Laine's Blog, Thinking Out Loud

Silver Linings

 

 

It's not too shabby when you have finally stopped sabatoging

your own happiness and joy.

 

Silver linings everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

Matanzas Inlet, St. Augustine Florida.

 

 

 

Sweet!

 

 

 

How do you sweeten your life?

Chocolate?

Long walks on the beach?

Time spent with friends?

Fragrant flowers?

 

It's a good day for some sweetness!

 

 

(You can almost smell the plumeria!)

 

 

 

 

Reprinted from LainesBlog, August 2012

 

 

 

Hold Onto Your Hats!

 

 

 "Oh, we are coming down faster than I thought!"

 

"At least it looks like it'll be a soft landing..."

 

"Hold onto your hats, kids!"

 

 

 

 

 

Those funny fall migrating birds coming in for a landing, St. Augustine.

 

 

 

Morning?

 

 

The world seems to be trying to turn me into a morning person.

All I can say is,

"Not yet, not yet, not yet."

 

 

 

 

Sunrise, and birds on the wire, (didn't make it to the inlet in time!) St. Augustine.

 

Welcome Wind...

 

 

After weeks of extreme heat and still air,

this Nor'easter stirs the soul and the senses,

and makes you believe in autumn again.

 

Low light and long shutter speeds

catch the movement of the waves under the spell of the wild wind.

 

And yes, it rained and rained and rained.

 

 

 

Villano Beach, St. Augustine, just after sunset.

 

 

 

Related articles

Wild Waves: 14 Photos of the Ocean Overtaking the Earth

Those Dragonflies...

 

Karaoke Night

 

 

Do be do be do...

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are everywhere this time of year, watch out! Karaoke Night reprinted from October 2013, from Laine's Blog, and with her permission!

 

 

Something to be grateful for...

 

 

This must be the month of the Dentist.

Everytime I tell someone that I had to go to the dentist,

they say,

oh, I went today too,

or I went 2 days ago,

or

oh yeah, I have to do that soon.

 

Imagine what a visit to the dentist was like a hundred years ago!

OUCH!

(Shoot me first!)

 

Today we have super sonic drills,

and lasers and e-xray cameras,

that do the job of 10 dentists.

 

Something to be grateful for,

for sure!

 

 

 

 

One of St. Augustine's many attractions, with old stores and Dentists!

 

Please Welcome!

 

 

Please welcome, guest blogger,

Sue Harrison,

a writer, seeker and friend,

who will be filling in some holes in Laine's schedule

in the coming month.

Thanks Sue!

 

 

 

Empty Bucket

 

 

 

Life is a big empty bucket. That is not a bad thing. It just means there is always space to add more, to gather in what the world has to offer.

That doesn't mean driving to another lake everyday to see if there is some water. It may just mean putting the bucket out to let it fill with sweet rain. 

An empty bucket can be a drum or a silly hat or the place for your most precious treasure. That is the beauty of your empty bucket, it is yours and yours alone. We all have one but not all of us have learned to understand that empty is just a place for full to come and live.

 

 

Family photo © courtesy guest blogger Sue Harrison, somewhere in the great southwest desert.

Morning Window

 

 

Sunrays breaking through the morning air,

shining an extraordinary light

on ordinary things.

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine, backyard art.

 

 

 

 

Are You Coming?

 

When the going gets tough,

the tough get going,

and going,

and going!

 

 

(Hey, wait for me!)

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine Beach, and keeping up with Aden...

 

 

 

That Season...

 

 

One side of the sky, gray and rumbling,

the other giving us a cloud show.

 

The rain came, and getting home after dark,

there was a heady scent in the air,

like night blooming jasmine.

 

Where did it come from?

Is it that season again?

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Getting Above the Clouds

How To Walk In The Mud

 

There comes some mud in everyone's life that you have to go through,

whether it's an awkward situation that you wish hadn't happened,

or something that you must do,

that you'd rather not.

 

It helps to take yourself lightly,

not so seriously,

get through it as gracefully as possible,

dust yourself off,

and carry on.

 

 

 

 

Or in this case,

rinse yourself off

and carry on!

 

(Wings help too!)

 

 

Egret and Heron walking in the shallows at Wakulla Springs State Park, ©2007.

Borrowed and added onto from LainesBlog, August 2013. Used with permission!

 

Related articles

More Egrets...Regrets...or An Entire Novel.

Reflections

Great Blue Heron: Patient, Prompt, and (Rarely) Pugnacious

Star Gazing...

 

Meteor showers?

Sleep.

Meteor showers?

Sleep.

 

O well,

how about some lilies?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Susan K. Wirth, for this beautiful shot of the Stargazer Lilies with Purple Cone Flowers, Baltimore, Maryland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Meteor shower lights up night sky

Borrowed Beauty

 

 

Set this shot as my desktop photo and it takes my breath away everytime I look at it.

 

Borrowed from the Astronomy Picture of the Day,

the Milky Way and bioluminescence  and glowing light in the sky,

along the shoreline of Victoria Lake, Australia.

 

 

Oh my!

 

 

 

 

Photo, Shooting Stars, by Phil Hart.

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Beautiful Bioluminescence

Stunning photos of Bioluminescent Phytoplankton

9 Amazing Supermoon Photographs

With a Little Help...

 

 

There's more than one way to get all of your "stuff" off the beach.

 

Hail a couple of surfers and you're good to go.

 

Don't forget to tip them!

 

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine Beach.

In Stride...

 

Some people naturally know how to take life in stride.

 

 

She makes this look easy!

Tails wagging and baby smiling!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine Beach, any summer day.

Simple Pleasures

 

 

This is the kind of day that makes you wish that you had a little boat

and could wander along the marshes,

spying on blue herons, and green herons and egrets,

maybe run into Ratty and Mole from The Wind In The Willows,

having tea in one of the coves,

taking time for simple pleasures,

as clouds drift by.

 

 

 

 

 

The view from Vaill Point, last August, St. Augustine.

  

 

Related articles

Where We Live

You Pick...

 

 

 

As beautiful as the night.

 

"Which night?"

You might ask.

 

The night of shooting stars or lightening bugs,

or the first time you held the hand of someone you really loved?

 

You pick!

 

 

 

Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, Water Garden with tropical water lilies.

Reprinted from Laine's Blog, August, 2013 and with Laine's permission ;>)

 

Related articles

The Water Lily and the Moon

They Sing!

 

 

No wonder ancient people honored the sun,

the reliable, predictable sun.

 

Our bright star might travel along the horizon

in a northerly or southerly direction,

depending on the season,

but it only truly goes away at night,

and returns,

bringing with it the morning,

and the first bird song.

 

The birds know the rhythms of the sun.

They don't have to check their clocks to know the time.

 

They know,

 and they sing!

 

 

 

Sunset from the beach along the inlet, Villano Beach, St. Augustine.

 

Related articles

The Sun Never Sets

Stories at the Beach...

 

 

One evening.

One beach walk in the rain.

Three or four or five stories being played...

 

 

 

"Let's Get Away"

 

A couple, no longer young, and not yet old, married only a few years, but finding themselves entrenched in very hectic busy lives together with their eager dog, Fletcher.

She suggests they dash it all and get away for a few days. He reluctantly agrees, only if they can bring Fletcher and they find themselves on the beach in St. Augustine, only hours from their

home in Gerogia. And although it is raining, they find that the joy of watching Fletcher running and chasing the frisbe in and out of the waves is changing their world, cracking their weary

faces into shameless smiles.

 

 

 

"The Wedding"

 

She: Do you remember when we decided to get married, we both agreed that we would run into the ocean in our fancy wedding clothes to celebrate in style? Why didn't we do that?

He: We were a few miles inland, if you recall, and surrounded by out of town guests and we couldn't get away.

She: Let's do it now!

He: Now? It's about to rain!

She: So, let's. It will seal our promise to each other, who cares if we get wet.

He: You really want to, now?

She: Yes! Why not?

 

 

 

 

 

"Nobody Gets Me, But You"

 

 

She: Dad, where are you going?

He: Out to the beach.

She: Again? It's supposed to rain.

He: You worry too much, Baby, God's rain don't hurt me.

She: At least wear your hat.

He: Yes, Baby.

 

The old man drives his old car to the beach and drags his old chair and his satchel that holds the holy book and sits close to the water, taking off his shoes and feeling the warm sand between his toes. He reads the words that are like music to him and writes the notes that help him to remember how they make him feel.

He thinks to himself, I wish Baby could hear what I hear and see what I see when I read these songs. It's like sitting on the edge of the world, looking out into the infinite. What's a little rain to an old man in ecstasy, just more joy! Nobody gets me, except, of course, you, my Lord and Saviour.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a very interesting trip down the beach that night.

There were the two young girls taking pictures of each other with a phone, doing hand stands.

I offered to take their photo together and they accepted and immediately posed,

with their backs to me, facing the ocean,

their hands and arms entwined in a kind of pretzel over their heads and thanked me!

I said, how about one looking at the camera together?

Oh, ok!

 

And at the end of my walk, a young man and woman,

kids really,

playing soccer, one on one,

and she was winning!!

 

 

Lots of fun in the rain on the beach.

 

(These stories are of course fabrications, fantasies, more fun!)

(The photos are real!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine Beach. 

 

 

Well Fed...

 

 

Cloudy at the beach,

some little bit of rain that didn't last too long -

heart and soul well fed,

a few *stories unfolding...

(and don't even mention that half moon peaking out of the clouds.)

 

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine Beach, *stories to come...