Scattered thunderstorms

Summer is paying an early visit to the Bogs.  The heat has been building along with the clouds.  I expect those clouds to burst any moment, the way they did in the early morning hours, waking us with thunder, lightning, and surges of heavy rain hitting the house.  Between the heat and the humidity, it does not feel spring-like at all.

Changes are happening quickly outside.  The daffodils which showed no sign of buds yesterday look almost ready to burst into flower today.

It looks like we may have an early and long growing season this year.  I’m wondering if it’s too late for the broccoli we started indoors, if it’s going to be too warm, too soon.

The orchids in this post are, of course, from the Orchid Mania exhibit at the Cleveland Botanical Garden.  While Ohio does have native orchids, I have never seen one and wouldn’t know where to find them.  That would be worth looking into sometime in the future.  It’s entirely possible that orchids live in places where M and I hike, and I’ve never noticed them.

When we look deeply into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it.  Without clouds there could be no rain, and without rain there would be no flower.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I am mostly wordless once again when it comes to blog posts.  I’m thinking about taking an at-home retreat for three, four, or however many days it takes to explore this need for silence.

Sunlight in the Costa Rica greenhouse garden. Cleveland Botanical Garden.

Next week would be a good time for a retreat.  We don’t have too much going on.  M will be busy with work, and I can use that quiet time to chop wood and carry water, almost in a literal sense.  There is meditation to be found in chores and repetitious work.

Today's view of the woods to the east.

I went out to take a few photos of the storm clouds, and to show you some of the neighborhood, when I noticed how much the tree auras resemble the colors we saw in the late autumn months.  I love the way nature cycles through common themes.

McMansions and storm clouds

A couple of posts back I mentioned that we are not as isolated as it might appear from most of my photos taken around the pond.  This is part of the neighborhood to the south and east of us.  It used to be farmland.  The farmer stopped farming, broke up the land into parcels, and now it is developed land.  The house in the foreground was not there when we bought our home and property.  Neither were the two houses at the end.  Just the big brick mansion (housing two people).  The pine trees you see in the foreground were planted by us a few years ago.

Well, that’s about it from the Bogs for today.  Thank you for visiting.  A quick look at the radar shows most of the storms are south and east of us now, but there are a few, small, pop-up thunderstorms scattered about.  We might get some rain out of it, but I won’t mind if we don’t.  Things are soggy enough out there.

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