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Pottery and Pinguecula
About two months ago I tried my hand at the pottery wheel after not working with clay for nearly eight months. The next week my eye flared up. After a busy summer and fall at the wheel in 2013, my eye had given me trouble but had cleared up when I quit working with clay. Steroid eye drops helped during that season, but the flare-ups only went away after extended time away from the wheel. After having it flare up again at the end of this summer, I’m convinced the clay dust was causing the irritation. Not only that, I had a recurring sore throat, my left wrist lost all strength, and neck and…
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Hanging Rock Nature Photos
This past weekend we drove up to Hanging Rock for a quickie camping trip. The very best part of the trip was watching the boys explore the woods and climb rocks and fallen trees. I found myself really wishing other families were with us to play with. Some of my best childhood memories are from camping with family friends at Fall Creek Falls. On Saturday, the weather was perfect, and we somehow managed to make it to two waterfalls and up to Hanging Rock itself. The forest floor was covered in mushrooms of all shapes and colors, and sadly, I don’t know my mushrooms and I didn’t get a good shot of…
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Wrinkles and Relationships
It’s amazing what photo filters can do for wrinkles and relationships. As I scroll through my instagram feed, I see one continuous incongruity – I rarely edit photos of plants and scenery, but pictures with my face in them have gone through filters, sometimes more than one. Photos with my kids go through another sort of filter, the one where they are presented as loving, creative, motivated, funny and kind. I rarely capture the tantrums, the boredom or the fights. The scrutiny I apply to my appearance and my life is hardly fair. Sure, we all look a little better in the brighter light that softens the wrinkles and splotches, and…
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Rain on Asparagus
Last night the sky dropped over three inches of rain, and the beads of water left glittering blanket over the plants in the garden. All but a few tufts of asparagus have been cleared from the beds to make way for spinach sprouts and cool season crops. Crouching over the plant trying to get my camera to focus on a select few tiny globes required a stillness that I don’t find outside in the rest of the city. Sometimes guilt over having the of the luxury of stillness hits me. I feel unworthy of the quiet places I find and the time I make to dwell in them. But I think…
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Ocoee
Since the fall of 1999 I’ve driven between Chattanooga and Raleigh, and for several of those years, I’ve taken the route along the Ocoee River. At some point another student convinced me that the route through Knoxville was quicker, but I do still love the scenic route.
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Autumn Fern