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Sunday, June 30, 2013

June Mosaics (plural)



What a month.

(...but aren't they all, when we stop to think of it?!)

I had my fortune told in a cup of Arabic coffee. Can you see the tiger's face? That's really lucky and rare! And see how there are several paths/options/choices that come together and are open at the rim of the cup? Also very propitious.

I weeded in the school land lab one cool morning after a rain, and caught the cup plant, an Ohio Native, doing what its name implies.

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Yum. Cherry Lambic Sorbet, if I remember correctly, and something lemony, though I can't find the exact one on the website. I do see Juniper and Lemon Curd and Lime Cardamom, both of which I HIGHLY recommend! :-)

We are loving having Natalie's Coal-Fired Pizza and Live Music at the end of our block! Will likes takeout best, pizza boxes being a particular favorite of his. We thoroughly enjoyed Juanito Pascual playing flamenco guitar music live at Natalie's...without Will.

I got a set of lenses for my iPhone camera (macro, wide angle, fish-eye and telephoto -- from Photojojo) and have had lots of fun playing with them. The macro is my favorite: text on a book cover and 3 of the sweet peas. There's my back garden beds with the fisheye. Then a couple more garden flowers and a homemade cinnamon roll with the built-in lens.

Can you spot mom's cat Mellie in the next picture? She's disappearing behind the microwave in a space barely wide enough to store an onion. In the next picture she reemerges with a look on her face as if to say, "What? I didn't do anything!"

Next are the pictures of a play space that makes me want to be 8 years-old again. I featured these pictures with my review of James Preller's Pirate's Guide to Recess.

That grass seed (macro lens on my phone again) is on Buffalo Grass, a short prairie grass native to Colorado that can survive without irrigation. That's why it does so well in mom's gravel alley!

Next is the turtle who walked up the driveway one morning last week, and who I featured yesterday with Kay Ryan's poem TURTLE for Poetry Friday.

The last few are: my poem and collage for Summer Poetry Swap, a Little Leaf Linden in bloom, a feather (hope is the thing with), an outrageously yummy BLT, a toad who didn't have the same good luck as our turtle in making it across the street, and sky, sky, sky, sky, sky...what there's most of in Eastern Colorado. Those last 5 were taken within about an hour of each other. Just before sunset and just after.

(You can view this set of photos on Flickr here.)



I had the great good fortune to spend the day at the Denver Botanic Gardens a week ago Saturday with Carol of Carol's Corner. We strolled and chatted and lingered and sniffed; we ooh-ed and ah-ed (and awe-ed). It wasn't the first time we had met on the other side of our blogs (in that other real-er life, as it were), but after spending all of April trading poems back and forth, it was more like meeting up with a neighbor from down the street than a neighbor from the blogosphere. The time we spent in the gardens, in the brilliant Colorado day, and in each other's company healed both of our souls in ways our souls needed healing. I am grateful that we had that time together. I took too many pictures for one mosaic, so here are three -- one all of pink and purple, one of the various parts of the Botanic Gardens proper, and one of the magnificent rooftop children's garden.








All of the Botanic Gardens photos can be seen by viewing my Flickr photostream, or my Flickr sets.

10 comments:

  1. You've had a wonderful month and I love how you share these collages. Are they done on Flickr? My sister recently got the macro lens and she is taking some amazing photos. I think it might just be on my birthday list.

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    1. Thanks, Margaret!

      I make a Flickr set, then use the mosaic maker here:
      http://bighugelabs.com/mosaic.php

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  2. Beautiful pics, Mary Lee, & thanks for the link to more lenses for the IPhone. I have the wide angle, but don't remember from where! The Botanic Garden is a special place-I could be there a long, long time! And love the sky pics too-that's what we see even in the city with the right view.

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  3. Great post, Mary Lee. I really enjoyed hearing (and seeing) what you've been up to since school got out. You really do have an eye for art with the camera as well as art with words.

    Interesting about that cup plant. My partner (a plant ecologist) has students study the fauna that live in those cups. Turns out that ol' cup is an amazing habitat all it's own (can you imagine your world in a cup? I guess you can, or at least your future in a cup! :)
    And habitats remind me of the wonderful poem you sent to Buffy recently...

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    1. Way cool! (cup plant habitats, that is) You've got me wanting to get a dropper full of water out of cup plant's cup and look at it under the microscope! Can they be seen with naked eye and hand lenses, too?

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    2. I knew you'd like that factoid. :)

      Seems that some of what lives there is microscopic, but a lot of the critters are macro-invertebrates, so you can see 'em with a hand lens. Check it out! Keep an eye out of spiders, too, 'cause there are some that seem to hang out near the surface when there's a hatch happening. Amazing to think of cup plants being the Midwestern version of tide pools, huh? :)

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  4. I could get lost in these mosaics - you've been up to some wonderful stuff since the end of school, Mary Lee. But, I'm also fascinated by Steve's "world in a cup" information. Who would have thought, right?!

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  5. Love what you are doing with your iPhone and extra lenses! And the combo of friends, poetry, flowers and photos - fabulous!!

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  6. These are gorgeous! Absolutely beautiful!

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