Something Bigger

I could be so much more
Something so much bigger I could be –
Just give me the freedom of the sky, the love of the fields;
Let my hands touch the hills and my soul the rocky, cloudy mountain tops –
Just let me breathe, breathe so much more, so much higher air and so much deeper ground, just let me breathe out all the words I could not speak in the same eloquence;
Let me form my words in the palms of wooden hands, of oak trees and wise old pines, let my thoughts be sung by tiny birds in aromatic southern coniferes down by the shore.
Just let me be, just let me breathe;
Just don’t ask me to speak in the vague little chunks into which you enjoy to mince this ephemeral art; my vagueness isn’t yours and your ways to space and break and part your thoughts aren’t fit for the rhythm of my steps. Just let me walk and skip along the roads and paths and wooden stairs I find; and I’ll bring back tales much grander than I’d otherwise find, tales of giant feelings and butterfly trails of star-wept tears, wordless stories of most wonderous travels down the well of night, I’ll touch you to let you feel the endless ocean and the deep, most satisfying rumble running through your chest as you inhale a myriad of eons-old saline chrystals, opening your heart to a fraction of the horizon I know how to feel.

Black stones, little sister

~
Remember how we
followed the creek below shrubs
the land of black stones
~

sunshine in the trees

Finally summer is here for real. We went out for a walk in the evening and the air was still hot, but with a gentle breeze. And I found a stick for my next try at the art making a bow (the first stick broke because it was too old, while the second stick, which I dragged home yesterday, is twisted in itself). So much sun and light and green leaves in the trees. It makes me want to live outside for a while, to wander, to leave the weird rules and ideas of post-modern Europe and quite a bunch of the latest inventions behind.

I tried to capture in a picture the beautiful sunshine gleaming through the foliage and casting shadows on the meadow we crossed, but it doesn’t do the real thing any justice. https://starfishskiesphotography.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/summer-in-trees-and-grass/

potato harvest

Some time ago we planted a sprouting potato into an old popcorn bucket. Today I decided to harvest because the part above the soil had rotten until it wasn’t connected to the new potatoes anymore, so there was no big hope the potatoes would continue to grow (at least I think so, but I don’t know a lot about potatoes). At first I only found some teeny tiny potatoes the size of my thumbnail, but then there were some bigger ones as well! All in all there is no really big result, now we have about the double overall amount of potato as before (the original one was pretty big), maybe nearly triple if you want to be really optimistic. But nevertheless we have small fresh potatoes from our own window sill now! (Technically this isn’t indoor gardening anymore, as we transferred the bucket to the outside window sill after some days.) Autumn wonders.

Favourite Friday: Scents

Hello again :) This one is a bit special one for me, as I can’t stand most artificial smells mixed into perfumes (ick, poison!) and scented lotions, deodorants etc. I want to introduce you to my wondrous world of natural and sometimes pretty ordinary scents.

Favourite scents: cedar wood and lemon grass essential oils, and lavender (both the plant and the essential oil, I like the scent because it is a childhood memory). I use them for adding a bit of fragrance to my homemade cosmetic products. Apart from that, I mostly enjoy the clean smell of a freshly showered human body without the addition of weird perfumed stuff (will write more about simple beauty/hygienic products and essential oils another day). I also really like some smells you can find in nature, for example the scent of rain on a hot, dusty path/street, the scent of the air directly before and after a thunderstorm, the aromatic fragrance of straw and hay – and the scents of late summer in general. Sometimes I enjoy the heavy scents of a forest, especially in autumn. Also, this special kind of winter air, when there is only dry snow or none, frosty temperatures, little to no wind, and this faint scent of fresh, crisp novelty and freedom. The kind of winter air that beckons me to run across the fields like a wolf, and once it really made me run through partly knee high snow at night! Some very nice everyday smells are the aroma of freshly brewed coffee in the morning (smelling it is nicer than drinking it imy opinion), freshly baked bread/buns, fresh bed linen, and of course clean morning air, especially after a rainy night.

Somehow I like all kinds of natural “fresh” smells, while things like scented air-fresheners give me headaches, big time! It is also unforgivable to spray me with a scented deodorant for fun. Not funny. You can take me for a walk in the forest or through fields instead.

I guess I’ll have to bake raisin buns today, writing this post made me hungry for fresh food (this, and the fact that I haven’t had breakfast yet).

What do you prefer, artificial blends of scents, or natural smells?

Favourite Friday: Summertime Activities

Hi everyone, I’m a little late because I haven’t been online yesterday. At the moment I’m out of town and enjoying the countryside for some days, so stay tuned for an update on my photoblog!

Just a short post today –

Favourite summertime activities: going for walks and taking pictures in the countryside (obviously, and today darling was tagging along, which was also fun), reading books, doing a bit of easy crafting (warmth = glue/paint/water dries faster), meeting friends outside – just being lazy and talking for hours, and if ice cream or a barbecue are involved, all the better. Somehow summertime makes me dream about places far away, different (more natural) ways of life, beautiful things of all kinds, and it makes me want to throw out some stuff to get a more airy feeling in the apartment.