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Category: landscape

Perspective

Perspective

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A view from on high. It’s what we get from airplanes, towers, mountaintops, rooftops and other lofty places. It’s perspective. Our world grows smaller when measured against the immensity.

It’s a necessary corrective, an antidote to most craziness. It can also be lots of fun.

Today the indoor parakeets are spending some time outside with me as I work. To say they are excited is putting it mildly. They haven’t shut up since I brought them out here. A moment ago a baby bird landed on the table beside me, attracted by the exotic chirps of these unfamiliar creatures.  A change of scenery for them, too, that of the wild beside the tame.

What has the birds so excited? The same thing I’ve been treasuring recently — perspective.

Perigee Moon

Perigee Moon

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I saw the moon rising as I rushed to the store on a last-minute errand. It was almost 9 and still light. I pulled the car to a stop at the corner and snapped this photo, which makes the moon look small and faraway instead of large and in-your-face, which is how it appeared outside the view finder.

This morning I learned from the weather guys that this is a perigee moon (closest to earth in its orbit), and the full perigee (also known as a super moon) appears 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than the apogee (farthest away in its orbit) moon.

I’m not a big statistics person but from the look of last night’s show, I’d say that’s about right.  And it was 40 percent more beautiful — at least.

But just to be sure I’ll be gazing skyward tonight and tomorrow, when the full perigee will once again bridge the gap between heaven and earth.

Half a Meadow

Half a Meadow

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To reach Franklin Farm I clamber over a fence and into a greensward bisected by a paved path. Most summers the flanking land is left to its own devices. Queen Anne’s Lace, oatgrass, milk weed and timothy spring out of the clay-packed soil, and by midsummer these grasses sway waist-high in the breeze. I look forward to the meadow as I would an old friend.

But this year the mower is much in evidence. Though patches of land are still wild and free, most of it is tidy stubble. At first I thought it was just the first strafing of the season or that it was growing more slowly than before. But now, well into June, the truth is evident. What we have in Franklin Farm is half a meadow — and that’s generous.

Is the neighborhood safer without swaths of tall grass through its heart. Maybe, though I doubt it. It is quieter without the buzz of insects and chirp of the red-winged blackbird. It is less arresting to the eye. And it is, sadly, less a place.

Still, half a meadow is better than none at all.

State House Dome

State House Dome

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On Monday, a rainy afternoon gave way to a clear evening, and a walk along Annapolis’s main street after dark gave us this view.

It’s the Maryland State House dome. Completed in 1794, it’s “the oldest and largest wooden dome of its kind in the United States,” a fact sheet tells me.

But on that early summer night, as it shone between the other, darkened buildings, it was a thing of beauty most of all.

Grass Moon

Grass Moon

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It’s not green, not blue, either. It’s a brilliant white, brighter than any recent winter moon. It’s the Grass Moon, a springtime orb, arriving just as the grass is starting to grow again and the mowers are humming and before we’ve grown tired of that weekly ritual.

 I learned of the Grass Moon by reading my favorite go-to weather site, the Capital Weather Gang. It will be a beautiful full moon tonight, the “Gang” told me, the Grass Moon. So I tiptoed out the front door at 9:30, trying not to rouse the dog, and stared at the moon peeking through the branches of the dogwood tree.

It was doubly framed, this moon, first by the tall oaks and then by the white blossoms of the tree. The moon shed enough light that I could make out each separate flower, could notice the details of branch and bloom, could have probably (if I’d wanted to) knelt down and counted each blade of grass.

It was a moon that brought the rest of spring into focus.

Wikimedia Commons: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

The Moon Before the Storm

The Moon Before the Storm

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Here we are thinking about the snow we might get on Wednesday, the snow I will most probably write about tomorrow, too. But today it is clear and bright and cold, and the moon, setting, was framed by the trees in our backyard.

A faraway moon this morning. Remote, withholding. Not round and jolly and close by.

A moon that is glad to be going.

Maps of Clouds

Maps of Clouds

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Yesterday’s walk began in drizzle, which I cursed silently. Not that I mind it, but my hair does. But I walked anyway, and as I did, the sky began to clear and the clouds piled up in the west and made maps of themselves, great illuminated maps. There was Cuba, or maybe some Micronesian island, and beyond it, some southern coast. And the yellow-pink light kept growing, even though the light rain kept falling. By then I had given up on my hair and just marveled that the sky could be so bright and still have rain in it.

It wasn’t until I reached the far end of our neighborhood that the rain finally stopped, and by then the clouds were on fire, so I extended my stroll along the busy road, which offers prime sunset viewing — all the while keeping those clouds, those pink and yellow clouds, in my sight.

As the cars drove past I thought how few of those drivers (often I’m one of them) could look — or see — the beauty raging around them. The poverties we are given, how they enrich us; and the riches, how they impoverish. This is certainly not a new thought, but an intensely felt one there in the just-past-rainy gloaming of an otherwise dreary day.

Pink Smoke and Purple Clouds

Pink Smoke and Purple Clouds

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A funny thing happened on the way to work today. Same thing yesterday and the day before. I blame it on my phone, which is also my camera.

No longer do I stride quickly from Metro to office, car to train. Now I stop, look, snap. 

What would before have been preserved only in my mind is suddenly ripe for the taking. A wisp of smoke tinged pink by the rising sun. A bank of clouds moving in from the west.

Pictures are everywhere. Now I have a chance to take them.

I may never be on time again.

Cloudscape

Cloudscape

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Yesterday on Metro, uncharacteristically bookless, I stare at the scenery passing by. The clouds were winter ones, thin, remote. So different from the fat summer cumulus. They reminded me of whitened  animal bones.

The light almost gone, me half asleep, wishing myself home in time to catch a walk in the brief dusk.

But before Vienna, a bonus — the sun, sinking fast, lights up the clouds, turns dross into gold.

Night Sky

Night Sky

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I try to keep luddite posts to a minimum, but the new phone is making this difficult. To begin with, I’m intimidated by the thing. When I do slide it out of its special pocket in my purse, I hold it like a Ming dynasty vase. This is making it difficult to familiarize myself with its amazing features.

My children are horrified that I continue to use it like a 2005 flip phone: “Have you tried the GPS yet?” … “Have you bought any apps?” … “You don’t have any contacts, Mom.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. For some reason I have the email address of a high school counselor from 2009 but no numbers for people I actually need to reach.

And then there’s the way that the phone completes my words and sentences. I’m a writer; I’d rather do this myself.

But there is hope. Last night a satisfied user I met at a party told me what made him buy his iPhone — an app called Night Sky. “The phone knows where you are and it shows you all the constellations and their names,” he said.

Then he whipped out his iPhone — and the roof flew away and the people, too. And it reminded me of once when Tom and I were driving in Wyoming late at night and stopped to put oil in the car and looked up, almost accidentally, and could not believe our eyes.

A phone that brings the heavens into view. I’ll buy that.