A golden late afternoon in the Iowa countryside during mid October.The land, the soil, the waters, the air need to be cared for, protected,   preserved and cherished as precious treasure .Read a line on social media recently - I Stand For What I Stand On. Yes, and come election time I will be voting keeping in mind how much it matters that we work to care for the planet and vote for people who will be environmentally responsible.

September Morn
This day an  unexpected drive was inserted into my day. Only a mile, maybe two separate the manicured lake and housing developments  from the fields and barns of rural Iowa and here and there i paused for a moment to savor and to share

A Day

 This day  I gathered with family, my daughter and her young preschoolers and a newborn came to introduce new baby to my mother who shall be celebrating her 85th birthday in a few days and my father.. There was the  tiny infant seeking only to be fed and be comfortable, the busy toddler delighting in newly discovered toys, the four year old already appearing like a small grown up in many ways and bursting with vitality, and my daughter busily distracted by watching multiple children still glowing like a  morning rose as she strikes her madonna and child pose to fed the baby,and then the fragile octogenarian greatgrandparents  observing the wonder of the younger generations. today the weather is  actively changing, the sky is dark as the cold seasons come on, the wind is sharp and cold and all can feel and recognize the change and know what is coming so each blossom and butterfly now is so bittersweet as each sighting may also be the final farewell for year. 

 That old September feeling... of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air.... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes and failures had been wiped clean by summer. ~Wallace Stegner

The days may not be so bright and balmy—yet the quiet and melancholy that linger around them is fraught with glory. Over everything connected with autumn there lingers some golden spell—some unseen influence that penetrates the soul with its mysterious power. ~Northern Advocate

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you. ~Stephen King, ’Salem’s Lot

Lady Autumn, Queen of the Harvest,
I have seen You in the setting Sun
with Your long auburn tresses...
You sit upon Your throne and watch
the dying fires of the setting Sun
shine forth its final colors in the sky...
Lady Autumn, You are here at last...
~Deirdre Akins

 

 

 As a cool wind ruffled the leaves and rippled upon the creek the flash of purple - yes, Alice Walker I always notice that royal color cuz I know - 'I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.'! I noticed bright vibrant  pulsing thistle purple that also invited in a beautiful little pollinator. A bee is a sign of life. More of us are becoming more aware how very much we need these insects to keep we humans  thriving, the bee is essential to our future. The flowers of this thistle had grown and arranged themselves in this dramatic stacked scene of phases of life, from a pollen coated bee and fresh living flower, to drying seed pod to the final dry ghost of plant material...for everything, turn, turn, turn.....

 Autumn... is mature, reasonable and serious, it glows moderately and not frivolously.... ~Valentin   

By the time we reach autumn  each year we have  gone from dark icy depths to the warming, flowering promise of spring to the ripening then wilting heat and energy that is the summer so vibrant and  yes, we know what is coming so autumn is mature and reasonable and always  somewhat nostalgic, melancholy and  golden sweet like honey

Mariposa

 sweet sight of summer

 sommerfugl

 

butterfly

Iowa is bordered by rivers. the Missouri River is the western edge and the mighty Mississippi River is the state's eastern border and in between many  beautiful rivers and streams make up the  watersheds and create valleys and ridges and plains. Northeast Iowa carved by glaciers and the  waters left behind is a jewel of fertile soil and delightful springs and streams. this is land that creates richest farmfields available, land that grows the flowers to support the pollinators, our honeybees and butterflies, it is land with fish in streams for the eagles to feast upon. this is the heartland bursting with life and that life all depends on the precious wonder that is water

“Where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give.” Jane Austen

“Always be like a water. Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind which touches its surface.” - Santosh Kalwar

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”  Hermann Hesse

“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.” Khalil Gibran

“Water is the driving force in nature.”  - Leonardo da Vinci

“Life in us is like the water in a river.” Henry David Thoreau

 "For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." - Carl Sagan

  


“I mean that it is possible to be unselfish without a moral code, sophisticated without and education, and beautiful wearing a skeleton on the outside.”  Marlene Zuk
 

 

 

                   

 

  If you want to live and thrive, let the spider run alive.  ~American Quaker Saying


 


























 Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.  ~Bradley Millar