Simplicity

"Compare the serene and simple splendor of a rose in bloom with the tensions and restlessness of your life.  The rose has a gift that you lack:  It is perfectly content to be itself.  It has not been programmed from birth, as you have been, to be dissatisfied with itself, so it has not the slightest urge to be anything other than it is. That is why it possesses the artless grace and absence of inner conflict that among humans is only found in little children and mystics."

Anthony De Mello

Spotted in the neighborhood

8X10 watercolor

English Cottage Gardens

At Sunnyside

Walked past Sunnyside this morning and despite the heat, things were looking fresh!  If Teddy hadn't been along, I would have stopped.

A little find

Walking home on a lovely, sunny morning I spotted these two little chairs tossed out in a pile of construction debris.  Brought them home, scrubbed them up, and after two coats of white paint, voila, with the help of this little pedestal, a new spot for the children to enjoy a snack on the porch!

Beauty's two edges

"It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder." 

words by Virginia Woolf

Fourth of July Parade