Out in the Garden ...

This morning my camera and I wandered out to the garden but it's not really my garden at all.  The Jasmine ... okay, I carried that home from the Amsterdam Flower Market one year, on the train, traveling with my favourite Australian, Clare.

And I pushed for the lavender plants and the honeysuckle too, bought one of the raspberry canes, and asked if we might have a fern.  I was rapt when Gert's parents gave him a part of their rhubarb plant ... while wishing I could have had a slice from the root of the mythical rhubarb plant back home in New Zealand.

Nana and Grandad grew the best rhubarb in the world, or that's how we told it.  Mum and Dad were given a section with roots and voila, we had some of that Invercargill perfection growing out back in our Mosgiel garden.

But I'm more of an admirer of gardens ... as opposed to being an actual gardener.  My mother would have told you that I was a bit of a lazy wench when it came to gardening.  I preferred reading or walking my dog, or just simply watching.  I should have been ashamed, as I come from a long line of hardworking, dedicated gardeners but I wasn't.

Then  I met Gert, who didn't garden but does now ... just like the New Zealanders I grew up around and so our garden is all thanks to him.  The big fat toads living out there simply amuse him.  He brushes off spiders, and goes into battle with the Ivy when it threatens to overwhelm all.

He BBQ's too, and this time I don't have a dog to get rid of the evidence about totally not being a Kiwi when it comes to BBQ food.

So these photographs taken by me mostly capture the result of his hard work and dedication ...

It was a Sunday morning impulse to attempt to capture a sense of how this beautiful day is playing out in our tiny pocket-sized Belgian garden.

A Lightness of Being ...

For me, there is this feeling of an incredible lightness of being that comes with that first really summery Sunday morning of the year.

We can finally open the door to the garden and enjoy the scent of the Jasmine I'm growing not far away.  But better than anything else, in those early morning hours, Nature often wins out as the dominant scent in the air ... especially on a Sunday when the roar of that massively busy highway nearby becomes so much less.

I wandered outside with my camera just now, startled a thrush, then watched a pigeon fly clumsily away.  The lawns will be mown today, there is a BBQ planned for our evening.  It's the first of this summery season. 

And the rhubarb is going crazy out there, so are the raspberry plants.  The fern has experienced new hope and is growing accordingly, and my beloved New Zealand Lupins are finally making an appearance too.  The yellow ones, the kind found growing at beaches back home.  Those ones that have a scent I love like nothing else.

Somehow they manage to contain both this huge celebration of summer and the promise of the sea.  I would fill my garden with these if I could.  But they're not in flower yet so I still don't know if they will grow and smell as they do on the other side of the world.

But it was the Elderberry blossom that turned my head this morning.  Perhaps more photos will follow.  The elderberry berrries are usually gobbled up by the pigeons but the birds were here first and do so little to harm the environment that it feels okay to let that situation be.

A good morning to you out there in the world.  I hope your Sunday is lovely in that way you need it to be.

Found ... as I wandered, reading.

Did you know, the British Library has put 1,200 literary treasures from great Romantic and Victorian writers online?  It's true.

This TED talk, Does Money Make You Mean?  was interesting.  There's some lovely stories of good things that people with money are doing ... at the end.

Glen Greenwald, fearless journalist & scrappy fighter, has turned up again, thank goodness.  He's now the editor of a 'news website describing itself as being committed to “fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues'.  You can find The Intercept here.

New Zealand takes 3rd position in the Global Peace Ranking.

A Sherpa and a native Nepali paraglided off of Mount Everest in 2011, they flew into history, and I read nothing about it.  There's a new book ...   Western-orientated media, you break my heart sometimes.

And perhaps that's enough.  Maybe 'more' than enough ...

Another peony.

In Celebration ...

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin, Writer.

There's a new project ...

Or perhaps it's a new way of seeing a project that has shape-shifted, changed, and developed so much since I first imagined it.

And it keeps getting better.  Maybe that's because it continues to move closer to my original idea ... that orginal intention.

I'm so excited.  There will be a newsletter from me next week.  And I'll be giving away copies of my favourite photograph too.  To celebrate.

And ... there's so much more to tell but not today.  It's 5pm Friday as I write this and I need to rest for a little bit before beginning again.

Meanwhile the peonies I bought from Dieter are exploding in soft pink lushness.

Processing ...

I've been trapped in chair here, processing a series after series of photographs over weeks ... or that's how I'm telling it. 

I finished the latest series tonight.  170 ... a most beautiful Irish/English family.  I am pleased.  I hope they are too.

Etel Adnan's book, Sitt Marie Rose, arrived in the mail today.  I photographed her while working in Berlin and wish I had read this before meeting her.  It shall be read, over days, on those trams that I ride here.

I'm off to Genova soon.  I am very much looking forward to that. 

This photograph was taken there, in Piazza De Ferrari one day ...

'The House Protects the Dreamer' ...

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard, Philosopher.

I needed to try and capture that place where I spend most of my hours for a project I discovered recently.  I'll write more on that when it happens.

Today the sun came out for a while and this is what I saw ...