Gangbusters

My little pearl sized tomatoes did very well this summer.  The plants were as large as regular sized tomato plants.  The ones to the sides aren't really very large for comparison.  I learned a lot about my raised garden beds this summer.  The tomatoes toppled over the edge and were on the ground; hard for the mowers.  I might change their positions next year due to the amount of sun, on the other hand never mind, as they would be much too hard to move.  I do love having them at waist height and no weeds.

The mornings are cool and dewy.  It has been a very rare August - cooler and rain.  Wonder what that portends for winter?  I'm just going to enjoy fall, though, can you believe that Christmas stuff is already on the shelves at stores?

Just Because

I really like this video, so here it goes.  Sorry about the ad at the first.  You have to pay to have them removed.  I'd put this on full screen for your viewing pleasure.

Eclipse And Crystals

My three pound Lemurian laser point quartz crystal.  All my crystals will be getting cleansed today during the eclipse.  These last months I've been immersed in crystals.  Can't read enough about them. I guess I've become a real rockhound.  But, so much more.

It started with trying to find healing crystals when my daughter went blind.  I had heard of Reiki, Chakras, Ayurveda, Feng Shui, etc.; thousands of years of history using million year old crystals.

I was a skeptic, as I always am, and realize most others will be too. Just let me mention titanium, quartz, lithium and even cobalt 59, whereby when it is changed at the atomic level, becomes cobalt 60, the same used in radiation therapy.

I'll step into it slowly, but let me leave you with this thought, from no less than the most brilliant mind in recorded history, Nikola Tesla.

"In crystal we have a pure evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and though in 

spite of everything we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being." 

Iron & Wine - Time After Time

If I only knew how to add more of his songs to this post.  Sam Beam is a polymath; he can do just about anything.  Writer, musician, film maker.  I'd like to go on and on.  You can watch a tiny desk concert of his at NPR on youtube. Or you can watch other videos of his there.  Or, you can listen to my favorite song of his, Swans And The Swimming.  His new album drops next week.

PS ~ I love his video with the flamenco dancers, something called A Boy With A Coin.  I am agog at those whom are genius at their crafts.

The Weight Of The World

When world events become too much to bear, I often find solace in nature. I am reminded of what wonders we can still find.  Ashes And Snow,  the dvd, is mind blowing and restoreth my faith in Mother Earth.

Quakes, Tornadoes and Fish Kills, Oh My

All that, and more.  My beautiful summer garden is on the wane and I check each day to see what is still faring well.

The echinacea is fodder for the birds now.  The orioles certainly do like those pin sharp seeds and that is all they are getting as I had to stop feeding the birds due to the rats.

Love black-eyed Susans.  They return each year like gangbusters.

Though the phlox are losing many petals, they still smell wonderful and the butterflies love them.

These flowers grow all over.  I haven't a clue what they are.  The first year I pulled them all up and saw one I had missed had snapdragon-like flowers climbing up the stalk.  They also come in many different colors, so I left them all this year.

So, summer is hurrying by.  It has been a strange one.  Oh, by the way, in the past week, there have been 1500 earthquakes (fracking.)  A fairly strong tornado passed within blocks of my first child's house and did quite a lot of damage.  Buildings destroyed and trees down and people hurt at 1:30am. Sirens didn't even go off.  Daughter's house was spared though only five blocks away. The tornado stayed on the ground for seven miles. It is only the third tornado in August since 1950 in Tulsa.  Seems it was caused by unseasonably cooler temps.  I'm not complaining about the cooler temps as August here is usually miserably hot, in triple digits.  Global warming? Climate change?

Oh yes, and the fish kill on the lake.  I saw a dead fish off my dock.  Then another and another.  Over about two days, every fish in our lake was floating.  Small fry and huge fish as long as my arm.  Everywhere.  Hundreds.  The smell was horrid. The wildlife department came out and tested.  Seems the perfect storm of events occurred.  Low oxygen levels, number of waterfowl and high temperatures and whatever else, caused it.  I doubt there are any left.  At least the turtles and waterfowl weren't affected.  It was terrible.

History

I love history (with the exception of political science.) I didn't love it in junior high school, but find it so fascinating now. Love geography too which is very much entwined with history.

I have been reading about the Library of Alexandria.  So much on the web about it.  The history of the world was stored there on papyrus.  Great scientific works, writer's writings, maps of early earth, astrological data and theory, art and works from the greatest minds of all time. One historian wrote the great flood happened 430,000 years ago.  Much of the early writings, which eventually became the bible and qua ran and torah, were lost in the destruction of the library. Mind boggling what all was lost.  

This is an early depiction of Sappho. Most of the nine volumes of her writings were lost in the conflagration.

Just a few scraps remain.  Not only a genius, her writings/poems were legend and she put it to music - the original Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro.

The writing that remains, speaks volumes.  I loved this line she wrote.

"Although they are/only breath,

words/ which I command/

are immortal".

And I just had to add a couple more pictures.  Hmmmmm....... I can't quit.



Just unimaginable.

What remains.