Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Dear to me

Donnie has been reading to us after dinner some nights from an old blue copy of Leaves of Grass. The book actually came from the Hedstroms's book shelf, I "borrowed" this lovely book sometime during college. These photos were taken in the Hedstrom's back yard this past weekend. My grandparents live on beautiful land in South Carolina. Every time we visit my grandparents, we drive over the rivers in this poem.... oh the mighty santee!

O Magnet-South
BY
Walt Whitman


O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all
dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things and the trees where
I was born--the grains, plants, rivers,
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,
over flats of slivery sands or through swamps,
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the
Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine,
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their
banks again,
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the
Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings
or dense forests,
I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the
blossoming titi;
Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast
up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,
the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the
graceful palmetto,
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet,
and dart my vision inland;
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,
The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged
with mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in
these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the
fugitive has his conceal'd hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable
swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the
alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and
the whirr of the rattlesnake,
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,
singing through the moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn,
slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful
ears each well-sheath'd in its husk;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;
O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and
never wander more.







Monday, June 28, 2010

jude's photographs

Jude loves taking photographs. (hmmm i wonder why?) Since he is not allowed to touch my 5d mark II, he has been using a kodak point and shoot that has been laying around for awhile. (it is still by far his "most expensive" toy, call me crazy!) He really loves the experience of photographing. i usually delete the whole card when he's done, but before i deleted this last card, i saved a few....






Thursday, June 3, 2010

this june morning

This morning, Jude was looking super cute with his new haircut wearing his "robot romper" that he hasn't taken off in THREE days (I drew the line and wouldn't let him sleep in it)... so I asked him to show me around the yard. We had a hard rain last night and there were new things to explore... a fallen chickasaw plum (too sour for me!), an ant pile, some ripe cherry tomatoes were eaten, the first of the season's black eyed susans, our fennel has flowered, our not quite ripe blueberries, coral bean, and a patch of coreopsis were found!