The Quiet Life: The Golden Hour photos and update on week 3 of summer break

By Elizabeth Prata

I don't have a garden but I live in a beautiful yard with wildflowers and some morning glories and flowering trees. I have a wonderful library, well-stocked for such a small apartment. It is everything I need.

I put "Happy Summer" because I am still happy about summer break. It never, ever, ever gets old. As a matter of fact, the older I get the sweeter summer break becomes.

I'm in week three and this is my update:

Bert my 12 year old cat died and I seemed to have taken that on board in my usual non-expressive, non-emotional way. It's just a fact. He's gone. But the other night I had a dream that I woke up in the morning and got up. As I entered the living room I saw Bert there in his little bed by the coffee table, looking at me with his pretty green eyes. I said aloud to him, "But aren't you dead? I thought you died? Have you come back to life?" And then I woke up all upset.

So I guess I have not taken it on board as yet.

I'm still reading and on track here in week 3 of my Summer Reading Plan. I added a few extra books as needed...I am enjoying Pat Conroy's My Reading Life, and I enjoyed the first third of Grisham's The Reckoning. I skipped part 2 and most of part 3 and just read the last 10 pages. But part 2 was 175 pages i.e long enough, and it felt like old Grisham again and was good enough for me. Especially since I've learned with being disappointed in the last three Grishams not to buy any more books but to get them from the library.

A friend recommended an author I'd forgotten about, Nathaniel Philbrick. I'd read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the whaleship Essex when it was published in 2001. (Wow, eighteen years ago!!) It's the true story of the true ship and event Melville based Moby Dick upon. Philbrick has written many subsequent historical books, rapidly becoming my new fave genre. I will reserve Mayflower from the library and grab that one up next.

Since I got pneumonia three weeks ago I've eaten very little through it all. My appetite is just coming back now. It was sort of a relief not to have an appetite, Anyway, during the sickness, I ate mainly crackers, scrambled eggs, and chicken & rice soup. I didn't eat any sweets at all. Now that I'm better, I am trying to keep up the no sweets and I think it won't be too hard. I ate a small cube of a brownie the other day at Sunday School and it tasted very sweet to me. Blech. I also ate two bites of a pecan roll and I couldn't eat any more of it and threw the rest out.

If I can maintain this habit of no sweets/sugar till school opens again, perhaps it will be ingrained in me enough not to succumb to stress eating at the snack bar in the copy room. And by snack bar I mean bypassing the crackers, granola bars, and chips and aiming straight for the Reese's and the Three Musketeers bars. I'm convinced only stressed educators know the comfort and delight of chocolate during the school day.

When school ended just before Memorial Day weekend I'd had visions of sitting at my patio table outside, re-potting my succulents, reading magazines in the sun, and watching the birds. But that weekend a strong heat wave came in and we suffered through highs in the upper 90s near to 100 these last 2 weeks. This was unusually hot very early. I stayed inside. This last week has been rain-rain-rain. Some places nearby received 6 inches in a day. I don't mind the rain since I don't have to go anywhere or drive in it, and it's kind of cozy to curl up inside with tea and a book.

But now the weather has broken and is closer to the usual for this time of year. I was hoping it would get to be so, before the hot weather of July and August steams in. Temps are supposed to be upper 70s to low 80s with overnight temps in the upper 50s to low 60s. This is perfect. Maybe I'll get to do my patio plan after all.

I also want, while the weather is cooler, to haunt some places in the city and take some photos. I love cityscapes and since I don't travel, Athens GA will have to suffice as my stand-in mini-city. There are some nice cityscapes there, if not the skyscrapers I'd love to snap in NYC or Seattle or Miami.

I know about the Golden Hour but I often don't DO anything about it. This is the hour that as the sun rises or prepares to set, the light turns golden and glowing. The noonday sun is high and harsh, but the sunrise hour and the time just before it sets the sun light turns a mellow yellow and adds a beautiful dimension to photos. I would love to go out and snap photos at 7 am but that would mean, like, going out. Same for the 7 pm sunlight. I never quite make it.

Here are a few pics of the yard this morning at the very end of Golden Hour. It was the best I could do, givne my innate sluggishness during the summer.