Fog, Long Needles, and White Flowers

We have had a lot of fog lately. I like it. It is still and quiet and adds another dimension to just being alive for the day.

I dropped the boy off at school and pulled into a Long Needle Pine Preserve. Like too many beautiful things on our earth, these southern forests are disappearing. Remember the two trees in my yard that disappeared, but everyone denied they were there...and I found the photo which established the fact that I was not insane, the trees were actually there--they were long needle pines.

I found the fog alluring and walked far back into the Preserve. The palmetto palms were twice as high as I had seen them anywhere. I hoped to run into an alligator - no, I mean I wanted to see an alligator in the wild. The only wildlife I encountered was the sounds of singing birds. I will go back in the summer when the pitcher plants bloom. These are also disappearing at an alarming rate. I want to paint them. When I first started painting, I had a period of painting endangered species of animals and earth.

I remember living in the woods In Alabama a few years back - I would go out and lay on top of the picnic table in the night, sometimes pulling a shawl over me for the night, and look up at the long needle pines against the deep blueness of the sky and wish with all my heart I could paint them: the deep night colors, the angle of looking up. I felt as if I were in another earth somewhere with these pines. My son died during that time and I bought his paints home with me. I still owe him that painting. I wish I had purchased that little mobile home out there in 'Bama on the bay. There were trails to walk, possums living under the shed, the smell of wet leaves and the bay within short walking distance.

When I drove to Mobile to see Dr. Lovely I encountered more fog. The horizon disappeared in fog, and the bridges I crossed disappeared into the fog. Another other-worldly experience it was.

Last night the birds sang all night--another reason I love Florida. I laid in a half slumber listening to them. Their song was absolutely heady.

Yep, I'm in an esoteric mood where I want to plant white flowers, moon flowers with blooms as big as dinner plates and a scent like no other, so I can sit on the patio at night with a bottle of wine, good music, and look up at the mystery of the two majestic long needle pines in my yard, watch the stars play off white blooms and inhale their scent and listen to the birds sing in the night. I would pick a bloom and hold it against my lips and be drunk with the sensation of petals. I could feel white with my lips, I would inhale white with my nose!


I think that surely there must be some place for me some day, a place of green, of moonlight and sunlight, tall pines and wild animals that come to the porch for food, abounding with nature and peace and the time to paint and create. Someday.