Sunday Dinner: Flow

~

Mist to mist, drops to drops.

For water thou art,

and unto water shalt thou return.”

.

Kamand Kojouri

~

~

They both listened silently to the water,

which to them was not just water,

but the voice of life,

the voice of Being,

the voice of perpetual Becoming.”

.

Hermann Hesse

~

~

“To them, as to Magnus,

time was like rain, glittering as it fell,

changing the world,

but something that could also

be taken for granted.”

.

Cassandra Clare

~

~

“…I keep looking for one more teacher,

only to find that fish learn from the water

and birds learn from the sky.”

.

Mark Nepo

~

~

“Water is the most perfect traveller

because when it travels

it becomes the path itself!”

.

Mehmet Murat ildan

~

~

“Water is the driving force in nature.”

.

Leonardo da Vinci

~

~

“Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape,

so in warfare

there are no constant conditions.”

.

Sun Tzu

~

~

“Empty your mind,

be formless, shapeless, like water.

Be water, my friend.”

.

Bruce Lee

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019

~

Sunday Dinner: The Beauty of Tenacity

Siletz Bay, Oregon

~

“Most of the things worth doing in the world
had been declared impossible
before they were done.”

.

Louis D. Brandeis

~

~

“There are times in life
when people must know when not to let go.
Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”

.

Terry Pratchett

~

~

“People can be at their most vulnerable,
but still tenacious at the same time.”

.

Toni Bernhard
~

Rhododendron re-blooms in October at the Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy.

~

“The qualities of a successful man
are tenacity, perseverance, courage
and the will to win”

.

Sunday Adelaja

~

Mussels grow amid barnacles on rocks jutting up through a sandy beach on Oregon’s central coast.

~

“Tenacity is the dance

within the art of opportunity”

.
Rasheed Ogunlaru

~

Aging Rhododendrons regenerate with new growth at the Connie Hansen Garden.

~

“NEVER GIVE UP.
No matter what is going on,
Never give up.
Develop the heart.
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart.
Be compassionate,
Not just to your friends,
But to everyone.
Be compassionate,
Work for peace.
In your heart and in the world,
Work for peace.
And I say again,
Never give up,
No matter what is going on around you.
Never give up.”

.

Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

Ferns cover the exposed rock work at Cape Foulweather along Highway 101 in the coastal mountains of Oregon.

~

“Beauty is seen in repetition;
keep repeating your beauty
even if your beauty is not all that beautiful,
you shall still leave a mark
and there shall come a moment
when the beauty will be seen”

.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

WPC: Reflecting

~

On the grayest, soggiest day, what little light seeps through the heavy sky catches in jeweled raindrops.  Wet cabochons shimmer for a moment, before sliding and colliding into dripping puddles of reflected light.

~

Oxalis regnellii ‘triangularis’

~

Who would expect such exquisite beauty to come with the rain?  Light finds its way into the gloom, and multiplies itself in countless reflections.

~

Heuchera ‘Melting Fire’

~

This beautiful light surrounds us.  We only need to notice it, for it to penetrate our own hearts and minds, and then reflect again into the multiverse.

~

Pelargonium

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

“The Sun will rise and set regardless.

What we choose to do with the light while it’s here

is up to us.

Journey wisely.”
.

Alexandra Elle

~

Geranium

~

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Reflecting

Wednesday Vignette: Vision

~

“The truth.” Dumbledore sighed.

“It is a beautiful and terrible thing,

and should therefore be treated with great caution.”

  .

J.K. Rowling

~

~

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved.

So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons.

It all exists, even if it’s in your mind.

Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares

aren’t as real as the here and now?”

.

John Lennon

~

~

“Facts do not cease to exist

because they are ignored.”

.

Aldous Huxley

~

~

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

.

Pablo Picasso

~

~

“In a time of deceit

telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

.

George Orwell

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

*

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

.

Oscar Wilde

~

~

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Reflecting

Sunday Dinner: Water Is Life

~

“Brushing the clouds away from my eyes,

I see clarity in the raindrop

and beauty in the first ray of morning sun… 

Life is strange and wondrous…”

.

Virginia Alison

~

~

“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday,

it rained very hard.

I like it when it rains hard.

It sounds like white noise everywhere,

which is like silence but not empty.”

.

Mark Haddon

~

~

“The sky mingled with the Earth infinitely

in the tenderness of rain drops.”

.

Meeta Ahluwalia

~

~

“Sometimes enlightenment descends upon you

when you least expect it…”

.

Dean Koontz

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

~

“Mist to mist, drops to drops.

For water thou art,

and unto water shalt thou return.”

.

Kamand Kojouri

Wednesday Vignette: Take Care of Our Heart

~

“People ask: Why should I care about the ocean?

Because the ocean is the cornerstone

of earth’s life support system,

it shapes climate and weather.

It holds most of life on earth; 97% of earth’s water is there.

It’s the blue heart of the planet —

we should take care of our heart.

It’s what makes life possible for us.

We still have a really good chance

to make things better than they are.

They won’t get better unless we take the action

and inspire others to do the same thing.

No one is without power.

Everybody has the capacity to do something.”

.

Sylvia A. Earle

~

~

“There is such solace in the mere sight of water.

It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent,

gossamer items that medicate the poor soul”

.

Sebastian Barry

~

~

“What begins at the water shall end there,

and what ends there shall once more begin.”

.

Doug Dorst

~

~

“Water records information,

and while circulating throughout the earth

distributes information.

This water sent from the universe

is full of the information of life…”

.

Masaru Emoto

~

~

“No one can know the infinite importance

of a tiny drop of water better than a thirsty bird

or a little ant or a man of desert!”

.

Mehmet Murat ildan

~

~

“To be fully alive

is to have an aesthetic perception of life

because a major part of the world’s goodness

lies in its often unspeakable beauty.”

.

Yukitaka Yamamoto

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome

For World Water Day 2017

~

 

Altered Perspective…. ?

~

The world looks a bit odd in December, don’t you think?  The newly bare landscape can sometimes surprise and delight us.

Here are just a few clics I captured earlier this week.

~

~

Can you figure out what you’re seeing?

~

~

“Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star,

the glittering herald of the day.

Heresy is the last and best thought.

It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea,

toward which the brave all sail.

It is the eternal horizon of progress.

Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought.

Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.”

.

Robert G. Ingersoll

~

~

“Watching the infinite horizons gives you infinite dreams,

infinite ideas, infinite paths!

Choose a great target

and then you will see that great instruments will appear

for you to reach that target!”

.

Mehmet Murat ildan

~

~

“In the most surreal, the most joyful,

the most beautiful, the most intense,

the most alive moments of life,

you are absorbed into the horizon

which is at its most invisible,

elusive, perfect blend of sky and sea.”

.

Connie Kerbs

.

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  New Horizon

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

Sunday Dinner: Flow

~

“Be like water making its way through cracks.

Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object,

and you shall find a way round or through it.

If nothing within you stays rigid,

outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water.

If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.

You put water into a bottle

and it becomes the bottle.

You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot.

Now, water can flow or it can crash.

Be water my friend.”

.

Bruce Lee

~

~

We have watched more rain fall in the last two days than I can ever recall.  If  ‘we’ includes every soul from Jamaica to Maryland, then we have perhaps witnessed the most rainfall in recorded history.

It’s ironic that the Daily Post chose “H2O”  as the theme for their Weekly Photo Challenge on Friday, as Hurricane Matthew chewed up the Caribbean and the East Coast of the US.

Ocean swallowed land, breaking up buildings and piers like tinker toys.  Waves crashed over sea walls and battered against homes and hotels.  Historic, torrential rains have washed away hillsides and towns.

Here, the water flowed.  We are blessed with a topography which can handle rain.

But all around us  in Virginia and North Carolina, at the northern edge of this great storm, it rose.  We watched streets become ponds and roads float away, carrying so much of people’s lives and livelihoods on the rising tide.

~

~

We watched this on TV and the internet, of course; here, we simply watched water run in sheets across the streets, fill the ditches  and puddle on the patio.

We drove to Jamestown late yesterday afternoon, watching the river rise to the top of its banks and the creeks and marshes fill like bathtubs.  Herons stood along the shallows,  gazing with curiosity at the rising tide.

Yesterday, the world was wet and grey.  The clouds hung low and spewed sheets of water from sea to land.  And now the storms have moved away.  The sun was out here by this afternoon.

~

~

And with sunlight comes every beautiful color of the day:  blue sky, golden flowers, green leaves and shiny patches of lichen on the dark wet bark of trees.

~

~

Water teaches the lesson of change.  As it changes forms itself, so it also changes everything it touches.  Judging ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sometimes begs more questions than it settles.  Even the lack of water, a summer drought, shows us this truth.

And so we learn to flow, like water; to adapt, to reflect, to adjust, and to persist.  And above all, to hope to nourish and refresh with  our very presence.

What can hurt can also heal; what can destroy is also the basic unit of every living thing.

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2016

 

 

 

For the Daily Post’s

One Word Photo Challenge:  H2O

WPC: H20

~

“Water is the most perfect traveler,

because when it travels it becomes the path itself!”

.

Mehmet Murat ildan

~

~

“I am like the water that runs over me,

immune to permanence, recycling endlessly.

I am water; I am life.

The form may change, but the substance

stays the same. Strike me down

and I will rise again.

Vincit qui patitur.”

.

Rick Yancey

~

~

“The fish don’t need to know why they’re in the water.”

.

Marty Rubin

~

~

“Water belongs to us all.

Nature did not make the sun one person’s property,

nor air, nor water, cool and clear.”

.

Michael Simpson

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

 

For the Daily Post’s

One Word Photo Challenge:  H2O

 

~

Silent Sunday: Water

~

“It is said by the Eldar

that in water there lives yet the echo

of the Music of the Ainur

more than in any substance that is in this Earth;

and many of the Children of Ilúvatar

hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea,

and yet know not for what they listen.”

.

J.R.R. Tolkien

~

~

“Eventually, all things merge into one,

and a river runs through it.

The river was cut by the world’s great flood

and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.

Under the rocks are the words,

and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.”

.

Norman Maclean

~

~

“In one drop of water are found

all the secrets of all the oceans;

in one aspect of You

are found all the aspects of existence.”

.

Kahlil Gibran

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2015

~