–Tickseed After The Storm, June 20th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Summer Solstice is tomorrow. At 8 p.m. tonight, the sky bled tornado green and hail the size of baseballs splattered windshields 12 miles south of our cottage on the hill. I walked around the yard with a navy windbreaker over my Canon, shooting sheets of rain that swept in torrents across the road.
On the deck it was dry.
On June 21st at 1:06 p.m., Summer shakes her frilly skirt and paints the garden green. Then 15 hours and 36 minutes of daylight follow in muted, Midwestern tones. Prairie grass cracks depleted skin. The sun explodes with rain.
I let her in.
–Hardy Lily in the Rain, June 20th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Summer Solstice in Minnesota, Thursday, June 21st, 2007
1:06 p.m., 15 hrs 36 minutes of daylight
beautiful photos!
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The raindrops on the lily are so alive, and they remind me that I’m thirsty this minute, 2:23a of summer solstice. (Raf sleeps peacefully inside tonight. An hour ago Jim and I pulled a hundred quills out of his mouth, inside and out, and his front right forearm.)
Good Summer Solstice, QM and all.
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Loved your lily and the reminder about Summer Solstice. Anita
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I like the poetic way this is written. It seemed to draw me through the storm to the peacefulness after a summer storm.
My favorite line is “Summer shakes her frilly skirt and paints the garden green”.
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Ah, sad about Raf’s quills. Sounds painful. The porcupine is loaded. He must have gotten pretty close. Have you ever seen a porcupine up close? They are slow and lumbering. Their only defense is on the tips of those pointy little quills.
It’s a beautiful summer morning in my town. Cool breeze from last night’s rain. And the light is brighter than usual.
This time of year, I want to be outside. It reminds me how much I miss the sun in winter. Solstice is a time of celebration. And the odd thing is that after today is over, the days start getting darker again, minute by minute.
I like thinking about that. It reminds me of the cycles of seasons. They run one into the other. I like to notice.
Happy Summer. And thanks for the comments. That storm last night was amazing. The saturated colors just popped.
I’m reminded, too, of all the places in the world where they have discovered daggers of light that on the Solstices pierce through rocks and hit circles and vortexes carved there.
There’s one in Chaco Canyon. And Stonehenge is one of them. That’s my wallpaper today.
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Since 1985, I have really celebrated the solstice, because that was the year my twin sons were born. They each called home today, from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. They worked on their birthdays, but we are celebrating tonight and toasting them with a tall cool one.
Here’s to the light of the sun and the sons!
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breathepeace, this moved me. That your twin sons called home from Saudi Arabia and Iraq as part of celebrating their birthdays. Solstice birthdays. When you wrote the year they were born, it struck me again how young they are. And half way across the world, giving so much of themselves for what they believe in. They are inpiring men. Happy Birthday to the twins. In light and love on the first day of Summer.
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I love this piece. It’s exquisite.
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Carolyn, thank you. It’s good to share the space with you.
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One more comment on Summer Solstice. I spent the evening with two writing friends, one here from out of town. We ate barbecue, caught up on our lives, and talked about our writing projects.
Then we drove along the Mississippi (one of my favorite motorcycle routes), past Bohemian Flats and the new Guthrie, through downtown Minneapolis, and back across the river by the cliffs near St. Paul, in the long hours of light. It felt so much like summer. And it was good to share the evening light with other writers.
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