Outside

I’m experimenting with through the viewfinder photography again. I find that I still love the feel of the old Kodak and the distortion and noise introduced by the dirty lenses and mirror. I love the brokenness and imperfection and mess.

We returned to Woods Edge farm for our third annual bonfire on Saturday. Angelina‘s non-profit hosted a camp for Native American youth this summer, and many of her campers returned for the day. So many sounds: Johnny Cash coming out of the barn speakers, horses neighing, a leaf blower making a giant pile for jumping, laughter, native flute. I spent time in the chilly upper pasture trying to get a good shot of the boy horses grazing. The only way I could keep them near me was to sing, so I made up the most ridiculous, operatic songs about horses and belted them while setting up my shots. Just when I thought I had the perfect picture, the horses were spooked by a squirrel. A SQUIRREL. So much for the power of opera.

A walk: to show them beauty between strips of asphalt to console myself to let the urge pass (not all good things are wild and free) sweet gentle green moss frail butterfly wing round red berries a single thorn

More music on our front steps. The kids played hide and seek in the dark spaces between the buildings. One nearby door slowly opened a crack, an unseen man or woman probably peering out to pinpoint the source of the sound. I sat on my stool, listened, swatted away mosquitos. My neighbors’ television sets cast strobing stripes of light on their front lawns.

We took a walk after dinner Friday evening, following mossy trails to the playground. I admit to doing a little climbing, a little playing, but only as much as becomes a forty year-old. At the end of our walk, we approached our front steps. Fireflies twinkled all around the concrete and the grasses, but only at our house. We were chosen. I lit them a candle to keep them company.

This early summertime has been lovely. Some notes: We waited with bated breath for cicadas to visit, but in the end had to settle for finding a few husks out at a friend’s place in Haymarket. My kids were the very first people in our community pool on the Friday before Memorial Day. It was 54 degrees outside. We three went strawberry picking, our first time ever. My first time ever. There is no thing sweeter than a freshly-picked, ripe, red strawberry. Except for maybe a ripe and juicy peach. ...

I have tons of soft, sweet clover growing all over my backyard and I and refuse to cut it short or spray it with herbicides. I just can’t do it. I often sit on a bar stool in my kitchen and watch the bunnies and birds hang out. The bunnies chow on the flowers and the birds look for worms near my de facto/illicit compost pile. On warm spring evenings, our neighbor carries his huge bass across the driveway and plants it in the front yard. His little ones often follow him over. We grab the sidewalk chalk and whatever instruments are handy and then we jam. People dance, people draw, people come out and stare. ...

*“The aphid is a stupid little creature which lives by thrusting its bill or sucking tube into a stem or leaf if a plant, and thus settles down for life, nourished by the sap which it sucks up[…] We three step outside our front door and walk down a paved path to a bridge that spans a small trickle of water, banked on both sides by honeysuckle. They pick small bunches of the flowers, then s[…] ...