Friday Ramble - In the Great Blue Bowl of Morning

We (Beau and I) awaken to skies that would make an impressionist painter feel like dancing. Drifting clouds are backlit by the rising sun, and below them, flocks of Canada geese are singing in unison as they fly up from the river and out into farm fields to feed. This year's progeny sing loudest up there in the great blue bowl of morning. Their pleasure in being alive and aloft is contagious, and I watch them with a mug of tea, eyes shielded from the rising sun with a sleepy hand. 

There are dazzling pools of sunlight in the garden, deep shaded alcoves of shadow under the trees that are several degrees cooler than the open spaces. Chiaroscuro mornings in July and August remind me of the artist Jean Parrish's words, that when she painted she tried to mirror the way light sculptures the earth, the way shadows fall. Oh yes, Nature (the Old Wild Mother) is the most fabulous artist of them all.

Below the sweeping strokes of vibrant color painted across the eastern sky are trees, hydro poles, rooflines and village streets, trucks and cars in rumbling motion, early runners in the park, commuters with lunch bags, bento boxes and briefcases headed downtown to another day at their desks. There are not as many commuters out and about as there were a year or two ago. After working from home for several months during COVID19, many office workers have decided to continue doing it.

On an early morning walk, Beau and I paused by a neighbor's fish pond to watch the white and scarlet koi finning their way around in circles, and we noticed that the first fallen maple leaves of the season had already drifted into the pool, making eddies and swirls and perfect round spirals on the glossy surface. No need to panic, it's not an early autumn, just this summer's dry heat setting a few leaf people free to ramble.

If only I could actually paint skies as magnificent as these... I can't, and the camera will have to do, but what my lens "sees" is absolutely sumptuous, and I am content with my morning opus. Sky blue, rose, gold, violet and scarlet lodge in my wandering thoughts, and on the way home, I think about taking up pottery again, about throwing a bunch of clay bowls and glazing them in perfect sunrise colors. Emaho!