Today on My Window Sill

Cut from the garden two days ago. Winter rains are here but the roses carry on. They are a bit tired, a little tattered, soggy from all the rain and not opening fully, but still smell so sweet and have their own lovely charm. I think they've earned special love and attention, don't you?

Cinderella Wings

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Idea leuconoe Rice Paper or Paper Kite Butterfly

Dedicated to dear Kat with wishes for a happy weekend and thank you for including one of my images on your blog today.

Yesterday my husband and I bid our computers adieu for a much-needed break and visited our local butterfly house. Pursuing these ephemeral beauties in the hot and steamy environment provided a welcome respite (and another 300 images to edit, sigh…).

This was my last shot of the day. I sometimes find those are most satisfying, do you? You have finished shooting, packed most of your gear and are heading away from the location but decide maybe you should go back for just one more peek… :)

Lingering Beauty at Winter's Approach

Rose hips of Rosa 'White Dawn', November, 2009

I spend many solitary mornings in the Woodland Park Rose Garden.

Over the last five years, I've become very familiar with the individual roses, their habits and how the nuances of the weather affect the best time to shoot each one – May or June or sometimes July.

I have never visited later than September. Until last week. And this is what was waiting for me. The out of town visitors no longer come. The weddings are over for the season. The leaves are nearly gone from even the highest branches.

But the rose remains the most beautiful thing in the park.

A Surprise Award!

Surprises are magical happenings. Along you are going on your merry way, pottering and puttering at this and that, with blinkers on to all but your projects to hand...when...Bing!... quite unexpectedly, a delightful something or an adorable someone enters your universe, sending shivers up your spine and goosebumps down your arm and a little thrill of happiness into your heart!

So here is a huge Thank You to my lovely friend, Éadaoin, at City of Blackbirds, she of the gorgeous name and equally gorgeous photography, for honoring me on Friday with my first ever blog award! Here it is:

Éadaoin and I became friends when we discovered a mutual love of photography, poetry, nature, observing the passing of the stars and bathing in moonlight. Please do visit Éadaoin's wonderful blog and dip into her magical images there and at her shop.

The really lovely thing about this award is now getting the opportunity to pass it on to other bloggers who are an inspiration, a joy and whose words and images add magic and wonder to my day:

Jessica at Chronically Vintage

Mary at In a Soft Light

Amy at Such a Wondrous Place This Faerytale Space

Sue at Glorious Nature Photography

Kristi at Life through the Lens

I would also like to pass it on to some of the friends that I don't know as well but who have their own lovely blogs and are kind enough to visit and comment here.

Ellen at Not Yo Mommas Handbag

msdewberry at dew drops

Thank you, all of you for being out there and taking time to visiting me here!

And now, I must away! So much to do at this time of year! The garden is calling out for me to plant the new and beautiful daffodil bulbs that arrived on the weekend, the roses are valiantly putting forth new buds, even though they know it is time for a trim and a nice tuck-in with a blanket of mulch and the leaves, oh, the leaves! Happily we have plenty of rakes and buckets and barrows for D and I rake the entire property ourselves and trundle the scarlet bounty to the compost where, with nature's alchemy, it will be reborn and rejoin the garden for next year's new planting.

The Jeweled Forest

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Magical Light in a Golden Wood

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Glorious, golden, gleaming and glittering

light from a long ago dream

fell in a shimmer over water and wood

turning gold all that once had been green. – gl

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(photographed today at Green Lake Park)

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Happy Halloween!!

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(Actually, these are Chinese lanterns at a lovely old Craftsman home that has been turned into a tea house. But I thought they looked nice and spooky!)