blue flax and california poppies

Do you ever have those moments when you see, hear or smell something and you are instantly transported to another place and time?

It’s almost like time travel in your emotional head. I do this quite frequently and the places I travel allow me to relive experiences.

Our senses are powerful. They are how we encounter life.

I taste a strawberry and know that early summer has arrived. Smelling salt air tells me I’m near the beach. Listening to a 60’s mix and I’m recalling junior high dances, hoping that whoever my “crush” was at the time would ask me to dance.

On my way to work I take a roundabout which circles up and past some homes that have a desert-scape loaded with blazing wildflowers. To me, California poppies are wild since they are scattered along roadsides and creep into neighborhood gardens. Blue flax and orange-red Oriental poppies were in the blend.

Seeing the flax and poppies was one of those sensory, time-travel flashes, and even though my eyes welled and spilled, my heart had a smile.

blue flax and California poppies brought me to tears; an odd flood of emotions I couldn’t understand
memories swaying like watching the flowers blown by the wind
it wasn’t sad, it wasn’t happy, it just was
each flower reminding me of different times and different places, but here they were dancing together
so tears came, in drops of faded blue and sun-reflecting orange

Where do your senses take you?

Missy

If you have been mildly amused, challenged or inspired by what you have read, please pass on my blog to a friend, colleague, family member or even random acquaintance

urban girl in the country

green in concrete For the last lot-of-years I’ve lived in urban areas. I’ve become a city girl with hints of a flower child mixed with hipster nuances…translated I like to wear skinny jeans. This is the total opposite of how I grew up, which was on a farm. My paternal grandparents grew, raised, caught and hunted for everything they ate – radical organic, free-range stuff. On my Mom’s side of the fam tree, there were green grocers and orchard growers. Heck, I was in 4-H raising feeder calves and a small flock of wooly sheep. Gardens, canning, freezing and preserving everything was the ordinary. I carried on the gardening-preserving, saving the spoils piece, until I found myself in fresh veggie-at-a-farmer’s-market heaven! The foreign city I found myself in had a temperate climate where fruit and vegetables could be grown year ‘round, and … it was sold at a giant open air market every week. Yippee! I no longer needed to ...

are you strong enough to do it together?

reflecting - paulina lake, october 2015 Weekend getaways are all about kicking back and well, getting away from the entire buzz of life. Caffeine excluded from this statement. Somewhere around noon of day two’s whatever we want to do schedule, my baby and I decided to hike around the lake that we’d been watching transform before our eyes. The distance was seven and a half miles according to the sign. That sounded totally do-able. Especially since yesterday we had ventured out on two shorter hikes that amounted to six or so miles. Besides, we’d walked a small part of the trail; it seemed like a pretty comfortable walk by the lake. First glances can be deceiving. Now, in all fairness to avid outdoors people, it probably was easy peasy. But to this urban girl, who only a few years ago had given up her love of walking due to not pleasant back pain from nerves having their life squeezed out; this hike was of larger-than-life proporti...

Parking on the verge

Sort of parked on the verge...at least it's mostly grass Living in Australia taught me many earth shattering things, like beets are called beetroot, but carrots are not called carrotroot. You “ring” when you are phoning someone and to “call” is actually to stop by. You can understand my American confusion at some of the Aussie ways and vernacular. Fortunately, we had great friends that kept us straight on proper protocol in this once penal colony. Terminology tweaks set aside, there was the whole driving on the left side of the road. What’s up with that? Is it because they are on the other side of the world or just trying to be oh, so British? I must admit, I never did relaxed when cars were careening toward me from the “wrong” lane. Now, that we’re on the subject of cars, it is perfectly natural to park in the verge. To be honest, I didn’t know what a “verge” was. Oh, I knew the word as in “edge or limit” but i...

Isabella Bird Miscellany

Search This Blog