Wonder – A Prairie Wisdom Card

Sunflower in Detail

https://annmorrislighting.com/619hdc0n Sunflower © 2103 Bo Mackison

https://someawesomeminecraft.com/2024/05/13/a97dknefi0 “Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; and you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.”
~ Kahlil Gibran

here If you ever have a chance to see a giant sunflower, up close and personal, you will notice that the sunflower seeds always form in a spiral pattern. Each successive seed placement approximated the golden angle, (137.5˚) and so fully covers the space.

https://www.jacobysaustin.com/2024/05/agivewp2kmd What a wonder-evoking sight. We know nature is filled with patterns and sequences, but often they remain hidden from our unseeing eyes. The sunflower, another natural things like pine cones, the leaves on a stem or the branching of a tree, the fronds on a fern, even the tippets covering a pineapple, follow this mathematical formula.

watch The beauty of the pattern, in part, is a result of the precise play of the positioning of each concentric layer, and the creation of an eye-pleasing spiral. Gifts of wonderment!

follow link “This very moment of your life, if you experience it fully, will show you astonishing wonders and exquisite delights.” ~ Martha Beck

Buy Diazepam Actavis The WONDER card offers activities for contemplation, art, and writing and a call to action:

  • Journal prompt: Compile a list of things that are common to our culture – for example, a vending machine, a super-sized grocery store, the subway. Choose one thing and write about it, writing from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with such conveniences.
  • Art and contemplative activities: The circular mandala often is used as a symbol for the Universe, for the whole. Seeds are the tiny packages filled with potential.
    • Gather seeds of any kind — choose one kind of seed, or different colored and sized seeds. Begin with a seed for the center, then create a circle with seeds, much like the sunflower with its closely packed seeds in ever-expanding spirals.
    • You can create this in nature as a temporary art installation in miniature. Or you can glue the seeds to cardboard for a more permanent mandala.
    • As you create the mandala, consider the potential of each seed, and consider the potential that exists within you.
  • Call to action: Take a walk in nature and look for some of the countless patterns in nature. Express your wonder with each discovery: “What a wonder-filled world!”

source ————

https://yplocal.us/s2d7my0 Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a set of Prairie Wisdom Cards, second in a series of cards based on natural habitats, and used for exploration and self-discovery.

Desert Heat

Dixie's Final Resting Place

https://photovisions.ca/r6q6b0l Dixie’s Final Resting Place ©2013 Bo Mackison

get link 1. to leave completely and finally; forsake utterly; desert.

2. to cast away, leave, or desert, as property or a child.

 

Abandoned in the Desert

Abandoned in the Desert ©2013 Bo Mackison

de·sert

 [dih-zurt]

verb

1. to leave (a person, place, etc.) without intending to return, especially in violation of a duty or promise. Synonyms: abandon, leave, quit; forsake.

 

Desert Heat

Desert Heat ©2013 Bo Mackison

des·ert

1 [dez-ert]

noun

1. a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all.

2. any area in which few forms of life can exist because of lack of water, permanent frost, or absence of soil.

 

 

Abandoned Stove in the Desert

Abandoned Range in the Desert ©2013 Bo Mackison

range

[rnj]
noun

go to link 1. The act of wandering or roaming over a large area.

https://restoreredspruce.org/2024/05/13/51cbu8g 2. A stove with spaces for cooking a number of things at the same time.
Hot Stove in the Desert

Hot Stove in the Desert ©2013 Bo Mackison

 

heat

[heet]

noun

1. the state of a body perceived as having or generating a relatively high degree of warmth.

2. the condition or quality of being hot: the heat of an oven.

3. the degree of hotness; temperature

verb
4. to become hot or warm

 

I first photographed these abandoned ranges/ovens/stoves scattered about the grounds of the Post Picket House, a historical but unmaintained property that’s part of the Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Globe, Arizona. Ovens abandoned in the desert. Really, who needs an oven in the desert?

The good folks in the Southwest describe their temperature highs with the disclaimer that it’s a dry heat, as if that negates the fact that is it nearly as hot as Hades. In my mind, when heat is described as “dry as an oven” it is still hot. Really, no matter what words you use, lingering temps over 100˚F deserve the descriptor HOT. If you’re not convinced, you could always poke  your head in a hot oven for a second or two — not advised though.

So…is the interior temperature of an oven abandoned in a desert as accurate as an oven abandoned elsewhere? I would presume so, considering age and condition of said abandoned ovens.

Disclaimer: Obviously, the prolonged high humidity and temperatures in the Midwest — though NOT dry like an oven — is responsible for the lucidity of this post. A week with temps over 90˚ and brains begin to soften around the edges…

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.   She is awaiting a break in the weather. Or not.

 

Garden Party – Emerging Coneflower

Coneflower, Emerging

Coneflower, Emerging ©2013 Bo Mackison

“To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.” ~ William Blake

 

And here
is the flower
not yet unfurled

petals not yet drooping
on the edge of a breeze
like the flutter of a heartbeat

a spark emerges from the depths
and disappears in the heated haze
on a sun-drenched July morn.

~~~~~~~~~

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.   Her exhibit, https://templedavid.org/symons/a2y7k7pdh Garden Party – A Celebration of Botanical Photography, is at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin and runs through September 5, 2013.

On Watch

photo(21)On Watch © 2013 Bo Mackison

A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature.
It is Earth’s eye, into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Skies hint of purple,
the sun withdraws.
Winds calm in the heavy summer air.

A tumble of rocks deep
disappear in gray shadow.
Ghost carp glide under the dock.

The spirit trembles, shaken, then
regains its equilibrium
On watch for the first star.

No Trespassing

Beach Scene

Sand Grasses © 2013 Bo Mackison

Sand dunes.
Protected.
No trespassing.

A ragged, twisted, never-ending fence
lines the sandy beach. Trapped
between the Atlantic’s cold waves
and brittle fencing. This is shadow land
cross-hatched, undulating zigzags
etch the sun-baked sand.

Waves in cadence, rush and roar,
past the beyond, murmur in melancholy.

Driftwood weathers silver-gray, a rotting
crab snags in the jagged fork. A purple jellyfish
upside down, adheres to a protruding stone–
will it rehydrate in high tide or disintegrate
in the blistery sun?

Two women walk near the waves,
an elder protected by a red straw boater,
carnival striped blouse, her daughter’s arm.
She steps with deliberation, settling into each step.
Her eyes seek the horizon,
she knows the strength of the tide
swelling near her canvas shoes. The sea holds her gaze
until the daughter grips her elbow, guides her inland.

The waves tumble in, the winds rush through beach grasses
and trees, tangle our hair, blow sand in our eyes.
We swallow grit. Our arms protect
our faces as we hasten along the path in search of the car.

The distant air is effervescent,
like a gauzy veil, one cannot peer through.
It is future, always hidden.

————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She strolled the beaches of Long Island and recalled the lyrics of a favorite song . . . “the ocean is a desert with its life underground.”