your backyard, right now

A request from a friend sent me into the backyard on a day when I felt more or less abandoned by magic. And wouldn't you know? I found some out there, hiding in the lee of a maple tree.

Go out into your backyard - or into the world surrounding your door - and show us mini-worlds and fairy dust. Do not wait for perfect light. Just go.

quotable photobles

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

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Share with us wonder and questions and eyes bigger than ordinary. Share with us faith and unfaith and how it looks to wonder what happens next.

the invisible photographer

The revelation with a new wide-angle (wider than my beloved nifty fifty) lens? The previously elusive arm's-length portrait. Note the absence of the word 'self' because it's not just about capturing photos of me, but of noting my presence in the midst of a captured day. And the crapshoot nature of a manual exposure that shoots into unknown light behind our heads, the best-guess aim and the dubious focusing? Just fun stuff.

Mama: present! (raises hand)

This monday, show us you're here. Show us your arm's-length portraits, and tell us what about that moment had you turn the camera that way.

spring at home

At night the window is open and once all settles and the light gives up, we scooch down under the duvet with the breeze at our heads. We fall asleep to the nocturnal song of the peeper frogs in the marsh down the cove, earth from the day's weeding still tucked in the upturned hem of jeans that lay crumpled in a pile on the floor.

The only thing better than a vegetable garden of blackberries, carrots, asparagus and beets is that very vegetable garden, yet-to-be-planted. A square of earth -- worms, spiders, rocks, last fall's wayward dinkies, treasures to be dugged out and tugged at. An afternoon as agreeable to the four-year-old as to his horizontal mother, who selflessly conducts scientific trials as to the healing properties of hammock-plus-sunshine.

(This is for the good of all mankind, I tell you. Please do not disturb my revelations.)

This Monday, show us a piece of your home that's so vividly restorative we can smell it, or hear it, or feel it on our face -- newness and rebirth and vitality and mischief.

Or, as they say -- show us the spring in your step.

hymn of loss and gain

At my church we roast marshmallows, and everyone arrives on tricycles. There are banjos, and there is woodsmoke. Everyone is loved without conditions, and nobody is judged, as long as they are kind, and that is the only rule that’s absolute. Snotty noses are welcome, as are rosy cheeks, both being great and worthy tributes to whatever universal energy sparked all this.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

On this night a song merged with photographs and got me to thinking, and I went to my imaginary church, and hey, that's pretty neat. It made me feel peaceful. So tonight, share with us a song informed by a photo, or a photo informed by a song—and tell us the story of why they go together.

Forgive me for issuing a challenge and not quite meeting it. I had written about Ben's upcoming birthday, and how I'm going to do my best to appear with a Star Wars cake in one hand and the memory of Liam in the other, and it didn't feel right. So it's gone poof and all that's left are some very tenuous threads from tricycles to banjos to a hymn, and now it's 2 AM. But you're all inventive sorts, and so I'll leave you to just listen, and look, and knit the rest on your own.