A Contemplative Life

I'm pretty fluid here lately, not sure why other than I'm making up for posts not written when visitors graced our home. I didn't write fiction yesterday, and this morning didn't feel it would occur. Then the marine layer arrived, but not in its usual takeover kind of way. It was mottled, unable to fully grasp the North Coast with both hands. Instead it possessed a shaky grip that occasionally gave way to the beauty in the photo above. That view inspired me to write what sits below, enough of a scene to usher in perhaps the rest of a chapter. I'm posting this before I continue the writing, but after having read through it, adjusting the minor points, erasing the biggest errors. Because sometimes the marine layer relents. And sometimes the writing squeaks through. Enjoy and have a beautiful day! Chapter 6   Clouds intruded on the morning Richard and Gilly left for South San Francisco. Gilly was behind the wheel, Suze noticed, watching them from the front room windo...

For the last several days hints of summer have muscled their way through an entrenched marine layer. A couple of hours of sunshine one day, another few hours the next. June Gloom is the theme, and I'm trying to be patient, but.... LOL. I'm very grateful it's not HOT here, and as for the sunshine, well, it'll come back one of these days. Gigi is in the Broody Hen condo and just about everyone else desperately wants in! Photo courtesy of my husband. The chickens don't seem to care; they're a year old today, going about their henny-penny ways, including Gigi going broody again, as well as a few hens molting. Hard to believe it's been a year since they hatched, and a nearly a year since we chose them, brought them home, and began our chicken adventure. The good thing about the marine layer is that I don't have to move their water container in and out of the sun. By the time the sun does come out, where the waterer sits is in the shade, not something I consid...

Colour does the heavy lifting in these six-inch squares with splashes of low volume to add sparkle. Despite two broody hens, one of which is a NEW BROODY HEN (ahem), I finished a definite quilt back this afternoon. It will be the back because the front is an EPP heart beauty, and this brightly coloured extravaganza will complement that warm-hued top just FINE. Life right now feels very....interesting, in a slightly overcast, marine layer sort of way. Revisions I wanted to do this week didn't happen. An extra broody hen wasn't in the plan. Completing this quilt top, however, was a goal, and I met it, and feel good about it. Certainly a win! Today my husband and I walked along Samoa Beach at low tide. The sand was packed and sturdy, the waves were loud, the wind blowy. I thought about how this setting could be incorporated into Noth's next storyline in The Enran Chronicles , as well as what looked like a driftwood forest there on the sand. Pondering that idea lifted my spirit...

It's been a summer of chickens, of guests and revisions. And a summer of the marine layer. I nearly added marine layer to the previous post of things which you never dream . Lol. I certainly didn't anticipate a marine layer figuring so significantly in my life. Mostly due to not realizing that living along the California coast would occur, nor how some summers that heavy cloud bank claims said coast without thought to those who call the coastal area home. But yeah, the marine layer wins again this morning. It's just about time to feed the chickens, 6.20 a.m. currently. If the marine layer wasn't so pushy, I'd get up from the sofa, put on sweats and a hoodie, then collect their feeder, walking to the coop, admiring planets still visible; Venus and Jupiter have decorated the morning sky most of the month, Mercury appearing along the eastern edge, thrilling me completely. Today the marine layer barged in before I spotted the smallest planet in our solar system, blottin...

The breaks in the cloud are faint, but cannot be dismissed! The sun isn't shining, a menacing marine layer keeping those of us along the North Coast aching in the gray. However to the southeast a break in the mundane is trying to emerge. This delicious light stirs me to write this post, because despite it being the high days of summer, our landscape has felt like the dark days of late autumn for too damn long. A metaphor perhaps for all that blankets our current world scene? Sure! Big ugly legislation, miserable conditions everywhere we turn, natural disasters wreaking havoc, tender souls wrenched from reality; all these traumas want to strip our joy, leave us bereft. I woke to another gray morning, assuming the flat dull horizon would remain. However peeks of brightness remind me that all is not lost. Goodness prevails. Does this mean the sun and blue sky are about to muscle in, shoving the dreariness aside? No. The marine layer is far too entrenched for that to occur AT THIS MOME...