No Place I’d Rather Be

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Scenic, wildflowers, Wildlife

The first day of my week off was spent almost entirely outside – The way I like it! Gardening, yard work, and other activities this morning, mowing until dark this evening, and a hike this afternoon to see if any water was still running in Battle Creek. Boy, was it! It roared pleasantly through the canyon and the deep-cut creekbed, a chocolatey, muddy brown. Wildflowers are blooming even more now, and the brush and forest were alive with bird life. My cellphone battery died on my hike, so I walked very carefully on the way home. I’ve never seen a rattlesnake on the Hole-in-the-Wall trail, but I didn’t want to find my first one and not have cell access in case of an emergency!
Blue-Eyed Grass What a wonderful day to be spent outside, enjoying the quiet and serenity of the Black Hills, the wind in the pines and the tall grasses, the vivid sunlight, the flashes of wildflower color, the shimmering green of the aspens. No place I’d rather be.

Almost Overlooked

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Photography

When I went for a walk this morning, two things almost didn’t catch my eye. But they did.
An unopen fleabane bud. And the flame in the heart of a dewdrop. Beauty can be so wonderfully manifest in the simplest of things – Only from the hand of God.

At Evening

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Scenic, wildflowers, Writing

While the sun was still high above the horizon, I fled to the outdoors, drinking in the evening coolness and the warmth of the slanting light. There was a delightful sense of apprehension or urgency – Light is the life of the wildflower hunt, and every day is a hunt when wildflowers are in bloom. So I chased the light.
From shadowed hollow with golden pools of sunlight, to warm and brilliant hillside, I followed the sun. It streamed through the slender trunks of pine trees, sparkling on threads of spider silk, casting long shadows, illuminating like glass the transparent greens of young grasses, the fiery fuchsia of shootingstar, the milky white of deathcamas, the sapphire of bluebells.
Tucked deep into the taller grasses in a sheltered place, larkspur violets spread themselves out in the evening light, some of them the palest of lavenders, others a deeper purple. Pussytoes grew like groves of tiny trees. Clusters of ballhead gilia caught the light in their tiny white flowers and on their velvety stems.
Catching sight of grazing deer ahead of me and over a little rise, I stopped suddenly and sat down quietly. Hastily and silently I changed my lens, and slipped the camera bag to the ground. I crawled closer, hoping to sneak up on them, but I got over-eager and they hightailed it into a ravine, their white tails waving like flags. Every time I see a herd of whitetails, their white tails bouncing and waving, I can’t help but think of the sense of humor of our Creator!
The sun disappeared behind the hills, and a dusky cool settled into the trees and over the hills. Grandma’s house was just over the next hill. When I walked home from visiting with her, it was dark, with the faintest turquoise still tinting the horizon. Lonely birds called and echoed. The stars were dim in the light from a brilliant moon. I opened my arms to the moonlight, as it trickled through the trees and silvered the whole landscape like a heavy frost. Perhaps it would freeze, but the warmth of the day still lingered in the air.

Evening disappeared with the sun. Night had come.

Weeds and Wildflowers

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Writing

Just a short ways down the road from where I work is Canyon Lake, and Rapid Creek feeds into this. Along Rapid Creek, upstream of the lake, is a little wooded dirt path. With the creek running on one side, and trees towering above, I could almost forget the sounds of town as I poked along in the grasses over my lunch hour, hunting wildflowers and watching birds and listening to grasshoppers. So pleasant and refreshing.
Dandelions were in abundance, and a clump or two of early dame’s rocket. There was a carpet of not-yet-blooming violets, with a couple of over-eager violets trying to bloom. Then there was the columbine! I missed good pictures of this gem last year, because of a sub-par camera, and I snapped away happily. And then I got to thinking – What is it about dandelions that makes us consider them weeds, while flowers like columbine and blue flax and shootingstar we consider wildflowers? Whether something is a weed or a wildflower depends very much on perspective. A limited perspective fails to see the beauty or even usefulness of the weed – It may be a nuisance, I suppose, and grow where it isn’t wanted, but isn’t the weed beautiful as well in its own way? Doesn’t it provide pollen for our pollinators, and color to our landscapes? Sometimes I view life this way. Because I can’t see or refuse to see the meaning in something or because I am frustrated with a certain situation, I consider it bad or ugly or undesirable. But might my perspective just be wrong or limited? A broader perspective, a more whole perspective, might be able to see the lessons to be learned, the service to be done, the experience to be gained, and the very real joy to be experienced if I allow my perspective to be broadened. Sometimes God gifts us with difficult or trying situations or experiences or people in order to grow us in our walk of faith and to grow us in holiness. One step of that is learning to see God’s sovereignty in our lives, in both the rocky place and the pleasant places.

I want the perspective that lets me see weeds as wildflowers.

Ghost Canyon Wildflowers

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Writing

This time of year is when the wildflower world really comes to life in the Hills. Hiking in a ravine near Ghost Canyon Road today, winsome little spring flowers were lurking in the shadows beneath trees and on the shaded sides of the ravine. The shade was pleasant and cool, the sun was golden and becoming harsh, and the pines reached their gnarled limbs towards the blue heavens. Spring’s first wildflowers are diminutive and unassuming – Later come the flashy milkweeds and Joe Pye weed and sunflowers, flowers that aren’t content to simply be. But spring’s first flowers are the epitome of serenity.
Like pale butterflies sunning themselves, the star lilies bloomed on the warm, fragrant, open hillsides, understated, clinging close to the dusty earth. Leaving the sunny hillsides behind, we wended our way through brush that will soon be too thick to walk through, snagging spiderwebs and burdock and wayward grasshoppers.
Tucked back under dead tree limbs, the shootingstars hid away in the ferns and grasses, almost unnoticeable in spite of their bold color. The flowers nodded on their long stalks, swaying in the summery breeze, almost twinkling in the scattered sunlight.
Blue-eyed grass is a favorite of mine, to see it peeking up shyly, sparkling here and there in the sunlit places like a deep blue gem. Mankind just can’t craft the kind of beauty that God scatters liberally through His wonderful Creation.

The air was heavy today with the dusty, sagey, piney scent belongs to the Black Hills. The sunlight wakes it up, just like it wakes up the wildflowers in time for spring! My heart will always quicken when I catch a glimpse of yet another of my botanical favorites, or a new one I haven’t yet gotten to know. Over the last year, these flowers have become like friends, a special part of this special place I now call home.

The Cat’s Meow

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Pets/Domestic/Farm Animals, Photography, Writing

There’s nothing quite like the company of a cat. Or cats. I understand, some people have very strong negative feelings on this topic. If you are one of those unfortunate individuals, you doubtless just haven’t met the right cat yet. Luna is a bit on the dense side, it is true, but you’ll not find a more beautiful feline specimen. Ever since he was a few months old, he has looked just like “textbook pictures” of a cat. Gorgeous. And there is almost nothing that I find quite as winsome and heart-entangling as Kashka’s attempts at a meow when she wants attention, or as calming and comforting as her rumbling purr.
Not a lot is known about why or how cats purr – There are suggestions, some of which may have some merit, but it tickles my funny bone that purring is one of those things that just has modern science a little bit bewildered. Then I stumbled across this from the Live Science website: “A domestic cat’s purr has a frequency of between 25 and 150 Hertz, which happens to be the frequency at which muscles and bones best grow and repair themselves. It is, therefore, speculated that cats naturally evolved their purr over time as a survival tactic – a biomechanical healing mechanism that ensured speedier recoveries.”
I read that and just kind of scratched my head. That’s pretty amazing! They just naturally evolved their purr to within a specific frequency as a way to equip the species? (My sister Sarah’s response to this was, “Why don’t we purr?”)

Not to create any tidal waves of controversy here, but I have another idea – What if cats were given the ability to purr specifically at the frequency best for muscle and bone repair by Someone who knew what He was doing? And because God wasn’t driven by rigid practicality in His Creation, He created a sound that human beings in general find to be soothing and relaxing and delightful, simply because He could, because His Creation was meant to be a blessing and a joy, something that causes us to thank and glorify Him. What if what we see around us that seems miraculous actually is miraculous, and is a gift from the hand of a good and loving God? Perhaps that sounds silly and childish. But I find that the more deeply convinced I become that these things are gifts from God, the more beautiful His Creation is to me. I find that my love and appreciation the natural world is enhanced and intensified by the evidence I see of God’s fingerprints all over Creation. It humbles me and overwhelms me.

I got home today from work and found Anna out in the corral playing with her kitties – What fun she (and they!) were having, and what fun it was to watch the antics! The little spectacle was, well…the cat’s meow.