Precious and Profound --

The beautiful poem/quote below resonates perfectly with my own thoughts, stirrings, wonder, and sense of true communion. As you read it, take in the words and the picture it paints; be moved by it and feel the connection between self and the profundity and majesty of our fellow creatures.
                                                             
... Clara

Looking For Treasures ..."

It's been a long, hot summer and the heat has kept me hiding indoors a lot more than usual. Nature-loving me spent a lot of time hosing down the plants and filling the birdbath. The man who faithfully comes to mow the lawn has lately been mostly raising clouds of dust out of the mottled areas of brown grass.

But I'm finding little jewels among the last vestiges of summer.  Young zinnia plants still popping up through the dry soil and then, somehow bravely producing flowers.  Birds showing up at the birdbath.  Butterflies of many colors that seemingly come from nowhere, doing what looks like the show-biz finale where all the cast comes on stage for the grand bow. Those are some of the works and wonders of Nature.  I even saw a late-season lightning bug the other evening.

In the totally human world, with politics and war news occupying so much of what we read, see, and hear, sometimes I need to just turn away from it and invest in what I'll call "hope". Hope, for me, is a supreme treasure, a rescuing spiritual vehicle ... for me it can be found in reading inspirational quotes, gazing up at the blue sky, watching the dawn climb and glide over the horizon, seeing a comical magazine cartoon, sending money to one of the many animal rescue organizations (http://animalministry.blogspot.com), spending meditative time -- at my piano or keyboard, meditative time while walking among stands of trees, and perhaps the most serious meditative time in the sanctuary of my designated meditation/breathing room.  Hope, for me, is getting the inspiration for a new song. I don't think I've mentioned my newest song "Early In The Morning", recorded at Songwriters Studio a month or two ago. It almost wrote itself one morning while I was waking up (morning is my most creative time). I put it up on Sound Cloud and Reverbnation. It's also on a CD single with a beautiful label created by Sandy. It's also on my revised personal website at www.claralandau.com. For me, that song is loaded with hope!

Anyway, hope is one of the most important by-products and treasures of love. "Peace is the vision; love is the key" is one of my original quotes; the other two are "we are all in the same cosmic canoe" and "whatever works"; I think the three of them are quite compatible. Let's look for the real treasures and help them to endure.

Summer’s Hush –

August is here ... golden August. The fruit of the gardens is abundant, the wildflowers are forming seed heads and pods. My favorite wildflowers are orange glory and purple ironweeds. The ironweeds are the late bloomers and just getting ready to blossom here in Tennessee.

Kids and teachers are getting ready to go back to school. Oh, I remember what a painful thing it was to relinquish summer when I was a child. I suspect that hasn’t changed for today’s kids, especially here in Tennessee, where school resumes in early August. Where I lived (Connecticut), school would re-open on the Wednesday after Labor Day. Always. That seemed much more logical to me. My birthday is September 1st, so as my excitement would mount with my own special day approaching, it was juxtaposed with my sadness about school’s re-opening. I remember that bittersweet emotional conflict – year after year!. I liked school, for the most part, and was a good student; it was just the loss of my personal freedom that bothered me. I’m the same way now, definitely a free spirit. Oh, to be a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, following my bliss! Well, to some extent, that’s what I do.

Anyway, August is kind of nostalgic and soft and golden, a time to hold onto in one’s memory. It’s a nice month. All of nature is looking forward now to resting, after its vigorous growth, budding, blooming, and propagation. Nature is a great teacher and I am nature’s daughter. August is a nice month.

Days Of Innocence –

Occasionally my mind opens up its picture album and diary and I get to re-experience some long-ago scenes. Mid-summer, during my childhood, was a time that I savored. I would say that I was what was known then as a "tom-boy", climbing trees where I’d hang by my knees or sit nestled where a comfy limb joined the tree’s main trunk, and read a book or eat berries. I vividly remember, though, that when I occasionally wore pants instead of a dress (little girls mostly wore dresses when I was a child), I’d always make sure I had a ribbon in my hair or laced into my shoes, to indicate to people that I was a girl (in case they failed to notice my long, braided hair, which boys of that time did not wear).

Many a summer evening, my mother would send me out into the yard to pick dandelion greens for salad. I think my father tried his hand at making dandelion wine. I recall that, at that time and place, dandelions were not disdained or poisoned – they were eaten and made into wine; sometimes they were just welcomed as part of the lawn, for their cheerful flowers and the fuzzy seed heads that we children loved to play with. I still like dandelions.

Often my father would enlist my help with his huge garden and he would teach me about plants and their care. My mother had been a "city girl", but she had adapted to life in the country. From mid-July on through September, she would spend days at a time in the kitchen, canning vegetables and fruit that would be stored in a special room in our basement. The basement was old-style, as the house had been built in 1938. It had places where coal chutes had been, before the heating system had been converted from coal to oil. The basement was spooky, even after I’d become an adult. My mother loved to make things out of cement. Making her own wooden forms, she fashioned many little "steps" and garden edgings, and even dug and cemented (sides and bottom) of a children’s pool, which I’d say was about 8'x10' and perhaps almost (an uneven) 3' in depth.

Lest this all appear to be a picture-book scene, I need to add that we always seemed to have an over-abundance of visitors – my parents’ friends, relatives, acquaintances – sometimes the house was like a train station; it also had its share of quarrels and the air was always blue with cigarette smoke. I didn’t mind the visitors much, except for when my cousins would be there for a day or several days. They were fun for the first hour or so, but would interfere with my treasured hours at the piano. Sometimes I would find my solitude and escape by getting "lost" on the property, usually in a tree.

Twice per summer, my mother would take me to the beach, which I loved. It was only about 25 or 30 minutes away by car, but that was before she got her driver’s license, so we had to travel by bus. When you travel by bus, it seems like a long journey.

Of course, there was always the possibility of one of the year-round music performances that my mother had me booked for. Some of them involved real travel; some of them were back-to-back. They were kind of the reassuring bits of punctuation, sprinkled across the scenes I’ve just described, sort of a reaffirmation – of what, I’m not sure. It sometimes felt like I was living two lives.

Funny how each season has memories that can tiptoe across that threshold; how all those threads are firmly woven together.



　

End-Of-Month Round-Up Of Thoughts & Happenings ...

Nature is, at once, beautifully delicate and very ruggedly designed. Nature tells me secrets and I try to listen; there is so much to learn. Recent violent storms tearing through the area brought flooding, toppled trees, and some scary moments. And there is the excitement, the drama!

I finally did manage to get the Myspace page closed. My house projects are completed except for the carport which is to be installed in a week or two. The front circular driveway came out great, thanks to the expertise of the Daco Company crew.

I was very saddened when my little foster-care birdlets deceased, during their third day in my care. They had been eating and seemingly making progress; then, sometime during the night, the friskier one went; around noon the next day, the quiet one followed. Maybe when I changed out their soiled nesting material, it was a mistake to do so. Maybe it was because they matured enough to realize I wasn’t one of their kind. Whatever the reason for their demise, I miss them and wish that they had survived.

Dennis, my prison pen-pal, has done marvelously on his academic studies, even got a score of 100 on his math final; he will be graduating soon and I’m very proud of him.

Summer is here, there is no doubt. Happy Summer Solstice to one and all!

Flowers Of Late Summer --

It’s hard to believe that kids are back in school and summer is winding down. My black-eyed susans still seem at their peak; my purple iron weeds (scroll down and see picture of last year’s blooms) are again peeking in at me through the front and side windows; the phlox, echinacea, and orange lanterns are gem-like in their brilliance and clarity. A light sprinkling of early-fallen tree leaves dot the grass in my back yard. I guess I’m a flower of late summer. My birthday is September 1st.