The weather forecast calls for a break in the heat (accompanied by thunderstorms, of course.) I’m looking forward to a few days of relief.
It seems the cats are eager for a change, as well. Perhaps I have been a bit too aggressive with the thermostat, these last few days.
Publication note: My poem “Custody” appears in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century.
Several years ago, one of my doctors recommended twenty minutes of sunlight per day as part of a treatment plan for depression. (Sunscreen first, of course.) Since then, it seems that more and more medical professionals want to talk about the health benefits of natural light. And I’m eager to listen.
I don’t know if anyone has studied or quantified the healing properties of sunlight, but personal experience convinces me to keep dragging myself outside. Even when the weather is bad. Especially when the weather is bad. It’s easy to feel content standing in a sun-soaked yard. Less easy when the yard is rain soaked, or iced over, or clotted with smog.
In winter, when I sometimes miss my twenty minutes, I lapse into dark moods and sleepy hazes. During the summer, when I average quite a bit more than twenty minutes, I suffer far fewer episodes of depression and/or anxiety.
At first, I tried reading during my sunlight minutes, which led to a few unfortunate sunburns due to forgetting the time (or going to sleep, depending on the book). Then I tried walking, which quickly deteriorated into fitful laps around the yard. I talked on the phone, weeded flower beds, trimmed roses, and doodled in notebooks as poem fragments refused to become poems. I played with the dog and painted the deck. Nothing took. Nothing worked well enough to become a routine, not until my new camera arrived.
Weeks rolled into months as I experimented with the zoom and macro functions. My twenty minutes of sunlight became twenty minutes of photography, which became this blog. Despite appearances, this isn’t a photography blog or writing blog or poetry blog. It’s a depression and anxiety blog. A sunlight and yard blog, measured in twenty minute increments.
Yesterday’s twenty minutes found a honey bee, a moth, and a spider web (look away, if you’re arachnophobic…)
After the spiderweb, my twenty minutes stretched into an hour, due to this butterfly. (I believe it is an Eastern Tailed Blue.) It flitted through the sparse patches of clover in our back yard, ignoring my eccentric hands-and-knees pursuit. Today I have a mild sunburn and the remnants of a grass-allergy rash, but I also have these photos…
The thermostat insists that it is not as hot this week as it was last week, but I’m not convinced. The difference between high-nineties and triple digits is barely perceptible. Both are too hot for comfort.
Even so, the yard remains active. A new dove nest is taking shape, a new wave of dragonflies has arrived, and a clutch of praying mantises have hatched in the ginger lilies.
(I believe this is a Yellow-sided Skimmer.)
While chasing this praying mantis through the ginger lilies, I stumbled across a young katydid. Both creatures were very wary of the camera. It didn’t help that I tend to be too clumsy for stealth.
We purchased this rose almost a decade ago. In my memory of that day, the rose’s label reads “Fireworks”.
Last year, during an early attempt at blogging, I tried to find an online reference for fireworks roses. None existed. Turns out, our fireworks rose is a climbing Fourth of July rose.
What trick of memory switched the labels in my mind? And what of all my other memories? Are they equally flawed?
Our dog telegraphs her every emotion, announcing her moods with a range of vocal cues, facial expressions, and overly-dramatic body language. The cats are usually harder to read.
Usually, but not always. Here, for example, the message is clear: “Don’t bother me, I’m mad at you…”
Publication note: My poem “Waking” appears in the new issue of Willows Wept Review. The issue is available in print (by order) or as a free digital download.
Rae Spencer 