A Bit of Self Indulgence

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My meme, originally uploaded by robin&company.

Gift of Green posted the results of her Flickr meme a few days ago. I’ve seen it on other websites here and there, and now I want to play.

The rules as I lifted them from Gift of Green:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

Fun! Here we go.

1. What is your name? Robin. Boring, I know.
2. What is your favorite food? Cheesecake. I like plain cheesecake, but this picture looks delicious.
3. What high school did you go to? Padua Academy. HA! This search returned a photo of one of my best friends from high school. Hey lady, I remember that Tshirt. I hope you’re not mad. (Oh no! It cut off your head!)
4. What is your favorite color? Silver.
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Oh my, that would be Sawyer from Lost. I couldn’t think of his real name, so I just typed in Sawyer-Lost and found this. Her hand reads, Not Penny’s boat.
6. Favorite drink? White Chocolate Mocha. I never get to have it anymore.
7. What do you want to be when you grow up? A published writer.
8. Favorite dessert? You mean besides cheesecake? Let’s see…Creme brulee. Now I am hungry.
9. Dream vacation? Australia, mate.
10. What do you love most in life? My family. This also returned some odd shots.
11. One word to describe you. I blanked and asked my friend Kristin. She said “smart”. This returned “the coolest dude in Harlem”, and oh yes, that tie is smart.
12. Your Flickr name. a clever turn of phrase.

Will You Walk a Little Faster?

 

“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,

“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.”

-Lewis Carroll

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Maverick somehow spotted this little guy- roughly the size of my thumbnail- in a pile of leaves. 

Getting the camera to focus on it was like giving a cat a bubblebath.

Misty Meadow Morning

How lucky are we, that this is our view while we wait for the school bus?

I love foggy mornings, because the field is littered with stunning spiderwebs, jeweled with dew:

I just never seem to get tired of them:

“There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

-Albert Einstein

It is so easy to find the miracles in the everyday.  Look for miracles and share them with us.

Turkey Vultures are Super Creepy

They are, in real life, exactly like they are in cartoons- all hunched over and threatening. One landed behind the shed and I went to go take its picture, but I was unprepared for how big it is up close, and I maybe yelped a little bit.  (I couldn’t help it.  I think I’m pretty tough, but I turned the corner and it was this close.  I probably could have touched it if I had a big stick and no common sense.) 

And, alas, it flew away, not very far, but far enough that my photos are a bit blurry- I can’t stay still enough to get a crisp focus, and I couldn’t get closer on account of all the prickler bushes we haven’t cleared yet.

So I thought, I’ve got nowhere to be, I’ve got all day. I’ll sit here until he forgets about me and flies back down. And then this big ol’ shadow passes over me, and I look up, and now there’s three more freaking huge turkey vultures flying overhead. They all come to these crashing stops- their enormous wingspan breaking branches off, and as those branches rained down on me, dear reader, I got the hell out of there, just in case they were thinking they could take me.

Who’s afraid of the big bad turkey vulture? I am.

They came back later, but I couldn’t get anywhere near as close.  My husband offered to tackle one and hold it down while I took its picture, but I declined, just in case he wasn’t kidding.  You never know with that one.

Backyard Springiness

It’s coming! It’s coming!

It’s practically here!

The tulips have died back; the daffodils are fading.  (I have photos of those over at Read Me Like a Book.)  In its place, all this new loveliness.  I don’t know what 90% of the flora is that we have here in our backyard, but it all seems to thrive on benign neglect, which I happily hand out in spades. 

Top row: Who knows what these pink things are?; here they are from my kitchen window

Middle: Unidentified plant newborns, aren’t they cute?; Tiger Lilies of the future line up for duty

Bottom row: ; I think the blue hyacinths are pretty; this was the only in-focus shot I got of the forsythia bush out of 21 attempts

Never lose an oppurtunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting- a wayside sacrament.  Welcome it in every fair face, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

What Does it Mean to be Happy?

Jacob: Being happy means that you have a wonderful feeling of joy.

Maverick: Recycling makes me happy because I am helping save the environment.

Jacob: It means you’re OK with your life. 

Maverick: You’re happy when you’re having fun. And when you’re helping someone.

Jacob: Not putting on lotion.  Not having excema. Or asthma. Being healthy.

Maverick: Not being annoyed.

Robin: Not having to worry.

What Does it Mean to be Organic?

Maverick: Eating foods without chemicals on them.  For your health.

Jacob: Being organic means you support farmers.  And organic stuff usually tastes better.

Robin: We like the dictionary’s description of simple, healthful, and close to nature.

What Does it Mean to be Simple?

Jacob: Living simply is a lot like being green.  Making your life easy.  If you don’t buy a lot of stuff you don’t have as much stuff to recycle or throw away.

Maverick: Reduce.

Jacob and Maverick: Not fighting.

Maverick: Keep your room clean so you don’t have to clean your whole room up in one day.  So you have more time for playing.

Jacob: Not watching as much TV or staring at the computer, because it makes you all stressed.  And then you have more time to read and make stuff.  And we wake up early so we have more time and we’re not rushing around in the morning.

What Does it Mean to be Green?

Jacob: It means you recycle, and you care about the earth.  You do your best not to pollute. 

Maverick: Not being wasteful.

Jacob: You want your grandchildren to still be able to live on Earth and not on one of Mars’ potato-shaped moons.

Treeclimber

Treeclimber, originally uploaded by robinelton19350.