Category: Photographs

Lens-Artists Challenge: Winter

~ oneletterup ~ 27 Comments

Lens-Artists Challenge#107: Winter

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand, and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

Edith Sitwell

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Winter brings back the cold. Reliable get-out-the-thick-sweaters cold. Gotta put on a coat before stepping outside cold. Hats and gloves cold.

Most of the time, however, this season of cold shows off…with spectacular displays of snow. My favorite time is right after a snowfall…while it is still fresh and new.

snow maple

Before the city plows started piling it up at the end of our driveway…

snowplow

That’s how I remember winter days back when we owned a house with a driveway and a walkway and a deck. Where the oh-so-beautiful snow couldn’t remain where nature dropped it. When we had to shovel and snowblow and move it out of the way.

snow deck

Color exploded in the sky our last Christmas at the house where we lived for over 36 years.

sunset69
December 2015

Along with Christmas comes a gathering together of family. Complete with holiday lights and decorations.

Winter also brings about changes at the beach – the sand is groomed into hills to guard against storm surges. At least that’s what the hippy guy from town told me – who I crossed paths with the day I took this picture.

winter beach
Hampton Beach, NH – January 2020

A January walk in the woods isn’t totally devoid of color…if you look closely…

winter berries

And last…but not least…in my growing family winter always meant…
…are you ready for some basketball? 

Both of my children played for their high school teams and enjoyed it immensely. As did my husband and I…watching and enthusiastically cheering in the comfort of a heated gym.

Box Out! 🏀 Defense! 🏀 Go Team! 🏀

Looking forward to the other side

~ oneletterup ~ 41 Comments

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

Rachel Carson

from the back fence

Behind one sturdy fence lies a river
Rising and falling with every tide
Each day the moon is relied on
Nature carrying us along for the ride

I took a break from a long walk in our local park recently and took a seat…alone…on the memorial bench we had donated to honor my in-laws. My view was interrupted by the metal fence separating me from the river beyond. But I knew what was there.

Bordering trees and plant life often double as reflections on the water’s surface. River banks are exposed when the tide is low and disappear when the tide is high. There is something strangely calming and comforting about this. The predictable pull of the moon. An ebb and flow of the changing seasons and time of day.

Nature at its finest with a lesson at its core.

It was hot as blazes the day I took this photo. What did I expect for July? Exactly what happens every July.

I hold out hope upon hope that a predictable life will return someday.

When we get to the other side.

~~~

BeckyB JulySquares: Perspectives
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Back of things
SixWordSaturday
V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #105: Quotation

Fandango’s Friday Flashback: July 24

~ oneletterup ~ 17 Comments

Inspired by Fandango’s Friday Flashback: July 24

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year….Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year?

~~~

The following post was originally posted on July 24, 2018

(my blog, still a baby, was a mere 5 months old)

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Diaries Revisited – 2018

 

diaries line up

My writing life started with diaries – the kind with the tiny keys. Keys implying a privacy that wasn’t actually possible. But which gave a 9 year old a sense of importance. Tucking away private thoughts in a safe space. A comforting fantasy. Trusting that the key really worked.

As I got older, diaries (keys long gone) were followed by small spiral lined notebooks (written with an orange Flair pen – this was, after all, the ’70’s). Next… black hardcover “blank books.” And then back to small spiral notebooks and thick journals. I actually preferred the printed lines to guide my sometimes erratic handwriting; angled in anger or loopy with emotion. I went through a calligraphy stage in college and carefully inked my thoughts with spaced precision. An art form! And since I was the sister who was NOT the artist, I felt mighty proud about that.

My good friend Debbie gave me a new 8 1/2″ x 11″ black blank book when we were both 20 and about to start sharing an apartment – a first for both of us. We would finish up our last 1 & 1/2 years of college together.

She filled the first page:

Here is the book you wanted. It means so much to have a book like this…to write down thoughts, feelings….watch how you grow, how your feelings change and how much more aware you become when you read back through it… 

The second and third pages contained Pink Floyd lyrics from “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Breathe, breathe, in the air…Don’t be afraid to care…Leave, but don’t leave me…Look around and choose your own ground…. 

I followed Debbie’s directions and kept filling that journal off and on for almost 18 years. (It didn’t come with a key. I wonder if it should have.) I was as open with my written words at 20 and 25 and 30 as I was at 9 and 10. Kind of shocking really. And now sometimes embarrassing – and painful – to see my heart splayed open on the page over and over, year after year.

Entries became sporadic and eventually just covered major life events – or the night before major life events – as I pondered their significance. Marriage. Career. Parenthood. Family dramas. Joy. Grief. Loss. I started and stopped various notebooks, journals and blank books. A brand new one always a hard-to-resist invitation to begin again. Maybe it was the fresh, smooth paper & its possibilities…like getting new notebook paper, pens and pencils for the start of school each September.

At the ripe old age of 27 – about 2 weeks before the birth of my first child I wrote…

It seems that the older I get, the faster life goes by…We Are Going To Be Parents!!…It will probably be the most important thing we do….”   

The next entry (in that journal) was 10 years later when I had a weekend away by myself.  By then I had a second child and a consulting job. I was still in my thirties. The 4 page summary began with…

Motherhood has changed my life more than anything else before it. 

And ended with…

After all these years I’m finally starting to acknowledge that there’s another side of me that’s been buried – perhaps a more creative side – I’m not sure…”   

Looking back, I was spot-on about the motherhood thing.

…I also have several well worn notebooks filled with stories of all the amazing, funny, and truly one of a kind things my 2 children ever said or did.

Truly like no other kid ever in the history of the world. Obviously. For example: How many 8 year old boys do you know who can make an earring out of a Cheerio?  And whose mother wrote a story about it?

I couldn’t help myself. It was such fun….

Lens-Artists Challenge: Autumn

~ oneletterup ~ 32 Comments

Lens-Artists Challenge #106: Autumn

…share your images of this season.  What does autumn look like in your part of the world?  What does this season mean to you personally? 

~~~

Autumn marks time until the cold darkness of winter arrives…as each day rewards us by unveiling ever-changing shades of yellows, oranges and reds.

Along with greens stubbornly hanging on from summer.

A feast for the eyes.

twisted tree

The line of trees along my street pop with color, one by one.

fall road

Halloween, my favorite holiday, happens in Autumn. There’s no pressure for gifts or elaborate meals. It’s just all about fun and make-believe. Since moving to a condo, I miss the trick or treaters and those knocks on the kitchen door. Little upturned faces covered with makeup and masks…the scary or beautiful or silly masks that have holes made especially for mouths and noses. I absolutely delighted in their joy as the doorbell rang over and over from 5 to 8 pm.

halloween pumpkin064

Autumn also means it’s time for annual fall festivals…including a very special one that I attended last year. It is cancelled for 2020.

fall festival
Apple Harvest Day
Dover, NH
October 2019

Eventually all the leaves turn brown…

brown leaf

…and at the end of a late September day – if you’re lucky – you witness a blaze of gold in a grocery store parking lot…

fall parking lot 2

…in the Autumn.

Wordless Wednesday…almost

~ oneletterup ~ 8 Comments

field of confusion

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During my quest for a Wordless image that would speak for itself, I took a second look at this particular photo captured yesterday afternoon.

I had a moment. A title to a specific song appeared…as if in a thought bubble hanging over my head. The kind I remember from 1960s Saturday morning cartoons.

But these days I’m not laughing.

Fandango’s Friday Flashback: July 17

~ oneletterup ~ 3 Comments

Inspired by Fandango’s Friday Flashback: July 17

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year….Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year?

~~~

…a flashback post down memory lane…a welcome respite.

(also coinciding with today’s citysonnet photo a day challenge: Watermelon Pink)

The following post was originally published on July 17, 2019

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Shades of Pink

Nancy Merrill is hosting a photo challenge. The prompt this week: Shades Of Pink

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO FEATURING SHADES OF THE COLOR PINK.

 

When I was a kid, pink was never my first choice. For anything. At least that’s how I remember it. Old photographs rarely showed me in pink pants or shirts. Maybe a pink dress when I was too young to voice an opinion…although my opinion was often ignored.

I probably lucked out because my younger sister was the “girly” one (a term I now dislike, but those who remember the “old days” will know what I mean). She could have all the pink, as far as I was concerned.

The one exception may have been my first bicycle…which was pink. I am not sure if that was my choice…or the only color available at the time for a “girl’s bike.”

Anyway, pink pops up on Valentine’s Day and that’s when I photographed these shades of pink.

Wrapped up and ready for local Valentine shoppers.

 

pink flowers