Here’s an early spring assortment of flowers and other creatures from our garden. I’ll have more in the coming weeks, as our fruit trees begin to bloom.

Places

Springtime in our garden

One of the first things I feel in the morning is my daughter kissing me on the face and whispering “Daddy…”, usually followed by a request for food or cartoons or playtime. She’s our alarm clock, whether we like it or not, though I have to say, no matter how tired I am, waking up to a little angel giving me a kiss and calling me daddy is a pretty good way to start the day.

Yesterday morning, even though I’d worked till 2 am and she was waking me up at 7 am, I got up and took her in my arms and started walking together toward her playroom. I looked casually out the kitchen window and (this happens every year) let out a “Yoo-hoo!” because the first snowfall of the winter had already covered our yard. Sophie did the same — after all, she wants to be like her daddy — and we both giggled as we looked out the windows at the pure, little ice crystals coming down in a hurry.

Still, I needed my sleep, so I got a fire going in her playroom, got her some food and shuffled back to bed. By the time I got up again, the snow was still falling, albeit in less of a hurry, and blustery winter winds had begun to blow. You know the kind, the chill goes right to your bones and makes you shiver no matter how many clothes you have on you.

After breakfast, I had to grab a camera and go out to photograph the snowfall. It had started coming down a little heavier again and this was a chance not to be missed, in spite of the cold weather.

I did just that. The streets were mostly deserted, which is just the way I like it, although the tracks of hurried morning traffic were visible in the snow. It was odd weather. The warmer ground had turned the freshly fallen snow to slush and yet high winds were blowing down, carrying more snow from up above and spreading it everywhere. It was not a good time to walk around with a camera in hand. My fingers began to slowly freeze and become unresponsive. I’d forgotten how this felt. A warm summer will do that to you. My nose and ears seemed to be in a parallel plane where the sensations consisted mostly of prickly pins being shot at them. The cold started creeping up my legs and in spite of the old saying that goes something like “I’m freezing my a** out here…” it wasn’t my derriere that was suffering, it was my kidneys. Weird stuff…

Anyway, I persisted, walked throughout the historic district and photographed what caught my eye. I hope you’ll enjoy these photos. It was a fun and partially frozen experience…

Historic district, Mediaș, Romania

By the way, high wind advisories are still in effect throughout Romania. Meteorologists are saying that some regions are expected to have winds up to 60-70 km/h. Should be interesting!

Places

First snowfall of 2016

I’ve been hearing our trees calling out to me these past few days, particularly yesterday, when it rained and their leaves were wet, a beautiful kind of colored, almost translucent wet brought on by the autumn winds. They were saying, “Raoul, come out and admire us, you know you want to… Take your camera and come outside.” And I’d say to myself, “Yeah, I really need to set some time aside today to do that,” and then I’d get to work on whatever project was most important and lose all track of time.

I didn’t get to go out yesterday but I did it today and it was worth it. Our entire courtyard is peppered with sour cherry and cherry leaves, paulownia leaves, “platan” leaves (it’s a big tree, grows as big as oak trees, but I can’t find its name in English as I write this), fig leaves, lilac leaves, grape leaves and of course my favorite, delicate white birch leaves.

What’s left on the trees is sheer beauty, bunches of leaves hanging on here and there, some dappled with many colors, some filled out completely with just one hue of autumn’s palette, ready to be admired, lessons in meditation and slow, peaceful focus. Autumn is truly a wonderful time, a time to be enjoyed slowly, savored in little vignettes that we tuck away in the precious corners of our heart and pull out later when we want to feel cozy and nostalgic.

I suppose we feel that way because the passing of these temperate four seasons of ours is a good preparation for life (its beginning, progress and ending). It’s hard not to look at autumn leaves and realize they’re saying goodbye to the world they’ve known for many a day. Some will stick around a little bit longer, most are already on the ground, but they know it and we know it; it’s inevitable. Winter, that time of hibernation, of natural pause, of a rest that explodes back into glorious life as spring arrives, will soon be here.

We too, have our autumns. We know, as we get older, that the time is up ahead. We start to feel it in our bones, our joints, our skin. We turn a little more yellow, the bones become a little brittle, the skin on our faces and bodies begins to tell the story of the experiences we’ve had. We have long autumns, we humans, but somehow they’re still not long enough. We always want to do more, even when we can barely move, when we should be preparing for the transition into the next season of our lives, that great hibernation that no one really knows anything about.

The plants are teaching us that every day matters. They show us how to make the most of the days we have, because sometimes all we have is one year, perhaps even less than that. We look at them and admire them for having accomplished their purpose in life, which was to act as complex, integral parts of a whole, for a while. Created by the whole, they rejoin it as they slowly re-integrate into the earth that gave life to the tree itself and is still providing for it.

Perhaps natural beauty is more beautiful because of its intrinsically ephemeral nature. And perhaps human beauty and human life are meant to work in the same way. Enchant us for a while, like blossoming flowers, then give up their life force in order for other creations to exist.

Don’t take these thoughts of mine too philosophically. They’re merely passing glimpses of subjects we don’t understand and possibly cannot even grasp. The only takeaway here is that we should be beautiful in our lives, to possess a beauty that shines from within and colors us in happy hues. We should bring joy and peace to others. We should make positive contributions to the working of the world in general. And we should learn to give up gracefully what was given to us for just a while, when that time comes.

I love their dappled foliage in autumn

Thoughts

Autumn has visited our home

It’s not often I wake up early enough to see the dawn. I usually work late into the night, because I find that’s when I can gather my thoughts and be at my most productive — when I’m alone, the noises of the day have subsided and the only sounds I hear are the reassuring churning of the hard drive platters in my Drobo and my own breath.

When I do manage to wake up early (or work through the night and into the dawn), I get these gorgeous, glorious views of the Earth waking up as that huge fireball called the Sun starts to light things up. Mind you, I’m not talking about the sunrise. It’s the dawn, also known as the daybreak. It’s when the darkness of the night starts to fade away and shapes begin to form out of the mist. It’s when things unseen become seen.

I thought I’d publish a gallery of various photos I’ve taken in recent years of the dawn. Some of the photos are from places where I’ve lived, others are from places I visited and most are from the road. My wife and I would often just get in our car and drive to some town where we had business in the middle of the night, so we’d be there in the morning. The roads were quiet and it was an experience unto itself to be in the middle of nowhere, our car a capsule of civilization and warmth in an otherwise cold place at a cold time, its headlights eyes, peering out into the darkness and making sense of it. Now that we have a small daughter, there’s no night driving. We’re too exhausted. We’re happy to take any and all sleep we can get. Which is what I’m going to do after publishing this post, because it’s way past midnight here.

This gallery isn’t exhaustive, it’s a work in progress (I hope I’m around for a long, long time to capture countless more dawns on bits and bytes) but I think it’s beautiful to look at and I hope you do too. Enjoy!

Somewhere in South Carolina, on I-95. Life and travel are often alike, aren’t they? If you don’t stop to look around, things pass you right by.

Dawn, Grosvenor Park.

Daybreak, Grosvenor Park.

Mt. Prislop at night, Bucovina, Romania.

Rome, Italy.

Near the city of Brasov, Romania. The dawn sun is flooding the distant valley (just behind the peak in the foreground) with a lot of golden light. Meanwhile, the portion of the road where I stand is still covered in shadows.

Bridge over Intracostal Waterway, early morning long exposure, Hollywood, Florida, USA.

Dawn sky, Grosvenor Park.

Somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, about 50-60 km from the city of Brasov, in Transilvania, Romania.

Above Pisa and Livorno, Italy. Not an ideal photo but the dawn colors were wonderful.

Sandpipers pace the beach at dawn. Hollywood, Florida, USA.

Daybreak, Grosvenor Park.

There was a gas station right behind me when I took this photo.   We’d been driving through the night and stopped to get gas somewhere in North or South Carolina. The station was closed and so were the pumps.   I paused to take a few photos. I stood the camera on the roof of the car and exposed this scene for a little over a second.   It was mid-winter. I was thoroughly frozen and my teeth were clanking by the time I got back into the car.

Hilltops in the distance, somewhere between Fiser and Rupea, Transilvania, Romania.

Dawn, January morning, Grosvenor Park.

Antennae and trees, morning fog.

A bright orange sky above distant mountain peaks signals a new day, while a winding road descends slowly into the fog-covered valley below.

Long exposure looking out over the Intracostal and A1A.

First snowfall of the 2010-11 winter, Medias, Romania.

A long, straight road, lined with poplar trees and covered in fog. Somewhere in Dobrogea, Romania.

Mt. Prislop at night, about 2 am, Bucovina, Romania.

Winter at its best. Snow everywhere, clear blue sky.

The Tulcea Monument, early morning.

Dawn starts to color the sky in our neighborhood. Taken right from our apartment’s terrace in North Bethesda, MD.

A hillside on the outskirts of Tulcea, Romania, blanketed in soft fog.

A colorful sky at dawn on a crisp and cold January morning.

Grottammare, Italy.

Morning sky at sunrise.

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Grottammare, Italy.

Lacul Bicaz and the surrounding mountains, as seen from the pension Vila Ecotour, in the village of Ceahlau, Moldova, Romania.

Shore, Intracostal Waterway, early morning, long exposure. Hollywood, Florida, USA.

Places

The dawn

It’s become somewhat of a yearly tradition for me to share photos of our garden with you. Here then is this year’s selection of spring photos. I hope the flowers bring as much joy to you as they do to me.

I feel blessed every time I take a walk through the garden. I particularly like to walk through it in the evenings, because it helps me unwind from our typically busy days. It’s our little corner of heaven. It requires upkeep, to be sure, but the payoff is grand.

This spring not many flowers escaped our little Sophie’s eager hands. Her passion is to collect daily bouquets of assorted flowers of all sorts of shapes and colors, and that means most of the flowers are to be found on her playtable inside the house, not in the garden, at least this year. We’ll see how we fare during the next seasons.