same walk, new lens (2 or 2)

so yesterday i asked steve to take a 5 minute walk and pick up seven interesting bits. today, i asked him to take the same 5 minute walk but this time pick up seven signs of spring. so, same walk. but with a new lens.  it’s not spring here yet, so he had to work harder today. look at yesterday’s post and today’s–the difference is striking though, isn’t it? it’s a demonstration of the biases we carry–how we see what we want to see. we all have lens that we aren’t even aware of. we pretty much see what we expect to see. or in other words, we selectively see what we are looking for.

a 5 minute walk

my husband is a tax preparer. these two weeks of the year are the very busiest he gets all year. so, when i asked him today if he had 5 minutes, and he said yes, i was shocked. he asked, what do you want? i said, walk outside with me for 5 minutes and pick up seven interesting bits if nature.  this is what he picked up. this assemblage is oh-so cleverly titled “march 25, 2022”.  tomorrow i plan to do the same exercise with a twist. standby.

p.s. yes, i know there are eight pieces. he’s an over-achiever.

march is the cruelest month

yesterday it rained all day. most of our snow melted. the exposed wet earth smelled loamy and intoxicating. over night the rain turned to snow, and now our world is once again blanketed in white. oh march, you are by the cruelest of all the months. a trickster. a bait-n-switcher. a false-promiser. a yo-yoing gamer. predictably unpredictable. i know you have never actually promised me anything, and yet i felt the warmth in your sunshine, and i hoped, this year it would be different. this year, spring would arrive in march. but alas, you always have the final word, march. you always will.

over-wintered oak leaves with spring rains

rocks for brains

i’ve got beach rocks on the brain. it has been raining non-stop all day. it seems everyone i know is on a beach somewhere for spring break. i will have to content myself with these beach rocks. remembering that hot afternoon on the mediterranean near bandol, france, sifting through all the beach rocks at my feet and gathering up only the pink ones. beach rocks are the best souvenirs for making memories.

pink beach rock collection

STILL-like and STILL-worthy?

i recently came across the paintings of artist Alan Magee. he paints extra-large canvases of piles of beach rocks. i didn’t dig deep enough to see if his were idealized beach rock collections, or actual rocks he’s gathered. either way, the work is inspired and beautiful. and it inspired me to take my dusty collection of striped beach rocks off the shelf and make a magee-like composition with them. i showed the photo to my husband, and he said “sure, it’s STILL-worthy, but it’s a little chunky for you. a little heavier than i associate with STILL.” so there you have it, a non-STILL-like STILL-worthy photo of my striped beach rocks.

striped rock collection