Star-searching

Do you understand how blessed we are to have something so beautiful as starlight?  Besides the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, nothing in common experience so brings home to me the glory and grandeur of God as a starry sky.  Of course, you can see the stars as nothing special, if you're so disposed -- small white dots in a seemingly random pattern against an expanse of dark -- or, worse still, you might never look at them at all.  There is, however, something about these little white dots that never fails to entrance you, if you pay attention, even if you know nothing of the staggering science behind them.

Stars have always fascinated mankind, it seems.  We fashion them into constellations and weave them into stories, we name them, study them, watch them -- sometimes we even attach an unlawful power to them.  They inspire poetry and lend their beauty to prose and painting. They're sprinkled through music, from beginners' piano pieces to great compositions.  For heaven's sake, one of the first nursery songs a baby learns is about the beauty and mystery of a star!  Better yet, stars fill the psalms and prophecies of the Bible, praising God and illustrating His promises, leading the Eastern Kings to the newborn Christ in Bethlehem.  Stars seem to have always caught peoples' imaginations and inspired their creativity, and I think it's fascinating. 

I can see some now, actually, glimmering through the skylight.  Some are faint and far-off, but a few are burning bright, so near that it seems I must be able to catch one, if I climbed just a little way into the sky.  I'd pass above the housetops, above the treetops, to a high silver peak in some distant land, and then maybe, just maybe, I could stretch out my hand and close it over a star.  It would be hot and pulsing, terribly bright and whiter than diamonds and snow and winter sun at midday.  Or perhaps it would be frozen cold and hard, like all the brittle jewels of the earth combined, and more precious than even the most prized of them: a sky-jewel, fit for the crown of the Queen of Heaven and Star of the Sea.

How about it, then: will you go star-searching with me?


*all images via tumblr*
 

Photography: Kentucky.

Last month my family and I went on a roadtrip to Kentucky to visit old friends and see if my parents would like to retire there.  (Results: one doesn't, the other seems undecided.)  Anyway, I took the opportunity of a hike around the campground wherein we stayed to practice a bit of photography - I've been really neglecting this hobby lately, and it was a gorgeous place.  I think the photos came out rather nice, all things considered, so I decided to share them.  Also I haven't posted anything in a while and I'm drawing a blank, so this is to fill it. 

I know that these first two are a bit over-edited, but I can't help it.  I like things to look "atmospheric," for lack of a better term, and because I'm not artistic enough, this is the way I get the atmosphere right.  Deal with it.

I'm pretty sure this is a cornflower.  It's hard to tell from the photo, but they are just the loveliest blue...

These are my boots.  I'm quite fond of them.  Awkward angle, I know, but I couldn't stop long enough to set up a good picture.

About the above picture: there were various water pumps stationed throughout our walk, so of course they must be tested.  As my siblings' wet clothes testified, the pumps worked.  My baby sister shown is obsessed with water, and was gleefully squealing "wa-wa!" the whole time.  (She also thinks that fire is wa-wa, but I've explained that it is something very different.  I'm not sure she listened.)

Truth be told, I'm obsessed with water too.

Isn't it beautiful? It's like a watercolor painting, the lake is so still.  Yet there was a lovely little breeze blowing as we walked.

I am in love with the light in this picture.

Yes, that is my hair.  Don't ask.  (Okay, I was proud of the focus.  It's not easy to focus correctly while holding a camera behind your head with no mirror.)

Though I don't fancy living there, Kentucky is a gorgeous state and I'm glad I got to visit it.  Seeing new places is always exciting.

Of Expectations

*Taken from a diary entry written on August 29th.  Yes, I am incredibly premature.  I have been since I was born - literally.*

I've been thinking about winter.  I've always had a long "preparation season" for the cold months, though I certainly don't long for them like I long for summer in January.  But the thing is, my visions of summer are usually not quite fulfilled, while my expectations for autumn and winter, being more realistic, often are.  I envision summer as a sunlight-soaked time interspersed with storms, with most of one's time spent outdoors.  Books, iced tea, flowers, companionship, and pretty dresses are almost always involved in these imaginings.  But, in my experience, one get a few days like that in spring or early summer, and then it's just moping around the house trying desperately to employ oneself (or trying desperately to finish school), surrounded by equally bored and very quarrelsome siblings, with the cold, stale air conditioning poisoning the air.  Don't get me wrong, there are lovely moments in every summer - it's just not like I imagine it during the winter.  When I look forward to the cold months, though, I know I'm going to spend at least part of it freezing and exhausted (being cold makes me painfully tired sometimes), hungry (that too), and desperate for fresh air but not willing to freeze my nose off for the sake of an all-too familiar prison-walk round the neighborhood.  But I also know that there will be fires and autumn walks (before the nose-freezing time) and, later, Advent candles and eggnog and beautiful Christmas ceremonies - not to mention cozy sweaters and tea and boots and berets and many batches of fresh cookies.

Bring it on, Autumn. 

(No, seriously, bring it on.  Stop with the green leaves and almost-ninety high temperatures already.)


All images mine.

Picking Peaches

Remember my post on apple-picking?  Well, about a month ago, on the coolest day we could find, my family and I drove down long country roads and through lookalikes of the Great Dismal Swamp to a lovely farm which had pick-your-own peaches.  We picked forty-three pounds of the the things, but even so I managed to take lots of pictures.  They came out rather well, too.  (This post is getting up so late because it took me until now to edit everything.)

From the parking lot, we had to walk about half a mile down to the orchard.  Some intelligent people drove down, but we walked.  It was just as well, because I wouldn't have been able to take photos from the car, and I'm not sure our giant of a fifteen-passenger van would have made it down there anyway. 

There was a lovely little pond with a bridge across it, so I got to practice landscape photography.

There was a lot of Queen Anne's Lace growing by that pond.  I love Queen Anne's Lace (or yarrow, as some call it), so I couldn't resist taking pictures of it. 

Now you know what it looks like. Yarrow has medicinal properties, but I can't remember what they are anymore.

 

 

 

This is the super-edited version of the first photo.  I would love fabric with this print...

I kinda sorta really like this one, even though it's a bit blurry.  It looks so fairy-ish.

Then we reached the actual orchard:

These are nectarines.  Just thought you might be wondering why they're red...

Despite asking me and my mom if every peach they picked was "good," my siblings did pretty well.  All the buckets were at least halfway filled.  (Hence the forty-three pounds.) 

 

 

Some of them had to be lifted.

I really like this sepia-toned photo.  Sepia makes everything better, doesn't it? :)

 I thought it was fun.  Orchard peaches and nectarines taste so much better than the grocery-store variety, I promise you.  Really, everything tastes better when it's not from a grocery store.

 

And yes, I am left-handed.

After we paid, we all sat out on the picnic benches and tried our lovely (and hard-earned) fruit.  I think it was worth carrying an over-ten-pound bucket (plus a sibling's smaller one) half a mile in the noon heat.  I do have a picture of us all sitting around stuffing our faces with peaches, but I'm thinking my mom would kill me if her picture was up here.  She'd say she looked fat, which is, by the way, nonsense.  My mom weighs ten pounds more than I do, and I am not fat.  Anyway, one of my brothers looks like a creep in that picture, and I wouldn't want you get nightmares.  Seriously.  He looks like the Grim Reaper or something. 

When we got home, we cut up and froze about two-thirds of the peaches.  Now my mom won't let us eat any until winter, which I protest is not fair, but she doesn't seem to care.  (I hate it when my sentences unintentionally rhyme...the rhymes are always so dumb. Ergh.)

Speaking of my mom, she did a peach-picking post (ha! Alliteration! Oh my gosh, I am such a poetry geek...) as well.  Voila: http://mrsrabbitsmusings.blogspot.com/2012/07/picking-peaches.html

First of Autumn

Happy first day of fall, my dears! 

Early this morning everything was covered in thick fog - I could only see to the street corner.  It made a fittingly cozy and cup-of-hot-tea worthy atmosphere...  

Well, I can think of very little to say about autumn that I didn't say in my September post.  I'm not waxing poetical this morning....

...so I was going to find a lovely little poem about fall and stick it here.  But after searching for half an hour, my very particular self couldn't find anything good enough.  My readers deserve the best, so, like Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, they don't get anything if I can't find the best. :p

I shall conclude this post by finishing my dump of autumn paintings upon you and bestowing an Enya song upon your ears which just happens to have the same title as this post.  

The above painting reminds me of my former home in Virginia.  *sniff*  It was so  breathtakingly beautiful there between now and late October... you couldn't see the road at all, it was so covered in leaves.  I miss it, a lot.  

Okay... have a lovely day/night whatever it is where you are!  And tell me: what do you love best about autumn?  Is there a poem that you know of which describes the season perfectly?

On Power Outages

This is a bit late, but I figured I'd write it anyway.

When hurricane Irene hit the East Coast, we were directly in it's path.  We had no high winds and very little flooding, but our power was out for a day and a half.

I loved it.

There's something about having no electrical power.  It's amazingly freeing!  We couldn't use the computer, the phone, the microwave, the stove, the lights....everything had to be done the old-fashioned way.  (Thank God, our water didn't go out.  That would not have been fun, because seven children use a lot of water.)

Me being me, I had to have something modern, so I took a bunch of random pictures.

My little siblings painted most of the day.  The table was covered  in paint sets and soggy papers.

I took pictures of the bouquet my dad had given my mom a few days before...

...but then I got bored and took pictures of the rug.

It stopped raining around lunchtime, so my mom, my sister Elisabeth and I ventured outside to see if there was any damage.  There was one downed tree, but otherwise everything was okay.

Left - right:  the downed tree, a large puddle, and a tree branch practically suspended in mid-air.  My mom got a kick outta that one! :)

When dusk fell, we went for a walk.  We wanted to save our candles, in case we needed them for a long time.  Everything was very peaceful, and the only lights were the solar lanterns that some families had in their yard.  You could see the candles moving from room to room inside of the houses.
As we came back, the stars came out.  The streetlights weren't there to block them out, so they twinkled down strong and bright.   (I did try to take a picture, but my camera refuses to capture stars.)

When we went inside, we shone flashlights in each other's faces until the candles were lit.

We lit these before we decided to take a walk.  That's why it's light outside.

I love candles.  I always have!  When I was a little girl, I went to Williamsburg with my parents and my uncle.  He told me that he'd buy me anything I wanted.

I got candles.   I came home with an armful of them, and I had them for years.

Anyway.  We made some lame attempts at storytelling before my mom rescued us by reading a real story.  My brother shone a flashlight for her, because the youngest, Louis, kept trying to grab the candle.

Finally, we went to bed.  Now, this is going to sound weird...but brushing your teeth by candlelight is super awesome.  Seriously!  It was so much fun.

My sister freaked out because it was "so dark!" and had to sleep on my bedroom floor, but I was in such a good mood from the candlelight that I didn't mind.

The next day, the power came back on around noon.  (Of course it would have to wait until after I had cooked lunch on the grill...)  Pretty much everybody was disappointed.  I guess a lot of it could have just been in my head, but it seemed like all the peace vanished instantly when the power came back.

That was the longest I've ever gone without power, and I think it taught me a lot.  It taught me that electricity is not all that important (as long as you have water), and that we rely on it too heavily.  It taught me that life is more fun when you have to rely a bit on yourself and nature.  On the practical side, this particular outage showed us what we done right and what we were lacking in terms of emergency preparedness.  (Some of the things we learned were that we should stock up on batteries, buy more dehydrated meals instead of just basic foods, and, most importantly, that propane stoves should be operated outdoors.)

If we have another outage now, we won't freak out.  And I shall light many candles and enjoy their lovely glow.

September

I cannot believe that it's September.  I'm so happy it's finally here!  I've been waiting all summer for this...

Picture taken by me, edited with Picnik.

In my mind, once it's September, summer is over.  Fin.  Autumn's coming.  Soon there will be pumpkins and colored leaves and cool days... not to mention that those lovely autumn winds give me the perfect opportunity to wear boots and wool berets!   :)

Even school cannot ruin my happiness - especially since I had to start in the beginning of August.  I'm sorta used to it at this point.

Have a lovely September!

A Shortcut to Mushrooms

I love mushrooms.  It's one of two characteristics that I share with hobbits, and therefore I'm quite proud of it.  (The other characteristic is my height.  I'm very short. :p)  But mushrooms are more than just pizza toppings and casserole fillers!  They're one of my favorite things in nature, because a) they're cute b) they're fascinating to study, and c) they make awesome pictures.  So today I'm going to share with you, my dear readers, some pictures of mushrooms that I took yesterday, along with any mushroom-ish thoughts that come into my head. 

Before I show you the pictures, let me just say that I am by no means a talented photographer.  The only camera I own is the dreaded point-and-shoot - This one.  (Mine's blue, though. And really, it's a good camera.  Just...not professional.)

Aren't they cuuuuute?

This is the same clump, only viewed from the top.  Notice the reddish splotches that weren't in the other picture.  Kinda weird, no?

I know, I know.  "What?  That's not a mushroom!"  Yes...but it is a sprig of orange leaves.  That's very important, you see, because orange leaves = autumn.  I'm quite ready for autumn, and even though it's only August, I was super excited when I found this bunch.  It's strange...I've always loved summer.  This year though, I wasn't interested.  It's been "ohhhhh, I wish it were fall!"  since June.
Anyway.  Mushrooms.

The cap of this one is a little bit out of focus.  You do know which part is the cap...right?
Just in case, here's a diagram of a mushroom.  I wish the ones in textbooks looked like this!

There we go.  Now you know all about mushroom structure.  End of science lesson.

Speaking of science lessons, I'd like to point out that children love learning about fungi.  If your children/siblings/small neighbors/cousins are ever bored and you're supposed to entertain them, take them on a mushroom hunt.  Show them all the different parts and admire the pretty colors and textures.  (Just don't let them touch the mushrooms.  Some parents - like my dad - tend to freak out over their children touching mushrooms.  It's understandable because they're potentially poisonous, but personally I don't think it's a problem.  Just make sure the little ones don't put them in their mouths.)  If the children are a bit older, "pick" a couple mushrooms, take them home, and have the children sketch them.

The above mushroom is my mom's favorite.  She majored in photography, so I'm very flattered when she likes my pictures.

I took that one and uploaded it to Picknik, where I had a blast editing it up in different ways.  Editing tools are fun.  So  I will proceed to bombard you with some of my edits.

I love that one.  It's so fairytale-ish!

My mother didn't like this one much.  She said it wasn't happy looking. It isn't, really, but I think it sort of fit the "earthiness" of mushrooms.  And it looks cool.

I made one hot pink, just because.

And I finish with a happy one - literally!  The credit for this goes to my 5-year-old brother, who told me to put a mustache on the mushroom.  I didn't put the mustache, but I did put the rest of the face!

One last thing.  I do not mind if you use my pictures, as long as you credit me!  Please do not try to pass my photographs or edits off as your own.  Also, I'd appreciate it if you told me that you're using one of my pictures, but that's not obligatory.  I'd be happy to know that people like my things.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my shortcut to mushrooms!  

Not my picture - Google Images