Fact: Jim, my son,  made me think of the 9,468 photos and 424 video son my camera – Outside, I snap photos every day to record what nature gave to me  at the moment.  Sometimes the camera does not quite get the feeling I had,  but I keep trying to help the camera do the best it can.

Fact: My son, Jim, and I planned a road trip this month – but due to circumstance it got postponed – but we chatted on the phone – somewhere in that chat he said  –  “Dad, I can not imagine you inside – from my childhood to this day I remember you always being out side” 

Fact: My Mother was often ask to do “readings” at gatherings from Mennonite church services, to farmer’s associations, to family reunions. She loved the outside and nature and most often recited poems about nature  – Any poem that was a metaphor of life and death with nature – she knew them all and practiced her readings on us kids.

The “Last Rose of Summer”(1805) by Thomas Moore – Mother had them all crying.

LAST PHRASE: 

“When true hearts lie withered,

and fond ones are flown,

Oh!, who would inhabit

this bleak world alone?”

Seasons Ebb Away (2016) by Jenny Kelley – A little more upbeat – and it is too recent for my Mother to read – but I think about how she could have used it as a “reading”.

LAST PHRASE: 

“People can be compared to the seasons.

They are born, bloom, and ebb away.

Like spring, summer, and fall they cannot stay.

Winter will come as it always does.

If we are blessed, we have experienced the

seasons at their best.” 

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee (1970’s) BY N. SCOTT MOMADAY – read the whole poem by this Native American author  – bet you will like it.

SELECTED PHRASES: 

I am a feather on the bright sky

I am the roaring of the rain

I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a deer standing away in the dusk

You see, I am alive, I am alive

I stand in good relation to the earth

Fact: All these poems made me think of the 9,468 photos and 424 video on my camera – I snap photos every day to record what nature gave to me  at the moment.  Sometimes the camera does not quite get it but I keep trying to help the camera do the best it can.

Here are just a few outside photos from my iPhone as the phone tried to record what I saw and felt this summer – They are not meant to be great photography – just my attempt to share my summer’s outside experiences with you – enjoy:

My Spring Rhubarb

Same fall Rhubarb

In the shadows of the corral

Wake up

Then try to hide

In the sky

Look up – More sky

Look up at night while walking in the quiet alone

When morning comes – take the same walk

Look down while walking – see shadows on the rock

From the front lawn – in 1975  that freighter could have been the Edmund Fitzgerald – but alas it is 43 years later!

Look out the windshield window

From the sand trap where my ball sailed by scaring a ???

no comment needed

Still no comment needed

The cedar tree, today,  says fall tomorrow

As does the last rose of summer

Oh my – as you swing through your fall and winter – take your phone camera with you – snap 10.000 photos and share a few with me.