Wild Bergamot and Bumblebee

 I could hear a low buzz as I approached the tall clump of wild bergamot swaying in a nearby front yard. Several varieties of bees worked gathering pollen. The bumblebees are my favorites. Slow moving and diligent, they never seem angry or aggressive They just go about their business. They are so bulky compared to most other bees, it’s a wonder that they can even fly. But off they go, slowly, like a B52 compared to the jet-like honeybees zooming around them. They have places to go and pollen to spread.

The Rainbow

 Grandma Moses was a big deal in the 1950s. Anna Robertson Moses was a farm wife who bore ten children and never forgot her childhood interest in art. Late in life, after her hands grew too bad for embroidery, she took up painting, creating canvas after canvas showing the way things were when she was a younger woman. Her paintings do not adhere to the basic rules of scale or perspective but they are full of life and her keen observances. I realized that her rainbows are exactly as a rainbow truly appears. When was the last time you saw a rainbow NOT painted in bright primary colors? The houses and barns that Grandma Moses painted may not look quite three-dimensional but her rainbows are honest and true.

We All Scream For Ice Cream

 Ice cream can be the perfect summer treat. But on a hot day, a rapidly melting ice cream cone can be more soupily stressful than enjoyable. So why not choose a pint (or three) to enjoy at home. Among chocolate lovers, Graeters is renowned for including massive chocolate boulders in their "chip" flavors. But the tangy refreshing stars of the summer, if you can find them, are lemon meringue pie or key lime pie.

Queen Anne's Lace

 This is a plant that lives up to its name, a radiating multiplication of tiny flowers forming patterns like snowflakes on stems. Growing in drifts along roadsides and in untended meadows, each one might as well be a crocheted or tatted doily or perhaps a circle of bobbin or needle lace. Surely it inspired past artists to interpret flowers into thread. Their life cycle takes each flower through all the colors in which lace can be found: white, cream, beige, ecru. They are nature’s ultimate version of Punto In Aria, Stitches in the Air

Ghost Signs Charlottesville Virginia

 Have you ever seen a building with the faded remains of an old painted advertisement? Sometimes there are layers, markings that represent the history of what was happening in that particular spot over a period of years. Some cities are beginning to preserve ghost signs, realizing that there is a special beauty and patina to an old wall or facade that hints at its past life. We can take the time to puzzle out what was there before each one completely disappears.

Staircase At Monticello

There are no grand staircases in Thomas Jefferson’s home. He thought they were a waste of space that should be devoted to the public rooms. Visitors to Monticello can participate in a guided tour that requires you to climb up and down the original stairs, which are very steep and very narrow. Imagine being a woman in a corset and a long skirt. Imagine being a slave carting laundry, water or the remains of chamber pots. The enslaved people who kept the house running used those precarious stairs all day and all night. Jefferson did not consult them when he designed Monticello.

 

Lichen-Covered Tree

 On a hot day we paused at a rest stop where tall trees sheltered a few picnic tables. The canopy of leaves cast an overwhelmingly green coolness about us. I studied the lichen on the trunks, admiring its sea green color and lettuce leafy flaky paint texture. No time to ponder the mysteries of lichen, which are a partnership between fungi and other organisms. It was time to get back on the road. But we felt several degrees cooler.