In Praise of Idleness Drawings 10 – 12

Eyeglasses

Crow

Sunflowers

Wordless Wednesdays: 12 Views of a Sunflower

It’s hard to find something to say every day in this blog, and so I will invest in a day of quiet — Wordless Wednesdays.  Instead of words and quotes, I will practice expanding my point of view by taking 12 different photographs of an object.  I got the idea for this practice/exercise from Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing by Mick Maslen and Jack Southern.  I think it will be challenging and interesting to find less obvious angles as I wield my camera.  See what you think.

 

A Portal to Complexity

Sunflower

“Almost any object of contemplation becomes a portal to the complexity of creation.”
—  William deBuys, The Walk

Watercolor, crayon and ink sketch of sunflowers

One More Thing

Watercolor sketch of sunflower on envelope

“What is there to get up for in the morning?  The answer is a simple one:  we get up in the morning, go through one more boring or difficult, exciting or exhausting, restless or depressing day, in order to discover one more thing about life.”.
— Joan Chittister, Welcome to the Wisdom of the World

What will I discover today?

What did you discover yesterday?

Sunflowers and Hope

The face of a sunflower

“Alm0st all lives are small.  What enlarges a life is the inner life, are the thoughts, are the sensations, are the useless hopes . . . Hope is like a sunflower which turns aimlessly toward the sun.  But it is not ‘aimless.'”
— Clarice Lispector,  The Streams of Life

Buckets of sunflowers, Pike Place Market

 

Mid-July Vividness

Harvesting for market, Jello Mold Farm

“Mid-July comes and the palette of blossoms shifts to hotter colors, as if in their vividness they were reflecting the sun.”
— Verlyn Klinkenborg, More Scenes from the Rural Life

I saw some evidence of vibrancy in the flower fields at Jello Mold Farm this past week.  The deep reds and oranges of the crocosmia, poppies, and sneezeweed glowed in their jeweled presence.  And the sunny yellow sunflowers were starting to burst into bloom.

Poppies

Crocosmia with hummingbird

Sneezeweed

 

 

Circumambulating Seattle 4: West Seattle to Downtown

“But most of these far walks have been taken just for the joy of walking in the free air.”
— John Finley, “Traveling Afoot,” from The Joys of Walking, ed. Edwin Valentine

“Increasingly, walking itself became a source of happiness, something to be enjoyed in its own right, bringing an intensity of experience and a sensual awareness of surroundings that grew more addictive by the miles.”
— Nick Hunt, Walking the Woods and the Water

View of downtown Seattle skyline from Alki

At this point in my multi-day project of encircling the periphery of Seattle, I no longer questioned why I was walking these segments.  I simply enjoyed the journey.  I was especially looking forward to this day’s walk because I knew I would have Puget Sound in sight almost the entire day.  I was reminded of how beautiful Seattle’s location is, with distant mountains to the west (the Olympics) and to the east (the Cascades) and the gentle waves of Puget Sound lapping its shores.

I started my walk from the Barton Street Pea Patch at the intersection of Barton Street SW and 35th Avenue SW.

Sunflower

Barton Street community garden

I followed Barton Street west and downhill to the sound.  The Fauntleroy ferry was disgorging cars and passengers.  It would have been a lovely day for a ferry ride to Vashon Island, but I stuck with my plan to walk.

Ferry to Vashon Island

Disembarking

I followed Fauntleroy Avenue SW to Lincoln Park, a heavily wooded space with playground, picnic tables, and below the bluff, a beach with paved walking and biking path.  Families, joggers, and dog-watchers enjoyed the beach.

Picnic table under the trees, Lincoln Park

 

Beach at Lincoln Park on Puget Sound

Exercising with beach rocks

The Seattle grunge look — starting early

Seattle is a very literary city.

From Lincoln Park I headed north on Beach Drive where I was separated from the beach by a row of waterfront residences.  As I approached Alki Beach, I discovered a set of 27 constellations embedded the sidewalk, West Seattle’s own “Avenue of the Stars.”

Beach Drive turned into Alki Avenue.  The point here was the original landing spot of the Denny Party, Seattle’s first white settlers, in 1851.  Later they relocated across the Sound to establish Seattle on the shores of Elliott Bay.  Today the beach is one of the city’s favorite recreation spots, especially on summer days.

Blue bottle house

Alki Beach

Alki has its own miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty, which commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Boy Scouts.

Picnic on the beach

Flowered house on Alki Avenue

Alki Avenue turned into Harbor Avenue SW and now the views over the water took in the Seattle skyline.

Recreation and industry on Elliott Bay near downtown Seattle

The next stretch of my walk took me away from the relaxing beachfront and back into the city’s industrial area.  Pedestrians are prohibited on the West Seattle Bridge, but I had access to a nice bike trail across Harbor Island on an older, lower bridge.  I passed over the Duwamish River, and Mount Rainier gleamed hugely and whitely on the horizon.

Bike path along the lower bridge

Under the West Seattle Bridge

Duwamish River with Mount Rainier

Duwamish River looking toward downtown Seattle

My final trek was along East Marginal Way South past the shipping docks.  The Starbucks headquarters punctuated the skyline in the SODO (south of Downtown) neighborhood.  I passed an historical marker near 2225 E marginal Way S on the spot of the world’s very first gasoline service station (1907).  Who knew that Seattle played a role in this part of our country’s driving history!

Loading docks and shipyards

Starbucks headquarters

East Marginal Way South

Bike path into downtown Seattle

Ferry coming into the downtown terminal

I ended my walk at the downtown ferry terminal.

Total walking distance:  about 12 miles

 

 

 

That Golden Time of Year

“Yellow the bracken,
Golden the sheaves . . .”
— Florence Hoatsen

Watercolor sketch of fall leaf

Last week I celebrated the color red in the landscape.  Today’s post gives equal time to the yellows, golds, and greens.

Path at Green Lake

White birch with dappled leaves

Watercolor sketch of ginkgo leaf

Watercolor sketch of fall leaves

 

 

 

The Sunflowers at Jello Mold Farm

Sunflower behind plastic

I thought the sunflowers at Jello Mold Farm were deserving of their own post, too.  Usually I think of sunflowers as loud and brash and bold, but I was captivated by their softness on this photographic outing.  Maybe this was reflective of my inner softening at the lateness of the season.  Or it may have been the diffused light under the plastic greenhouse covering.  Regardless, I was pleased with my photos.  Here they are:

The Sunflowers
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines

creak like ship masts
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young —
the important weather,

the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,

which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds —
each one a new life! —
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots of the earth
so uprightly burning.

 

Finding Life Lessons in the Flower Fields at Jello Mold Farm

Nothing lasts forever

“Nature reminds us that we cannot hold on forever.  Only with letting go can new life come. . . . So autumn always makes me wonder what I am holding on to.  What is it that I am afraid to let go of? . . . What must be put aside so that spring can arrive?”
— John Izzo, Second Innocence:  Rediscovering Joy and Wonder

You certainly get a sense of time passing when you see the withering and decaying flowers in the flower beds at Jello Mold Farm.  A few valiant blooms stand bravely in their last days.  Come with me for a walk in the flower fields as Jello Mold Farm prepares for winter.

A few sunflowers brighten the fields.

Sunflower bed, Jello Mold Farm

Dahlia beds

I love the plum-colored and dark-toned petals of this dahlia.

Sunset-colored foliage

Red fruit

This artichoke looks like a spiked bludgeon from medieval times.

Pick up in the flower fields, Jello Mold Farm

Luminous hydrangea leaves

Pumpkin patch

Pumpkin with black & white focal effect

Spent sneezeweed bloom

Time to let go