Posted on February 11, 2014 By George Weaver
The Parrot
Abandoned her icy Perch
On
Monochrome Island
In her search
For
Warm Breezes
Bold Colors
Sunshine
And
Magical Gardens
Filled with
Dreams
Where the shadows
Keep
Their Secrets
And
The dying Amaryllis
Sings
Where the Mother Tongue
Is Mock Heroic
Spoken
With
A Wink
Where all the Flowers
Wear
Primary colors
And
The Street Lamps
Are
Sculpted Gold
Where all the seasons
Are
Seasons in the Sun
And
The Children
Paint
All the Horses Blue
Category: Adventures, Essays, Philosophy, Photographs, Photography, Photos by George, Stories Tags: Adventures, Dreams, Holiday, Journey, Philosophy, photographs, photography, Poetry, Seasons
She Kept A Parrot
simply artistic 🙂
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Thanks! I like bold colors and exaggerated flowers! I even speak “Mock Heroic English” with a Southern accent, you know… 😉
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Lovely! Colors and dreams of colors for a winter’s day…
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simply magnifique… glad to have come across your amazing blog… my very best, tons of inspiration and friendly thoughts from France, “old Europe”… 🙂 cheers! Mélanie, ex-Houstonian(Clear Lake – NASA area)
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LOVE that parrot.
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I never tire of photographs of your garden, George! I can see why you have sooo many compliments…I loved the prose with this one. (and brilliant says it all)
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Thank you, WL. You are always so very encouraging. My aim is to leave a kind of photographic journal for my grandson. He is ten now, so I will be gone by the time he is old enough to see me as a person outside of my role as his granny. I often wonder who my grandmothers really were as women. As people. And, that’s what this is all about. 🙂
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What a beautiful thing to do!
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Such a visual treat George! Your instinctive approach to photography is evident in every single frame. The dreamy fern and the secretive philodendron are my favourites of this fantastic gallery.
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Ah, thank you, Madhu! That “visual treat” is precisely what I get when I visit The Urge To Wander! I’m glad you like these images of my garden. You see the world in color just as I do. I know virtually nothing about the technical aspects of photography. I peer through the lens and snap when I think that what I see might serve to say what I want to say. So, I suppose my approach is through gut instinct. My aim is to record my thoughts through pictures and a few words to leave for my grandson to read as his grandmother’s personal “journal”. I want him to know who I was besides his favorite granny. 🙂
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Fabulous images!
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Thank you, Linda! I’m always happy when you like my pictures. I am more than eagerly anticipating spring. The temperature was eighty degrees here today after that awful freezing weather we had a few weeks ago. Now, I am smiling again! 🙂
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Poetic words and images, George. A gorgeous post!
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Thank you SE! I am happy when you enjoy my posts! It always makes me smile. Thanks for coming by to visit a spell. 🙂
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That’s a lovely thing to say, George. 😀
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You are a lovely girl, you know.
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Um, I’m sometimes lovely, sometimes not. And I’m an old girl, George. 😉
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Ha-ha! Old is relative. I’M legitimately old by any standard. You are not. 😉 Speaking of old folks, I haven’t seen Joseph around lately. Have to go in search of him, I reckon.
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Joseph is back!
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Yippeeeee!
Thanks!
🙂
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Oh it’s so nice to experience COLOR again. My world seems to filmed in black and white instead of technicolor these days. Your photographs are so vibrant and rich in color. I love this series, George!
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Thanks, Elisa. I’m glad you like it. Yep, I’m absolutely Vitamin D deficient, I’m certain! Seriously, this is the first winter that I can remember in which I felt a real longing for spring. Maybe I’m getting too old to wait! I do not do well with linear time. I keep wanting to circle around to spring. (I think they put old people somewhere safe when they start that, don’t they!) Chuckle. Soon, you’ll be out with your happy lens and we’ll forget the black and white days! 🙂
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Amazingly beautiful George!
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Thank you, Elena. I am hungry for color on the menu again! 🙂
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This is just lovely, George. Nice to see some colour – it’s very grey here.
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Thanks, Richard. I’m growing more nostalgic for the warm days of spring too. It’s good to see you return to Papier Mache. Hope you are well and stalking the streets of London with that magic lens! 🙂
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Most of what I want to say has already been said by Carissa, the first to make a comment here – you have a way with images and words, your posts are delightful. The images here are very beautiful. Adrian
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Thank you, Adrian. I’m glad you like my photos. I was very weary of cloudy days and Primary Drab, so I found some colorful pictures to convince me that the color will come back eventually. Chuckle… I have fun putting my pictures together with a few words from the fantasy pot. I think each of us has our own unique way of seeing our world through the lens of our memory and world view. That’s what makes it interesting to see the photographs of other people. And why we travel around here! 🙂
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Lovely photos, lovely words. You have a way with both!
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Hi, Carissa! You have charmed WP completely. They seated you right at the front of the guests once again! Chuckle…
Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it, Carissa!
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Hi George… what a gorgeous post. it’s looking like spring is approaching your neck of the woods. and your words are gorgeous too.
we’re warming up too but still wet. i’m quite ready for it to be dry again.
thank you for stopping by my actual blog today. i certainly do agree with you about the “like” thingy. I hate it!! and WP, in “infinite wisdom” has made it technically unnecessary to visit a blog anymore. I could have written this on my reader. I HATE that too. why bother to do anything much at all on our blogs if nobody’s going to come and visit? ah well, so much for my bitching for this night.
it is good to see you again, my dear. xox
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No, I’m afraid the spring feel in the post is pure fantasy! It’s cold as hell here. I am anxiously awaiting warmer weather. I about froze from head to toe getting the pictures for the ice post! We rarely have such cold here and almost never have ice. So, I was fantasizing about warm gardens and happy thoughts!
I am in a quandary about how to handle the follow thing and how to keep up with posts. I seem never to get it right. It’s back to the follow list, I suppose, since my inbox is stuffed with so many notifications of posts that I cannot possibly keep up! Thanks for coming to visit, as you always do, Adelaide. I appreciate that. 🙂
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Hi George… Yes, a nightowl, like most old ladies… I was going to say about the follow thingy. It’s really hard to keep up and frankly I keep my actual reader short and ruthlessly edit. I now mostly follow those bloggers I want to comment “with”(yes, I like to hear back once in awhile or edit edit edit…can’t yet figure that part out) and don’t want to miss out on a post.
Those who post mainly photos, rarely write, etc., I find just clutter me up and my reader. I don’t stay too long with overly long writers either for some reason-I’ve changed in that respect I guess.
I tried the email thing to keep up but never worked for me either. In the end, I find I have to go thru it, my reader, at least once or twice a week to keep up even with the short list I keep. I still go missing but not quite as bad as when I started.
And I do use the “like” because sometimes I cannot leave a comment but usually don’t as a rule unless I’m going to comment. I HATE it! However it seems to be a WP fixture they’re not planning on losing. I just can’t figure out why they’re making it so convenient to NEVER leave our readers…. ah well.
much love to you, my dear. stay warm! Get a big dog!! 😉
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Beautiful photos, George, and your words are full of promise. 🙂
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Thank you, Sylvia! I know you are somewhere WARM! I haven’t heard any weather report on Florida, but I’d bet you are warmer than we are in South Texas! The kids went to Steamboat Springs to play in the snow last weekend as if they didn’t get enough cold here! Chuckle… I am more positive now than I have been in my entire life. I determined to spend the last years of my life searching only for the beautiful. And, I’ve discovered that there is plenty of it to discover! Thanks for stopping by, Sylvia. I appreciate that. I really do. 🙂
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a succulent magnificent poem George, and divine photos, sensuous and evocative!
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Thank you, Christine! I love the word, “succulent”. My husband used to use it to describe anything that he thought was absolutely perfect in a sensory sort of way… Like his favorite foods! I appreciate your description. I was very weary of the cold and gray weather, so I suppose I was looking for warmth and sun and optimism in my photo collection. 🙂
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a balm of course, and beautiful to us observers! did you read my post about Charlie the Papuan Eclectus parrot?
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thank you, the article and the true happiness rays began to warm hearts, when we share it with sincerity. Greetings from Gede Prama 🙂
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Your kind, smiling face and your gentle presence warms hearts too, Gede Prama. Thank you for stopping by to visit. I appreciate your kind words.
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Even without the photos, your poem had enough imagery to get one’s imagination going. The photos are just an added bonus.
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Thank you, Andelieya! I appreciate your kind words and taking the time to stop by for a visit! 🙂 I love your Gravatar, by the way!
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Beautiful George 🙂
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Thanks you, Celestine. It’s good to see you. I appreciate you always stopping by to visit my posts. You are too kind! 🙂
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They are great photographs dear George, fascinated me. Thank you, love, nia
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Ah, thank you very much, Nia! I hope all is well with you! I appreciate you stopping by to visit. 🙂
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I just got into school George and sat down at my computer with coffee-in-hand. Now, I know I’m supposed be working … but it is always my habit to check my WordPress reader (just quickly, of course) as a way of starting my day. Well, this morning I was greeted by this wonderful addition of yours. I’m not sure what struck me so about it. Was it the simple (though colorful) images? The simple words? I suppose I’ll have to conclude that it was the combination. There is a phenomenon in biology we call ’emergence’ which essentially says that the whole is more than just the sum of the parts. So, your post has emergent properties … the whole is more than the sum of the pictures and words. Nice way to start my day. Thanks. And, here’s to some warmer weather in both our futures. D
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Thank you, Farmer. Glad it started off your day on a sunny note. In literature, a comparable convention is the Synecdoche. A part equals the whole, the whole represents its parts or something like that. The concept of any part being greater than the whole is absent, of course. Life is simple. We make it complicated, I think, in an effort to understand or to avoid simple truths. As I grow older, I realize the folly of complication. Life distills itself. I love photography because it allows me to say what I want to say, and sometimes what I want to say is vague and fuzzy as are the photographs that represent it. Yes, I’ll drink (a morning coffee) to that! 😉 I appreciate your insightful comments, always.
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Very attractive photography here, George, and some of these are just wonderful, Monochrome is complicated. It is an abstraction. Back when we worked in film, I would have to adjust my thinking, when I moved from B&W to color. Or back from color to B&W. Because the same images didn’t work in both. Today, because of the digital, we can move from one to the other in a minute, or change a photo from color to B&W just by pressing a button. But I believe the products of such manipulations do not compare well with a photograph that is intentionally shot in B&W. In any case, I admire your flexibility, and you willingness to learn and experiment. In my opinion, that’s the best way to learn… to try out all kinds of things… But you have to go with your true taste. I’m sure you have a very strong intuition. And this post is marvelous.
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Hi, Shimon. I’m glad you enjoyed the post. There are photographer still who are great film artists. Rick Braveheart is one of them. If you follow his blog, you know that his life’s work is as an artist in residence at many national parks here and in Canada, Alaska, etc.. He works in the tradition of the early conservationist writers like John Muir who loved and lived in the natural world, and of the great painters and photographers of the past. His work is exhibited in national galleries, held in private collections, and published. His latest, “Winter Night” is a fine example of the best in black and white film images. He shot it with a 1907 Seneca 5×7 camera. I bought #1 in the limited edition. Nothing digitally captured compares to film. The images are instantly recognizable.
I enjoy capturing images that say what I want to say. Images that please me. The technical aspects of photography will never concern me. I am a lover of art, color, beauty. And that has brought joy into my life beyond anything that I am able to reproduce here.
Thank you, Shimon.
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A poem in words and pictures—a treat for us all.
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Thanks, Kenn. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I keep looking for a post from YOU. 😉 Are you all frozen up in The Sunshine State??? And, to think that Rita and I were on our way to your place in search of Sunshine!
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You are brilliant… these photos are just beyond words and your words (magnificent) just complement the photos… this is a magnificent post… pure brilliance…
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Well, I always preferred the short-haired breeds, but I swear, I think I’m in love with at least one Bulldog! Thank you so very much, Rob. Your comments are always wonderfully supportive and encouraging. You have no idea how much they mean to me. It makes me happy to know that you enjoy my pictures and little stories. 🙂
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I am ready for seasons in the sun. I wondered how Rita was coping with the coldl
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Miss Rita is holed up in the warm house as are every one of the spoiled animals around here. I am ready for warm too. I wonder when it’s scheduled for this year. Lordy, I hope we got on the roster!!! 😉
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Great photos, as usual!!!! You’re so talented at both prose and photography!
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Thank you, Linda! I enjoy snapping the photos and posting here. It’s freezing cold in Victoria. I’m sure it is cold in Denton too! WHEN is spring? Either I forgot or I’ve missed it….
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A breath of fresh spring air! 🙂
{Hugs}
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Thanks, RoSy! We need spring air around here. How about you? I swear I’m on my way to your place. 😉
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Ahhh… color washes away the greys of winter!
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Well, I’m mighty tired of gray. I couldn’t stand one more gray post! Chuckle…
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Another in your photography as art series, George! Like super-realism on steroids. Love them all, and the caption-poem. Terrific 🙂
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Well, there is nothing about me or my life that’s monochrome. I succumbed to the cold allure of black and white for the ice post, but it about froze off my fingers. So, I scurried back to warm me old heart on color. I appreciate the description of my pictures. Sometimes I lapse into the fantasy world of color, as I want color to be. It’s where I breathe better. It makes me very happy to know that you like my world too. Thank you very much, Merideth.
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pleasing to the eyes and mind!
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Thank you, Gail. It’s been entirely too gray for entirely too long down here! Glad you like the warmer climate in this post! 😉
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beautiful everything comes very natural. pleasing as always!!!
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Thank you, Nono! I’m happy that you like my fantasy world of color! 🙂 I appreciate you dropping by to visit too!
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I wish so much for colour too as I am tired of white and grey scenes. You photos are beautiful; their colour a sight for my eyes.
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Thank you, Colline. I am weary of monochrome days too! I want spring sunshine. I’m glad you enjoyed my photos. And, I appreciate you stopping by to visit as always! You are too kind. 🙂
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