FIELD NOTES: Goodbye to summer friends...

...Sunday morning at the flea market...backyard at the grill...a glass of evening wine with jazz at the bistro set on the deck outside the kitchen...or...just keepin' cool around the house...& garden...snipping chives & mint...during one-too-humid-summer-spent-waiting-for-a-breath-of-fresh-air...

FIELD NOTES: On the last Blue Moon...

...on the eve of 2010...I sorted decades of fabric leftovers into swatches, promising that perhaps I would turn the scraps into a work of art on the next Blue Moon...nice idea, but it came on Friday night...at an inconvenient convergence: the end overlapping the beginning...summer/fall/last month bills/next month bills/school/work...as difficult to sort as the last Blue Moon's bin of remnants...a lean summer equals too much month at the end of the money...head to table...and then I remembered the moon...I positioned the summer's lounge to face the blue light, scooped up the sleeping bag cast aside on the basement couch, grabbed my bed pillow and gloriously mooned until midnight...I didn't want to give in to inside slumber...why hadn't I planned a party?...the next Blue Moon won't be until 2015...plenty of notice to plan that party now...and you are invited!

Web photos from around the world.

FIELD NOTES: Terrifyingly beautiful...

A perfect 10 day...no one available...or awake!...so jumped in the car myself...went to my favorite nearby beach...Silver Sands State Park...80 degrees on sand/in surf...low tide...full sandbar out to Charles Island...treasure hunters on a Sunday afternoon...all before the opening of a new school year...teachers, coaches, grandparents surround me...a coconut-scented breeze swirls their memoirs and hopes around me...anniversary of strong woman names Katrina/Irene/Victoria(my mother's death)...the summer day I have been wanting?...and...the last?...or...full circle...

HAIKU: Bee-sotted at sunrise...

                   Vine jiggles! I dash -

                   get paper - make coffee. He

                   ...sating......self.........proper.

GOT A CAPTION?

FIELD NOTES: Between a rock & a hard place...

...or a post & a shingle... A sound had puzzled us for days...not only was it a high-pitched whirl that was loud for small, backyard nature, but we couldn't figure out where it was coming from...Chip is known to scurry around the back patio, under the deck and in between the planters, but this trill was high up...yet not avian...I couldn't see anyone on the roof, so it was someone small enough to hide in plain sight...I wondered if a chipmunk was capable of 'throwing' his voice like a ventriloquist?...I settled on that thin hypothesis only because I needed a reason to quell my curiosity. One noonday I lunched at my bistro and in my daydream, the answer caught my eye! There was a mottled gray lump wedged between the deck post and the house...it had a inflated throat which I later Googled to find was a vocal sac that acts like the hollow wood on a guitar amplifying the sound of the strings, or the sound of an echo in a large cave, projecting it across long distances! It's satisfying to solve a mystery... Read more: How Does a Toad Croak?

Listen to a toad!

FIELD NOTES: The original Sunny 'D'...

...so I'm running into Big Y for salad and some wild sockeye to grill, when I am stopped still in my tracks by a curbside rack filled with $12.99 sunflower patio pots...it's the middle of another heat wave and still only the last day of June, so crabbiness is an easy commodity to come by, but I grab one of their new mini-carts and wheel this beauty around the store in my black-white-turquoise sundress...this lovely kept getting liked for looking so happy I wish I was getting a sales commission...Moral of the Story: when you have a little paycheck, a little AC and a little poison ivy, find a great big yellow sunflower that makes strangers smile, go home, throw some fish on the grill, pour some Pinot Grigio in a Polish crystal wine glass, find Andrea Bocelli on Pandora and you'll be dancing around the kitchen in your sundress, even if nobody's home... NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE STORY

FIELD NOTES: The rest of the 'tail'...

The cat that ate the birdies.

Suspect #1:

DESCRIPTION: white, gray, tail-less; last seen wearing a pink collar with fake diamonds.

NYT: How Many Computers to Identify a Cat?

FIELD NOTES: Peeps

Have had trouble finding time to write, but...

here is inspiration found...

two birds in the bush are worth more than a bird in the hand...

FIELD NOTES: A day for watching...

(Super Bowl Sunday: Patriots v. Giants – not that I follow football - just making historical note for all TRUE New Englanders.)

...the CBS Sunday Morning show and wanting to find things to write about…A Typewriter Renaissance added a little ‘sweet’ to Sunday coffee and muffin making…and a little ‘bitter’ because my late father one day decided to get rid of the classic 1940’s Royal typewriter that had predominated his desk like a pipe organ since he had closed his furniture store…I had typed my school papers on a more ‘modern’ version of the manual - a Smith-Corona - out in the backyard…on the picnic table in the Mays and Junes of the 1970’s…then moved on to feeling quite elite when one of my first jobs landed me at the keyboard of an IBM Selectric with changeable type balls and white correcting tape on the ribbon…just in the brief shadow of the Wang on which I learned the magic of word processing…what a pain it had been to have to cover up ones mistakes on paper…who wants to see where our fingers and thoughts had gone off key?…funny thing, I want that Royal typewriter…and if I want another one, it will now cost me to acquire one from some stranger…maybe human beings need to leave dimensional marks and brush strokes on paper…at craft fairs, they make jewelry out of old industry…at a flea market in Seattle, I found myself pawing through boxes of keys…of question marks and exclamation points and capital letters… keys that had been pulled off their type-bars with needle-nose pliers…I found D…brought it home, fused it to a bezel, hung in on a chain and took a picture of it around my neck…like baby teeth in a tooth fairy jar…I seemed to feel some strange and innocent magic…

FIELD NOTES: These boots are made for walkin'?

...I figured I could take a couple of loops around Harrybrooke after tutoring today without having to stop home to change…I have “Saturday-wear” on …skinny jeans, cotton sweater, down vest, ponytail…I even have sunglasses and my Klean Kanteen of water…however,I forgot to throw my walking shoes into the car…but my gray suede boots are flat…they should be okay… we have been experiencing a Seattle-ish winter so I have a good amount of company in the park…quiet company, contented company, nature’s company…I start at the Sri Chinmoy sign as usual and breathe in the softened Februrary air…as incorrect as butter left out on the counter too long, yet somehow delicious …two-thirds in, I notice my thin dress socks are sliding around a bit in my boots…uh-oh…friction is not good on the sole…perhaps I should only do one mile today…but it’s like flossing my teeth…I won’t feel right if I don’t complete the routine, so I go again…at the point of no return, the bottoms of my feet are burning…as a proud walker, I am taken by surprise as I gain new appreciation for athletic socks and shoes…in hoping to avoid blisters, I think to walk off-road, as the words of Nancy Sinatra follow me from a long-ago 45 on my little record-player…”These boots are made for walkin’, and that’s just what they’ll do, and one of these days these boots are gonna’ walk all over you”…dum-dum-dum….back then, I had no relationship to that song other than payback for one of my three older brothers or the pre-teen pecking order of fifth grade girls…I give up trying to keep my standard pace of a fourteen minute mile and just try to tip-toe my way to the car, thinking about aloe…these boots aren’t made for walkin’...but they did make me think…