Reflection

Gazing Bowl’s Summer Gift

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

The gazing bowl (AKA Geordie’s outdoor water bowl) normally only provides consoling insights and quiet focus in the autumn months when it becomes a kaleidoscope of spent leaves and shifting reflections.

Perhaps it sensed that quiet moments were especially needed this week as it’s putting on a rare summer performance.

The floral patterns in the bowl are only subsidiary gifs — the main one is that the snowbell (Styrax japonicus) tree itself is in full magnificent bloom for the first time for years.

I’d begun to accept that it would never flower again, but this summer it seems to be trying to make up for every lost opportunity. At times the tree is so full of bees that standing under it is like sticking your head into to a hive (but less dangerous.)

That soothing bzzzzz and the dappled light are the essences of summer.

But back the gazing bowl.

It’s summer message seems to be something of the lines of … take a break from the endlessly dire news cycle.

Like the wise flight attendant, it’s reminding me — put your psychic oxygen mask on first, or you’ll be no good at helping anyone else. If your beauty tank runs dry, how will you find the energy to fight for what needs fighting for?

So, just in case you need a deep breath of stillness yourself, please take your own reading from the gazing bowl.

You can hum-m-m-m a bit to yourself to mimic the sound of the bees.

As Geordie actually needs the bowl to drink out of at this time of year, the important messages do need to be dumped and rinsed every day.

For now, there are fresh scrying bowl memos each morning — but soon we’ll have to wait until fall for the next hydromancy installment.

Mavis stops by for a visit with her own messages

 

 

 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

© junehunterimages, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Modern Travel

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 Comments

“Wherever you go, there you are” was just one of my mother’s vast repertoire of Handy Sayings For All Occasions.

It sounded a bit eye roll inducing when I was young, but gets increasingly profound as I age.

Which brings me to travel.

Most of my journeys, especially over the past two years, have been of the internal variety, moving from one state to another. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.

We’re all confined our own little vessels, one way or another.

This has limitations and does take a toll — leaving us at the mercy of time, wind, rain and whatever passing reflections come to visit.

Things become worn and begin to fall apart.

Colours fade — but then others become richer and more transparent.

I’ve always had a fondness for travelling in place, perhaps dating back to the time I lived alone in my little cabin. 

My studies of bowls in the garden are like small, eagerly anticipated, annual journeys.

I love the hellebore bowls in spring, which are always beautiful when first arranged, but often become far more interesting when left to their own devices — week after week, or even month after month.

Some of the images here are of the glass bowl hellebores from last week’s post, left to drown in a week of heavy rain since then. Others are one of last year’s collections, left in the garden to make their fading journey from March until May 2021.

Each fall there’s always the adventure of the gazing bowl to look forward to. Starting off as a rather pedestrian dog’s water bowl in September … by late November, who knows where it might have taken me?

I believe that my interest in watching the crows in my neighbourhood falls into the same category of static travel— spending so much time watching, not just a single bird species, but actually the same individual birds, year after year, is a bit like gazing into a solitary bowl.

It never gets boring.

The longer you look, the more ways of seeing you find.

The crow world is also full of reflections — yourself reflected in the eyes of the birds is the simple version. It becomes a hall of mirrors as you consider the infinity of crow reflections, real and imaginary, in the looking glass of your own eye and brain.

So there you have it: the future of modern travel lies with crows, reflections, faded foliage, and is always far more about the journey than the destination.

Get your tickets now!

You may also like:

 

 

 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

© junehunterimages, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.