asakiyume: (Lagoonfire)
The mail brought a welcome item--my uncorrected proof for LAGOONFIRE!



I must go through it carefully and root out typos! The Polity approves of rooting out errors.

Last book featured a deity who wasn't ready to be retired. This one features a bunch of retired gods. How do they spend their time? How does the Polity treat them? You can learn a lot about a government by how it treats its decommissioned deities.

I've been spending too much time just working, but when I'm not, I step outside to enjoy the cosmos ... by which I mean the flower called cosmos, but hey, it's part of the bigger cosmos, so both things, actually.

cosmos flowers

Seems like each blossom held its own bee:

cosmos flower with bee cosmos flower with bee cosmos flower with bee

By the time I got those photos, late-ish today, the bees all seemed to be sleeping, but this morning they were active, flying blossom to blossom, but always politely socially distancing when they saw a blossom was already occupied.

It's past 5 pm, local time. Have an autumn brew.

leaves and rain in a pitcher

May

May. 6th, 2017 02:36 pm
asakiyume: (shaft of light)
Everything smells beautiful right now, and the landscape is so many different colors; leaf hasn't subsided to leaf yet, and blossoms are everywhere.

My apple tree has never been so graced with flowers before:

apple blossoms

apple blossoms


asakiyume: (glowing grass)






Out my kitchen window (... if not elsewhere in the world), the day is made of soft and shining.

flowering pussy willows

flowering pussy willows

What adjectives is your now made of?


blossoms

Apr. 29th, 2016 08:41 am
asakiyume: (dewdrop)






It was the scent of these that drew me. (ETA: I haven't checked what sort they are yet.)

blossoms

blossoms



asakiyume: (shaft of light)



Here is a road I walk every day. This photo is from yesterday, but this morning, when I passed this way, an oriole flew into an apple tree (not visible in this picture) and seemed to be sniffing the blossoms. Maybe it was sipping nectar. Maybe it was nibbling the petals. Maybe it was listening to whispered secrets--I don't know.

spring road

These are not the apple blossoms that the oriole was getting intimate with, but these are apple blossoms I especially love, because they're on a tree I grew from a seed.

apple blossom

Beautiful May ♥

green way


asakiyume: (bluebird)







... just a pretty picture

cherry blossoms


Catalpa

Jun. 27th, 2014 10:27 am
asakiyume: (feathers on the line)
You know personal ceremonies or festivals, things you end up celebrating, year after year, just as an individual (or maybe, say, as a group of friends, or a family)--in other words, something that's not a broader cultural thing?

One of mine is the blossoming of the catalpa. SUCH A GLORIOUS TREE, with blossoms that look like they belong in tropical garlands (well, they are a bit pale, but so **fancy**), that rain down onto the street.

Here is the tree--can you see it is twice as tall as the rooming house it towers over?

catalpa in bloom

And here are the blossoms, fallen on the street and grass

fallen catalpa blossoms catalpa blossom glowing on road


The blossoms wear different colors of makeup to attract the bees. Some like a red-purple, like the one over on the lower left:

catalpa blossom, purple-red accent

Some go for golden-orange highlights:

catalpa blossom, yellow accent

And every year, I string them on long strands of grass and hang them up somewhere in the house.

catalpa threaded on grass

Happy catalpas, everyone!


asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
After working all day, tonight, when it was all soft and dark out, and the breeze felt pleasantly cool, the forest creatures and I went out to look at the fireflies, or the moon, or both.

It ended up being both--the fireflies spangling the fields on one side of the road, pure magic, and the moon the color of lemon custard and bright as a candle flame above the other.

--okay but here's what I've been thinking about. It's because of getting all these extra immunizations to go to East Timor. Immunizations and prophylactic medicines: they're like wards. I feel like the medical establishment is laying spell upon spell upon me: "Now you will be able to walk through flames and over scorpions, and you will emerge unscathed." (Except really what they said was, "You know this typhoid shot is only 80 percent effective, so be careful of what you eat" but even so. Eighty out of one hundred typhoid scorpions will not sting me.)

But I can't help thinking, What about everyone who lives there all the time? I bet they're not on prophylactic doxycycline all their lives. They have to just rely on mosquito nets and bug spray to keep away malaria. Or, y'know, they just get it. And same with all the other ailments. But I get to waltz covered in wards. Oh: and whatever germs I might be carrying with me from New England, they're certainly not warded against. ... I shall try not to breathe on people.

catalpa wands: blossoms threaded on grass
DSCN3681
asakiyume: (far horizon)
Sometimes people aren’t led to fairyland by ghost-pale lights or bewitching smiles . Sometimes it simply swallows them up, gulps them down. They fall into it without realizing. They’re lost and don’t even know it.

Like Maddie, walking home from the train station after a long day at work. She stops to admire a crabapple in full bloom, ghostly in the black-and-white of nighttime, luminous—from the starlight? Like the petals are cups filled up with it.

Her head becomes completely filled with petals and starlight, and then at some point she blinks and starts and thinks, Did I just doze off ?

And,

Where am I, again?

There’s a lake up ahead, filled with water lilies. Some are breaking free from their stems and rising off the lake, spinning lazily into the air.

Is she maybe dreaming? Did I maybe leave out the part where she got home, collapsed on the couch without brushing her teeth, and fell asleep?

Maybe I’m the one that’s dreaming, or maybe you are.

It gets worse. Who am I, again? she’s thinking. She knits her brow, trying to pull together some thoughts, trying to make some sense of things, but the only thought that comes to her is something about bells—is it that the lilies can be rung, like bells, if you catch one?

Maddie has that nagging feeling that she needs to remember something. It’s important, so she strains to, shuts her eyes squint-closed and presses her lips together hard, but it’s no good.

When she opens her eyes, someone with black and white fur on their cheeks standing in front of her, someone with a red tattoo in the shape of a star between their eyes.

“Lanterns, or bells?” this person asks, holding out both hands, and in both hands are lilies, tugging to be free from this person’s grasp. Those on the right are glowing slightly; those on the left chime, subsonically, when they brush against each other.

“Bells,” says Maddie, and the person smiles and hands her a lily, and she smiles and takes it.

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asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
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