Magnolia blossoms

Siegfried at play

May 10

Siegfried was just running off steam, but the rushing wind helped dry the red Mebane mud he had been lounging in out in the back yard moments before.

And today

A portrait:

Use it and lose it

Yes, we know it's true. While we live and still have the power, we preserve our ability to do by doing—to think by thinking, to dance by dancing, to love by loving. We use it or lose it. Nevetheless, as Philip Larkin (1922-1985) reminded us in his poem "Dockery and Son":

Life....
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.

– from The Whitsun Weddings, 1964

I wonder, though, at that choosing by "something hidden from us"; what might Larkin have been referring to? Was he a closet pantheist, god immanent in the natural cycle of life and death? Or was he simply saying that, be born and die as we must, we do not know why and cannot ultimately choose, any more than those primitives depicted in Paul Gaugin's fine painting, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"

Reflection of Wally

Early June 2005

Clematises in late afternoon sun

Siegfried at three months

Before and After

Siegfried had his first body haircut on April 30.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water Boy

Dark Cream...or Apricot?