Hazy Days

 "Because there was no wind, the smoke... hung in the air for a long time..." -Amy Lowell (1874-1925) (excerpt from A Burnt Offering)

There are fires burning on Vancouver Island. Burning on the mainland. Some are close to here. The pock marked moon is stained yellow and red.I can't see the fires, but they are here....

 There are fires burning on Vancouver Island. Burning on the mainland. We feel them here. Spencer, who visits us daily, still comes in the early morning and late in the day, when it is still and quiet.

  I won't go into details about the fires. The details change on a daily basis.It's enough that we see enough to know that they are there. I can hear the planes and helicopters roaring overhead during the day. Refueling. 

 Smoke and haze cover the mountain range. Today is a good day, believe it or not...can actually see the outline.

 And over all there is this weird, yellow otherworldly  sun.

 "There may be a great fire in our soul,and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke..."-Vincent Van Gogh

 Everything is  touched by the haze that waffles in and out.

 I started taking apart some of the pots. A couple to overwinter before they get dried out. Mostly cause they are drying out. Cutting back on watering. Only geraniums remain. A hardy reminder of an earlier summer.

 The Smoke Bush lives up to its name. Yellow light filters through, making the stems look smokey.It puffs up like a thousand cigarettes....

 "We look up to see if it is day or night, if stars burn cool, and moon does shine..if breath of sun does belch its heat..."-Roman Payne

 Grapes, however, are loving the heat. Fat and saucy. Ripening like crazy.

 And beneath us, swirls smoke and haze. Just out of reach.

Flowers  slowly fall away. Sun. Sun . Sun. Everywhere I look.

 Even Patience, the cat, resembles, uncannily, a fluffy golden sun.

 "The sun is such a lonely star....." -Joseph Gordon Levitt

 And I will continue to tear apart pots. Lonesome now without their flowers.

 In the dark of night. Away from the sun that beats down .Under the crescent moon and it's pimply face.  Waiting for the rain......

 "Summer sun was not meant for me........rain was meant for me....." -Benjamin  Alire Saenz

Photographs 2018

Sun. Haze. Moon. Smoke.

 "The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire." Pamela Hansford Johnson

 Some Images from the past two weeks  of the haze and smoke and heat travelled in from B.C. Interior forest fires.....

 "Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you."
-  Maori proverb  

 "The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love."
                                   -  Hunkesni (Sitting Bull) 

                                        MOON. 
                 Smothered with red smokey haze from the fires  up north.

 "We are the stars which sing,We sing with our light;
We are the birds of fire,We fly over the sky.
Our light is a voice:We make a road
For the spirit to pass over." -  Algonquin Song of the Stars 

 “Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”   ― E.E. Cummings

 “We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moon is coffined in clouds.” 
― Fitz-James O'Brien, Classic Ghost Stories by Wilkie Collins, M.R. James, Charles Dickens and Others

 Mt Washington Range cloaked in smokey haze.

 “May your feet ever walk in the light of two suns... and may the moonshadow never fall on you... ”     ― Robert Fanney

 "But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness.  The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head ... The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on." -  Robert Finch 

 END of Summer. The sunflowers fall.The rain comes.

 "I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day."     -  F. Frankfort Moore 

Photographs 2017

Haze

 “When she awoke, the world was on fire.” 
                                                                                                          ― Scott Westerfeld, Uglies

 Well, not actually on FIRE. But the heat and the haze and the drifting smoke from the Interior of B.C. finally made it's way here, to Vancouver Island.The mountains  are mere outlines this week.....

 This is what the Washington Mountain Range ( sorry I don't know the actual names of these particular ones) should look like at this time of year.

The tallest sunflower. Over the eaves of the house. Tinged orange in the early light. Can see farther  than anything else. It turns its head in the heat.

 Haze. Heat. Sun. Golden Boy . So hot. Eyes sting in the haze. 

 “But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke." ― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

 Even at High Noon..........

 The mountains still look riddled with smoke and haze.

 I'd forgotten that they should be like this...

 The light has changed over the past few days.

  Weird shades. Orange. Bloody. Yellow.Like in a horror movie. 

 And remember that the mountains should look like this.....

  End of the world . Disaster movie in the making.

 The smoky haze  finally  swooshed its way into the valley between us and the mountains.. Yukky to breathe in. Tastes like burnt matches, in the middle of the day. Not that I've tasted burnt matches. Well, maybe I did..long ago....kids try the craziest things.

 By 7pm the mountains still look like fuzzy peaches.......

 Don't forget.....they should be looking like THIS!THIS! THIS!

 Even watering pots is a chore. The farther into the day the heavier the air gets. Almost harder still to be toddling about. Like moving  though bubble wrap.Bubble wrap that won't pop.....

              "The No. 1 cause of forest fires is trees."
                                                                                         -Pat Paulsen

 And the mountains once looked like this..................

Photographs 2017