Jelly Belly

I saw more jellyfish on the shore today than I've ever seen before! Good thing I watch where I step.


This shot shows more than a jellyfish washed up on the shore. It proves that our sand really is sugar white! One jelly belly with sugar on top, please.

[So maybe this isn't really a Jelly's belly. It's probably his back, but what's the fun in saying that!]

The Bouquet

Today I saw a beautiful bouquet that reminded me of life's ever-changing journey.


Like a hand's grasp of hydrangeas, we adapt as best we can to the acidity or akalinity which sometimes unexpectantly rearranges our lives.


The sun shifts, the shade grows, and though we struggle against change, we adapt.


While the colors of our life may fade, as sure as spring follows winter, a delicate blush will become rich and vibrant, reaching out to envelope us again.



Though a bouquet is rearranged and its hues and tones shifted by time, beauty survives. Though not the same as we first gathered, or first arranged, we love it the same -- just differently.

Crystal clear!

The end of September is a spectacular time on Pensacola Beach. Both the water and air temperature have dropped and the seaweed has washed back out to sea.


The water is crystal clear as it washes over our sugar-white sand. The ribbons of color across the Gulf of Mexico are incredible.

The bird and me

"At first we walked, the bird and me,
And struck a wary truce.
He did not fly, but stayed nearby,
Believing me obtuse.


"And then we talked, the bird and me,
He seemed to like the chat.
Content we were, to share our time
I spoke of this and that.


"But in the end, the bird and me,
We went our separate ways
Me, with a sigh, to watch him glide
Above the ocean spray."

~~ Barrier Island Girl

A quiet moment

Sometimes the most important thing is a deep breath and a quiet moment.

A beach wedding

I love weddings on the beach. This morning I discovered the remnants of one, and its simple romantic beauty made me smile. Bright flowers to symbolize a happy future and yards of windblown tulle must have given an ethereal effect at sunset. Can you imagine the vast blue horizon as background for the ceremony, while your eyes are drawn in to focus on a happy young couple. What special memories everyone took home with them.

"I dreamed of a wedding of elaborate elegance,
A church filled with family and friends.
I asked him what kind of a wedding he wished for,
He said one that would make me his wife."

~~Author Unknown



"Love one another, but make not a bond of love;
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."

~~ Kahlil Gibran

Silent skies

"...a landscape whose wide border lies in silent shade 'neath silent skies...”

-- Horatio Nelson Powers

To Priscilla

"When we have done all the work we were sent to do, we are allowed to shed our bodies, which imprisons our soul like a cocoon encloses the butterfly and when the time is right we can let go of it. Then we will be free of pain, free of fears and free of worries-- free as a beautiful butterfly returning home to God..."

-- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Here on the island

"Here on the island I find I can sit with a friend without talking, sharing the day's last sliver of pale green light on the horizon, or the whorls in a small white shell, or the dark scar left in a dazzling night sky by a shooting star. Then communication becomes communion and one is nourished as one never is by words."

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Hermit in the Moon Shell

"Moon shell, who named you? Some intuitive woman I like to think...You will sit there and fasten your single eye upon me. You will make me think, with your smooth circles winding inward to the tiny core, of the island I lived on for a few weeks. You will say to me 'solitude.'"

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Bee happy!

Don't worry! Bee happy!



"Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain.
Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain.
The dark days are gone, and the bright days are here,
My Sunny one shines so sincere.Sunny one so true, I love you."

-- Bobby Hebb



"Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed."

-- [Margaret] Storm Jameson

The old road

"Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again."

-- Henri Cartier Bresson

[Tomorrow is the anniversary of Hurricane Ivan. The old road inside Ft. Pickens has not been rebuilt, but Mother Nature is doing a wonderful job of reclaiming her property.]

Sea oats at sunset

"Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon
like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape..."

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To Millie and Mollie

maggie & millie & molly & may

"maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea."

-- e. e. cummings (American poet 1894-1962)

The grass flower

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night... It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

-- Crowfoot

Wildflower: Spurred Butterfly Pea

I discovered this small viney wildflower during my walk to Range Point this morning, but cannot identify it. If anyone knows what it is, please e-mail me and I will post the correct name.

UPDATE: Thanks to Anne M., a regular blog viewer, I was able to identify this wildflower. It is a Spurred Butterfly Pea. Anne also included a link to the beautiful "Native Flora of Louisiana, watercolor drawings by Margaret Stones"

Yellow alert!

I'm on yellow alert as my first lemon begins to ripen! Now what shall I do, make lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon zest, lemon pudding, lemon bars, lemon....?????

Remembering 9/11

'Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."

-- Charles Dickens

The Lap-Dance method

This afternoon I was reminded that life becomes more interesting as you get older and your hearing isn't what it once was. Considering that I did not attend a lot of concerts as a teenager, I can only surmise it was the hours I spent trying to blow dry my hair into some Farrah-do, that made me half-deaf. Now, I am paying the price.

I should be less surprised by some of the things I think I hear nowadays, especially after the time I mistakenly thought a friend of mine was getting a boob job when she was only going to Jiffy Lube. But, once again, an ad on television made me stop in my tracks:

"You can now lose a significant amount of weight with relatively low complications by using the lap-dance method!"

HUH?

I can say with all honesty, if I had a husband who decided he needed to 'lose some weight' via the lap-dance method, he'd have a WHOLE lotta complications he hadn't planned on.

I stopped unpacking books in the office and stuck my head around the corner to see what channel was on in the other room. Only then did I see they were referring quite innocently to the lap-band method.

"Oops," I said with embarrassment in my best Roseanne Roseannadanna impression as Pee Pup cocked his head in my direction, "Nevermind."

The Moss Rose

"Loveliest of lovely things are they



on earth that soonest pass away



the rose that lives its little hour



is prized above the sculptured flower." -- William Cullen

The parking lot

Ahhhhh ... the parking lots are empty outside the core area, the kids are back in school, and I'm living in paradise! I never realized how pretty -- and tranquil -- a parking lot could be.

Sand fencin' (Just fence me in)

We are beginning to see more rolls of fencing along the beach as work continues on dune restoration, and in neighborhoods trying to hold sand in place on open lots.



[Sing along to the tune of "Don't Fence Me In"]

"Oh give me sand, lots of sand, and the starry skies above,
~ then fence me in.
Let me ride side the wide open beaches that I love,
~ then fence me in.
Oh let me be by myself in the evening breeze,
And listen to the crashing of the rolling seas,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
~ just fence me in.

"Turn me loose,
~ let me capture
~ all the rapture
~ underneath the southern skies.
Round the dunes
~let me wander
~over yonder
~while the gulls go flying by.

"I want to walk on the beach where the blue commences
~ gaze at the moon until I lose my senses
It's great to be rebuilding, but we need sand fences,
~ so fence me in."

~~ Barrier Island Girl (with apologies to late Cole Porter and Bob Fletcher)

Forms of beauty

"All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory... and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty. '

-- Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)

de Luna's gold

While walking through Gulf Islands National Seashore this evening, past the barrier on Ft. Pickens Road, I wondered if Tristan de Luna saw the true gold in this paradise.


“The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value."

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 -1860)

Oh buoy!

“When it comes to exploring the sea of love, I prefer buoys."

-- Andrew G. Dehel

[Me too, Mr. Dehel]