On Blogs and Frogs and Flirty Lizards

It dawned on me recently that it's been ten years this summer since I started blogging.

Ten years --- holy mackeral! One sixth of my life.

Sometimes the ideas fall over each other inside my head in their haste to get to the page. More often it looks like the Gobi desert in there and I wonder "Why am I doing this?" The answer is always the same. Desert or rain forest, I have found that if I just get all the gobbledygook down on paper, where I can see it, and slowly move the words around, they will eventually  make sense. The Little Blister and I were talking a few days ago, I mentioned this and, to my guarded delight (she's made similar noises before,) she is about to administer CPR to her blog. Since that ten year milestone has inspired me to continue into my dotage it would double the fun (or is it torture?) if she were scribbling alongside me. She started after me and, for a year or two, we egged each other on, but life got hectic and her blog was one of the casualties. So, fingers crossed!



There's a little lake in our neighborhood, a couple of gardens over. You can't see it from here but me and shank's mare can get there in three minutes. It's a great place to think, to stargaze, to read a good book, to play at being a photographer, and a stellar place to just sit and think.




 Molehills were turning into mountains one day recently so I came to the lake to sit awhile and clear my head.



Lizards flicked to right and left as I walked along the boardwalk. They have the place mostly to themselves so they get pretty territorial about it.

They move just far enough not to get stepped on, then sit and watch me, all the while flexing their muscles and doing pushups. But I'm bigger than you, Squirt! Unimpressed. I think this little guy was flirting with me. He made a great show of stretching out his colors for me to admire. "Go find a lady closer to your own age and size," I advise him.

The sun is low behind the trees, glowing golden between their trunks. Great banks of dark clouds, sitting along the horizon, are fading from grey to a taupe-ish pink but, don't close your eyes 'cause it changes every minute. There's whispering in the pines as a breeze wanders by.

Suddenly the air is rent with raucous honking.  A trio of sandhill cranes prepare to land in the rushes but, oh-oh, they've changed their minds. Warned off by honking from others already settled in those reeds, they climb again skywards as two more fly overhead, squawking loudly. Must be a crane convention going on.

Meanwhile, piled high in the west, more grey clouds shot through with pink, the color of a rose.  The reflection of an old, fuzzy jetstream zig-zags through the ruffled water,. Straight out from where I'm sitting at the end of the boardwalk is a raft of waterlilies, no flowers yet but beauty enough in the leaves alone.

What looks like an old brown leaf appears among the ripples, dark, almost black against the water's grey. As I watch, it moves, then ducks beneath the surface and I realize, that's no leaf, that's a turtle!

Belly down on the raft at the end of the boardwalk, I watch this tiny spider catching the last rays of the sun.....

Big blue dragonflies zoom about, intent on going --- where? What's on the to-do list of a dragonfly?Does her nest (if dragonflies have nests) get claustrophobic so she feels she must get out and come to the lake to clear her head? And while we're at it --- why is the sky blue? If I had such beautiful, irridescent wings I'd fly down into the rushes where the water is squishy and brown and spy on those frogs who make such a racket and sound as large as dogs but are, somehow, invisible.

Guess I should go home while I can still see the way. The silver jetstreams high above have turned pink now, the clouds in the west are an even darker grey, and, best of all, my head is clear. The cranes have resumed their inelegant song and the wind is whispering "go home! Go Home!"

I went back to the lake last night to take some photos. It was earlier, and sunnier, so no dramatic clouds but all the usual suspects were present. Those loud, invisible frogs were as noisy as ever and I wondered idly who decided that frogs say "ribbit"? Sounds more like chirping to me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe those loud, invisible creatures are not frogs at all but birds that hide under water! The sandhill cranes were having another domestic dispute but the sun was sinking and they sounded halfhearted.

You never know what new drama Life has up her sleeve so it's comforting to come to the lake knowing it will be different every time but reliably and serenely the same.

Such an ordinary place but, when you sit and think and watch, you find ordinary places can be full of extraordinary peace and beauty.