flora

Springtime in the Rocky Mountain foothills

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

Yesterday, the forecast said it would start snowing this evening. Instead, I woke to smothered flowers and shrubs in my front and back yards. I spent more than an hour outside with a broom, clearing snow from collapsed lilac bushes and apache plume shrubs. I’m probably going to lose my iris display this year. Again. And forget about the poppies.

Sigh.

The finches are handling it pretty well. We’d already called it a season and brought in the long extension cord that heats the bird bath, so that’s a bummer. I filled the dish with hot water this morning and the water has already turned slushy.

The snow’s supposed to continue through Friday and then on Saturday? This:

 

Day 5: In which we each take shots in Stockholm

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

Zebu took the train from Uppsala down to Stockholm after his class this morning. As he showed us around parts of the city, we took turns with the various cameras. Here’s a picture of Zippy and Zebu (lower right corner), walking and talking:

A few minutes later, we passed two young employees standing outside a toy store, blowing bubbles to attract customers:

Zebu then took this photo of Zippy and me beneath one of the regional pink-blossomed trees I’ve been admiring since we set foot in Amsterdam:

And here’s Zippy’s final shot as we headed home on the metro:

It was an absolutely beautiful day in Stockholm and while Zebu confessed to wishing we’d experience one of the colder/grayer/wetter days he’s grown accustomed to, he didn’t begrudge us the warm sunshine.

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About everything

/ Tracy Abell

Fiction is too beautiful to be about just one thing. It should be about everything.
~ Arundhati Roy
sedum

I absolutely agree with Ms. Roy. Fiction should include the smooth, the rough, the soft, the sharp, the bright, the dull, the everything. Right now, however, I’m struggling with a bit of overwhelm in regards to the EVERYTHING I’m contemplating for this current project.

The good news is that I’ve (temporarily, at least) eluded my panic, and am whittling away at one piece of EVERYTHING that I hope belongs in the story. If it turns out this piece doesn’t belong, I will still have learned something.

Disclosure: That mature sentiment will fade if this project turns into one long-ass process of elimination.

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Here comes 2017

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

I wanted to end the year with a photographic image I’d created on the last day of the year. So I grabbed my camera and in the fading daylight, captured this image of Loki:
loki-in-motion
Whoa, that’s kinda scary and weird. Slightly disconcerting. An image that overstays its welcome fairly quickly.

And then I captured this:
geranium-bloomAhh. Delicate beauty that evokes peace and calm. An image that grabs my attention without gimmicky extra eyes or blurred pink tongue.

And that about sums up the philosophy I want to carry into the coming year. Every day is going to have its bizarre-scary-weirdass-infuriating-heartbreaking-unjust moments, but there will always, always be moments of beauty. It’ll be up to me to notice them.

Here comes 2017.

 

 

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No blue without yellow

/ Tracy Abell

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.
~  Vincent Van Gogh
goldfinch-on-sunflower

Injecting a splash of color and Goldfinch-y goodness into this late-December morning. We’ve got sunshine today, but are sadly lacking in vibrant color.

And oddly enough, Mr. Van Gogh, the yellow’s making me feel less blue.

 

 

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Wearing the shriveled skin of the ordinary

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning,
it satisfies the senses amazingly.
~  Virginia Woolf

old-berries

My senses are doing all right today, I guess.
Not what I’d call amazingly satisfied, but well enough.
I’ll gaze on those old rose hips a little longer.

Happy Thanksgiving to friends in the U.S.!

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