Here are last year's milkweed pods with the new grasses of early summer.
I’ve been in my home town in Moosup, Connecticut all week. (Sorry to tell you if you were hoping for a bit of Block Island. I’ll be back in time for next week’s post.) In any case, I also drove to New Jersey to visit some friends. We had good company and an exceptional lamb dinner. Plus, after knowing them on Block Island for almost 15 years, I finally got to see their house. They are art dealers and in addition to many, many pictures of their much-loved family, their house is full of the most spectacular art.
I learned a lot. For example, there is much to be said for a big picture. I mean, BIG, the size of a wall. And there is such a thing as a perfect color. And the really good artists… and my friends know how to find them… have their own language and you can feel it even though any you might find it difficult to put into words. And those paintings can speak so powerfully that you can drive all the way back from New Jersey and not be able to think of anything else.
I've been waiting to get a picture of a blue heron, wings outstretched and feet pointing down, and in full display of all her wonderful feathers, just before she lands.
Tiny little new wildflowers.
I also went to see my niece and nephew’s graduation from kindergarten where one child was so overcome by the magnitude of the occasion that he burst into tears, and the next day went to see another nephew’s graduation from third grade, and then unfortunately yesterday, I went to a funeral.
And in between I went to the fish hatchery to take some pictures. So all of this has been mixed together all week… my friends and their art and the very young children and their brand new lives and the unexpected, untimely death of my cousin.
I thought about all of this and then I went out and took pictures and I thought about how it is when a person goes out to try to know or feel or express something about the depths of this life and this world.
These ducks for some reason, did not fly away when the dogs and I came closer than they liked. They just threw out a big commotion as they powered themselves around the corner.
I noticed this guy first after investigating when I heard something plopping into the water.
All of it... the example of really fine art and people who have made it their passion, the wonderful, deeply felt lives of children, and the fact of my cousin's death... it all affected my photography. I want to spend more time and go as honestly as I can.
I didn't expect to see these turtles. In fact, as many times as I've been to the hatchery, I've never seen them before. So here is some new information for me about more creatures and their self-referencing lives....about their complete, self-contained experience...about the way that life expresses itself among them.
There is all this thrum and energy and every time I see something new or something expected and still so beautiful...I just feel it is worth the closest attention I can muster.
(PS. Happy Father's Day, especially to my step-son Kevin on his first Father's Day and to Bill who is far away, having just arrived in Southeast Asia.)
It took me a minute to realize that all these little dark spots in the water were turtles. There were many, many more, even, than what I'm showing you in this picture.
I've been watching this nest whenever I come to Moosup, because I thought it might be an eagle's next. But it's for osprey. Here is one osprey, dropping a fish into the nest. It's way up on a pole for high tension wires.
This is how the osprey feels about us coming this close to the nest.
Here is a field at the fish hatchery. The river is just beyond those trees. I can imagine it as a complete world for someone.
For this guy, for example.
And here are some young geese, in the "kindergarten" of their lives. I wonder if the world looks as new to them as it did to us.
And another old milkweed pod, still standing after a hard winter.