Pictures of a spring day

These trees are kind of ordinary around here, but I like them anyway, especially with this sky as backdrop. It was a good sky for photography today.

By the way, larger versions of all pictures except the second are available on request, until either I or my hard disk cease to function. Just in case you want to use them for workspace background (“wallpaper”) on your computer or something. I know I do that sometimes with my pictures.

These flowers grow by the shed. The old couple who lived here before must have planted them, I guess, unless they are even older. They are still hanging on, even though the people who once loved them are gone.

This picture is actually of the hedge, such as it is, that separates this property from one of the neighbors. The flowers there however are basically local wildflowers; perhaps they were planted there or perhaps they just spread there on their own.

This tree is actually on the neighbor’s property, but by the old road along the river. This road is not being maintained anymore, but still exists out of habit. This was supposedly the main road to the house until sometime in the late 1960es. When I was a child, people were still using this road every day, I guess. I wonder if they stopped to look at the trees?

The white “stars” on the ground are wildflowers again. The yellowish green color of the tree comes from the new leaves, which are still folding out, like a butterfly’s wings that have not yet got their final color.

After the sun had set but before the daylight faded, an uncommon calm fell on the river, transforming it into a mirror. Or so I thought, when I took these two pictures. Only after I opened them, did I notice:  The reflection in the water is subtly different. Not distorted or fuzzy, but… different.  As if taken at a slightly different time.

Can you see it here? The trees seem darker, and the cloud formations are different, as if the river showed another time or a parallel world rather than a simple mirror image.

There is a saying that “you can not go into the same river twice”, and this refers subtly to the river of time. Even if you come to the same place and the river looks the same, it is not the same water. And so it is with us all. Form and content do not quite change at the same pace as time passes over us.

I hope you enjoyed the ordinary beauty of this place.  To some of you, this may be as exotic as a desert or jungle is to me. If so, feel free to grab the pictures as long as you don’t sell them.

2 thoughts on “Pictures of a spring day

    • There are many ways to enlightenment. To some it just happens, seemingly out of the blue. To some it happens seemingly because of life circumstances. To some it happens seemingly because they have sought it with all their heart for many years. To some it never happens at all.

      Some Zen teachers say it approximately like this: “Enlightenment is like being hit by the lightning. Meditation is like staying outdoors.”
      In other words, you can increase your chances of enlightenment, but you cannot bring it about, nor can you entirely prevent it.

      But even if we never become enlightened, we should still love our fellow creatures and be content with a simple life. It is better to be unenlightened but loving and happy than to be unenlightened, mean and grumpy. These are things we can actually change, although even that is surprisingly hard. And it won’t stop enlightenment if the lightning strikes.

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