Summers End

Resting bee

I have never loved the heat of summer, but I have always loved the birds, bees, butterflies and flowers summer brings. I’m glad for the cool weather but sad to see things leaving, wilting and moving on and migrating to warmer places.

I’ve spent a lot of time watching the bees this summer, they are so fascinating to watch. They seem so meticulous as they walk around the stamen of the flower in circles gathering up all the pollen, it’s like a little dance. Most years I try to catch photos of them as they do their work. At the end of the season they slow down and you can often find them resting on flowers. Like humming birds as flowers wilt bees have to travel farther to do their work, the cooler weather slows them and they end up resting on and beneath flower petals, for some bees it’s the end of their season (life) all together. The sweet thing about the bees slowing down is you can pet them. As a child I was afraid of bees, now as an adult I love them. I give them a little pat and thank them for their hard work.

Did you know when a bee stings a person they sometimes “regret” (instinctively preserve their life), if you don’t panic and allow them they will start moving in circles to try and unwind their stinger. Most people swat them, but it’s fascinating when given time they try to undo their “mistake” to a have a longer life.

They are such wonderful insects, and watching them this summer has been joyful and peaceful. There are many pollinators but bees are still the best.

Some of my fav bee photos below 👇🏻

Bees removing stinger info below

👇🏻

https://youtu.be/nTVsqc2CCGo?si=2fEyTldptqev_g7h

In my dreams

Since childhood I have had very vivid dreams. I actually still have some of the same recurring dreams I had in childhood now as an adult. I also have the type of dreaming where I can become aware I am dreaming and can control the dream a bit (lucid dreams). My daughter can do this too. My vivid dreams can cause me to break my own heart, specifically when I have dreams about someone I loved who has passed.

Last night I dreamt I was sitting at a table with my mom, my uncle Randy and my grandmother. I was listening to them chatter, my grandmother turned to me and asked me to sing and I sang to them a song by the Beatles called “ I Will”. The lyrics are :

Who knows how long I've loved you?

You know I love you still

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?

If you want me to, I will

For if I ever saw you

I didn't catch your name

But it never really mattered

I will always feel the same

Love you forever and forever

Love you with all my heart

Love you whenever we're together

Love you when we're apart

And when at last, I find you

Your song will fill the air

Sing it loud so I can hear you

Make it easy to be near you

For the things you do endear you to me

Oh, you know, I will

I will

I know it’s a love song but I think it was fitting to how much I loved each of them. I love and hate these kind of dreams. I tell my husband it’s like getting little visits with those I love, but often when I wake up I cry. These relatives made me feel seen and loved, and I miss them and visiting them in my dreams often makes me grieve again for a little while. I’m not sure there will be a time I stop missing them, they have a permanent place in my heart.

My life in photos

I’ve been online sharing a series of my favourite photos from over 2 decades of photography. Early in life art, music, photography and reading were places I went to to hide myself.

Growing up I was often overlooked by others because I was the quiet weird kid but I found a lot of joy in being alone and learning things like photography. Photography has been a wonderful way for me to showcase how I see the world around me. My camera is like a friend I take every where because every where I go in the world has beauty to be captured.

When I was very young I had a pink camera, I found a photo of my pink camera online 👇🏻 below:

I took sooooooo many photos with this little camera, I have only one photo left from that camera, there are likely more out there somewhere in a box. I remember my moms siblings coming for a visit and I’d drive them crazy snapping my fuzzy out of focus photos. The only photo I have left from that camera is of my a dads car in the driveway of our home in Chatham Ontario.

At some point in my childhood my dad got a cannon camera, I was fascinated by it, he took beautiful photos of nature, and I loved seeing how the photos turned out when he’d get them developed. I have a few of his photos still, and they are still impressive to me considering the age of the camera. Looking at his photos I can clearly see his photography made a great impression on my own photography.

My dad’s photography 👇🏻

In grade 9 he graciously allowed me to learn you use his camera and I took time to read the instructions it came with to learn how to use the timer, I took a series of photos in my yard and a few of my younger sibling and I. I got her and I dressed up and did makeup, then set up the camera on the self timer, I was so excited to do a photo shoot.

After I was married and moved out I couldn’t really afford a camera and used disposable ones for different occasions, I didn’t want to miss capturing things like my honeymoon.

I have a bunch taken that way, but you could never really tell the quality of the photo until they were developed because they had no focus feature, your distance from the subject of the photo was the best attempt you could make at getting a clear photo.

When my my first son was born my father in law gifted me my very own cannon camera, it was one of the first digital cameras by cannon, and I was so thankful and absolutely thrilled. I spent evenings after my kids went to bed figuring it out. I loved that camera and it allowed me to capture moments of my kids childhood that I look back on with so much joy. I have a little saying, “We are surrounded by real life fairies, we call them children.” I always felt my kids were magical, and that childhood was magical. I was so happy to capture those every day moments when they were little.

I used that camera up until about 6 or seven years ago, then I bought myself a used camera with more lens options so I could capture nature as close up as possible. Birds, bees, and butterflies tend to like humans at a distance, so having a lens that allowed for this has really been helpful . I find if I sit in my grass quietly nature comes to me and I can quietly capture a moment of it without disrupting or scaring anything away.

What I love about photography as an art form is that it is low effort and impact. Most of my art takes several days to create and will be thrown in the garbage eventually. Photography is captured in a moment and is kept for a lifetime. It is by far the most relaxing art form, it engages with nature in a low impact way, it causes you to notice the small details and beauty all around. It builds patience because nature requires you to be quiet and still to observe. I know most people can snap a photo in a moment with their phones, phone quality photos are quite impressive now but even with your phone it’s worth it to sit and wait and practice observation, because photography is more then just snapping randomly as much as you can, it is an opportunity to slow down, quiet yourself and notice the beauty all around you, photography for me is mental health care, it quiets me and engages me with small unnoticed every day beauty.

For more of my photos you can go to:

https://vs.co/peulqggp