FIELD NOTES: I see myself...

What Next? Haiku

I can scale walls, but
I sometimes tire looking for
the next toehold. Rest?

Good Morning, New Neighbor!

Lived here since 1993. First time I've seen a fox sitting in my backyard...

...guess it's not very interesting here.

FIELD NOTES: Heart transplant...

My daughter got married in Seattle today...

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.

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: Now that it is long past, I can write about it...

…the month of August that is. It is not the Ides of March the soothsayer warns to me, but the Ides of August!...and perhaps the Kalends and the Nones of August as well. I do not approach its advent with predictions of calamity like a horoscope, omen or phase of the moon…I am naturally optimistic and hopelessly hopeful…but yet it comes. What used to be a month full of weddings, births, a summer fling squeezed out before going back to school, is now pock-marked with deaths of friends, parents, emergencies and the destruction of property from hurricanes and floods. But I cannot stay angry long at nature. It is human nature that assigns to us our curses.