenges are available here.

The red, red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ along

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American Robin

At the confluence of serendipity & symbolism sits this red-breasted beauty. He appeared in my backyard for the first time yesterday, a dandelion wish finally realized.

I’d search the skies above our new home for more than a year, believed beyond reason that our backyard would one day be graced by a robin’s cheerful song. And just before sunset, without advance warning or fanfare, hope perched its chubby self on my back fence.

He foraged in my flowerbed, splashed in the birdbath, and surveyed the hillside beyond our fence before flying home to his own nest. I’m hoping he’ll return, but even if he doesn’t, I’m over-the-moon happy about this visit.

 

Blog title courtesy of Dean Martin.

 

 

Throwback Thursday: Paradise found

I have arrived. I am home. –Thích Nhất Hạnh

It seems like just yesterday that the moving trucks rolled into our new driveway, but we’ve lived in this place for a little over a year, now! We’re slowly transforming our garden into a drought-friendly place; and little by little, we’re personalizing each room and emptying the boxes.

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Birds of Paradise

It’s easy to get swept up in the day-to-day minutiae, to the point that we forget to celebrate just how far we’ve traveled. Conversely, when we focus too much on the future, we eventually lose sight of the joys available to us in the here and now.

No doubt you’ve already guessed that by ‘we,’ I mean ‘me.’

Mindful as I am (or try to be), I still live on planet earth. No one’s immune to its gravitational pulls. But when the songbirds perform their morning serenades; when our kitties nap together in the afternoon sunshine; when ocean breezes drift into our backyard, and palm trees sway in the surrounding hillsides…well, now! Color me grateful, same as the day we first called this place home.

#AugustBreak2015 Photography Challenge, Day 13. The prompt for today is last year.

 

When Life Hands You Lemons…

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drink deep their zesty nectar.

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Practicing in manual mode…mmmm, sugary goodness!

Day 5 of Susannah Conway’s #AugustBreak2015 photography challenge. The word of the day is citrus, so…hippity hop, to the candy shop to buy a bag of jellies! The dessert plate–one of my favorites–is by artist Lou Rota.

 

Early birds at breakfast

As the blue moon gave way to silvery dawn, I joined these early birds for breakfast.

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Lesser Goldfinches.

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Song Sparrow

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Spotted Towhee

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Lesser Goldfinch

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Costa’s Hummingbird

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Second breakfast, because why not?!? =:) (My first meal of the day was a quick-and-done energy bar.)

This is my first entry in Susannah Conway’s #AugustBreak2015. Today’s prompt: breakfast. Think of it as a virtual campfire for camera-toting hobbyists and storytellers. No need for special equipment, fancy words, or photo filters; it’s absolutely free, and there are no rules! Wanna join us? The deets are here.

A fine feathered friend

Looks like something's ruffled this mourning dove's feathers, doesn't it? But looks are deceiving. Messy plumage aside, he sits calmly on the back fence this morning, greeting the new day with gentle cooing. Other than the mockingbirds, what better alarm clock could there possibly be?

Both he and his mate like to plop themselves in the middle of things, especially if food's involved. Every morning, it's the same. The goldfinches gather for a breakfast meeting–a songfest, with lots of seed consumption. The mourning doves make a crash landing. A commotion ensues. The goldfinches take wing, scolding the mourning doves as they fly away en masse. The feeder swings wildly, but those bulky doves just stare straight ahead, as if to say, "Nothing to see here, tra la la. Move along folks, move along." I watch this recurring drama from my kitchen window every morning, join the house finches when they laugh. Mighty fine background music, don't you think?

"It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds," the legendary Aesop once said. They may be the stuff of folklore, but Aesop's words contain an underpinning of truth that I witness through my open windows every day.