Oh, nothing is so beautiful as spring --

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush



The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush



With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.



There is nothing so beautiful as Spring.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins (oft quoted, still true)

hair!

i forgot all about this in the excitement: the boy's very first haircut! no, it's not exactly short, but still, what a benchmark. and there's no way we could say goodbye to those curls (and i fear his daddy would do something drastic if i ever had the temerity...!).

pile o' random {plantings}

today we picked flowers



planted harmonicas



caught rhinos


(pardon my lack of expression, it's hard to balance a thorn on your nose and take your own picture, the boy was uncharacteristically camera-shy, even though he totally started the game)

and visited old and amazing headstones, like this one from the very beginning of the 20th century (boy howdy, that was a long time ago now). there were a few of these 'trees' for the woodsmen of the world, and i so wonder who they were.



i wish i had better pictures of them, perhaps another day. i always come home and see the picture that i wish i'd taken -- the trick now is seeing it in the moment. every one of these, in a way, represents that very challenge.

pile o' random {colors}

we walked in the sun today and the colors were all over, and off, the charts. for those of you in the frozen parts of this world.











that last one because i couldn't resist. don't you feel so much warmer now?

baluchon

photographing thoroughbreds is a lot like photographing small children with their fidgeting and liberal adherence to requests. so it is that the only pictures that i like of our photoshoot with my mom's horse have him cut off at the knee (poor guy) so you don't get to really admire how impossibly long his legs are. but there you are, at least he's finally made it onto this site, and what a dapper guy he is.



he is an Irish Thoroughbred, direct descendent of Man O' War and War Admiral (for those who haven't spent their lives obsessed with these things, those guys are legendary), and in color he's a lovely chestnut. he's carried many riders (most notably me mum) to many blue ribbons by flying over very tall fences and dancing fluidly about a dressage ring, and he's a perfect lap pony as well to hear my mom tell it. his withers (that bump where his neck meets his back) stands at a regal 17 hands high -- which in human terms puts that bony protrusion just over the top of my 5' 7.75" head. and when you're riding him, well. it's a ways down there to the ground.



but he's a perfect gentleman for all his size, and a very hale old man, still jumping at 23 years of age. his registered name is Baluchon (which means 'bundle' in French), but everyone calls him Sean, which harkens back much more strongly to his Irish roots.