Category: Weekly Photo

Fall Changes

Published on by Janet Sunderland10 Comments

willow in winterA weekly photo challenge from Terri Webster Schrandt announced Fall Changes. She has lovely reds and oranges and shining light. She lives in California..

Here’s today’s Fall Change at our house, a rather abrupt change.A cold front from the west met a very wet front from another hurricane off the lower Pacific coast, and we have water droplets coated firm enough they don’t fall.

Not really frozen hard, just stopped from moving.

This is the willow I often write about as I sit at my upstairs window, that window on the upper left, and look out on the day. I pretty much do that winter, summer…. well, all year.

Nothing is quite as colorless as it appears in the shot, but the starkness seemed to fit the topic.

iced branchesHere’s what the backyard looks like with color, which as you can tell isn’t much. Those are rose bushes against the fence. The roses lasted until a couple of weeks ago.

table (2)Right before Thanksgiving, we had roses and pumpkins on the table at the same time. But now, they, too, are gone.

I really really hate being cold in the winter. At the moment, with the outdoor temperature just at freezing, I already have wool socks over silk liners on my feet. My fingernails have quit growing and begun to crack. The humidifier is going.

There are compensations.

Cliff’s building a fire. We’re putting up Christmas decorations. The table you can’t see on the right side of the above photo will move into the dining room by the window you also can’t see on the left so the tree can go in front of the window. The sculpture piece with the strange little doors has a red bulb in the right hand … well, whatever that is. Holder. All winter, we turn it on for dinner.

It’s time to hunker in for a season of light and promise and home.

.

 

Writers Quote Wednesday

Published on by Janet Sunderland19 Comments

writers-quote-wed-20151

 

 

 

From e.e. cummings

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

 

Perfect words for a morning last week when the warmer air brushed fog off the damp ground. Except I only looked; didn’t have these most perfect words. And finding a camera, let alone focusing it, is beyond my first-thing-in-the-morning self.

Check out Writers Quote Wednesday from Silver Threading. Thanks for the prompt. It’s been years since I read e.e.cummings. This was a good reason to do so.

 

Snow Birds

Published on by Janet Sunderland12 Comments

Today is the third Monday of the month and over at Lens and Pens by Sally. Today’s challenge topic is Black and White.

This is for all the folks who were slammed with snow these past few days and still hadn’t finished with the outdoor work. I understand!

snow flam

Daily Prompt: The Power of Touch

Published on by Janet Sunderland2 Comments

The fabulous not to be missed smooth to the touch Commander’s Palace Bread Pudding Souffle.

English: The Commander's Palace, New Orleans, ...
English: The Commander’s Palace, New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Bread Pudding Souffle
Commanders Palace Bread Pudding Souffle

It came to the table warm from the oven; the waitress brought a spoonful of the whiskey sauce to the top and gently prodded open the crust and poured the sauce inside. A spoonful of this is a bite from heaven. Really. Warm and creamy and the tang of whiskey and sweet and ooooohhhhhhh so good.

Not only that, but the textures of shiny ceramic plate, paper frilled doily (how often do you see that anymore???) and the crusty top over a mushy sweet insides? Now there’s TEXTURE.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgic

Published on by Janet SunderlandLeave a comment

When I look at the many photos I’ve taken in Hawaii, nostalgic is a mild word for what I feel. Longing is more like it. It’s not that Hawaii is “paradise” as so many people say; it’s not paradise. Every morning when I got out of bed, I shook out my slippers to make sure no centipedes were lurking. And if I got up in the night for the bathroom, wariness was always in order for the same reason. And I’m talking about loooooong centipedes, as much as six to eight inches long. My sister Jeanne taught me to pick them up with long tongs, cut them in half (over the toilet) with scissors, and flush them down. That’s not exactly paradise.

But I felt at home there in a way I feel at home in few places. The land, the wind, the wide stretches where I could see far felt like mine.

There were wild pigs in the brush and their tusks were enough to cause serious damage. Or more. My brother-in-law Robert’s friend, another Robert, would come down to the land from time to time and go hunting just to clear them out some. There were cattle loose on the land. Driving back to the house at night was always a challenge as the cattle slept on the road – a warmer spot than rocks.

Ah, but the mornings. The photo is the view out my window where I sat each morning, writing. Rainbows didn’t always greet me in the morning, they were more an afternoon or evening thing, but when I see this photo, I remember ocean sounds and gargley myna bird conversations. The birds woke early, before dawn. And after I moved down near Volcano, I’d hear the jungle wake every morning, a cacophony of birds warming up for the day’s concert.

But this view is from my sister’s house, looking west to the ocean. And when I see it, I am home.

rainbow