At dawn this morning the light is pale yellow, flushing the leaves of the beech tree with primrose until the sun hides behind a white cloud.  Softly a late summer wind shivers the top most branches so that the boughs sway and the dark shadows reappear deep within the summer foliage.  Something about those top branches in the trees reminds me of a time long past in Florida.  Why?  Why would swaying branches and glittering dancing leaves remind me of a holiday in Florida?   Trembling leaves, fluttering leaves, flickering, gathering dancing leaves.  The branches are so long and leggy making their movement a swaying.  Lowering and rising.  Swimming through the air.  Rustling, struggling leaves soon to be free, to fly free.  Flying- yes! But downwards, their one floating, spiralling flight down...down, freed from their anchor, freed from their tether.

..........Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired

and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that 

which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.

And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes

shadow to another light.

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a 

greater freedom.

-Khailil Gibran-

-Claude Monet-  Le Jardin 

Hello everyone........

This is just exquisite, thought you might enjoy watching!

The sound of soft summer rain, somehow poignant reminds me of stately homes and summer leaves, English lawns and a river, its surface gleaming and glancing, with shards of brightness here and there.  A silky dreamy spell, drawn with moving splashes, 'rings of bright water'.  Crystalline raindrops slinkily slide along telephone wires like passing cable-cars coming down a mountain-side.

But the rain we have today is more as though someone in the skies simply pulled the plug-up.  It barrel's down the windows and gushes over the top of the gutters.  Streams in down the inside of the French-windows and floods the conservatory floor.  We hurry to mop up with towels before the wood is soaked through.  There is no wind so the torrent just comes straight down in long silver shards, it's quite scary, there is so much power to it.