The Open Door

🎶🎶“Doot, doot, do, lookin’ out my back front door🎶🎶

💕💕💕

“All my life has been a series of doors in my face
And then suddenly I bumped into you…
With you, I found my place
With you, I see your face
And it’s nothing like l’ve ever known before
Love is an open door.”*

💕💕💕

*from the movie: Frozen

🎶with my apologies to CCR ☺️

My contribution to Thursday Doors by Dan Antion

Clouds

Happy first day of summer, friends!
We are experiencing an early heat wave here in Newfoundland, so our longed-for season received an early start.

Last week, while the weather was cooler and we were having our morning coffee out on the deck, we saw a cloud that was nothing short of spectacular. It started with a low bank of fog stretching across the entire horizon, but soon morphed into a tall white marvel.

Fog bank in Newfoundland

And just before it dispersed, it grew even bigger:

Fog bank in Newtown NL

“A cloudless plain blue sky is like a flowerless garden.” – Terri Guillemets

On the eve of our heat wave, the sky and clouds were an artist’s tableau:

Summer sunset in Newtown

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now. From up and down, and still somehow, it’s cloud illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all.” – Joni Mitchell

“All That We Love Deeply”

Last month, our daughter Denise surprised us with this lovely sun-catcher she found online. Does it remind you of anyone?

Is it a coincidence that she found a cat replica that looks like our Vivian, who passed away in November? I think not. Now we have a visual reminder that she is still peering out over Perry’s Point, which she knew like the back of her paw. 🐾

It’s also the perfectly fitting remembrance of her many guest posts on this blog—“Vivian’s View From Here”.

We still miss her terribly, yes.

But I like to think we have our own little guardian angel

watching over us. 💙

“What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” – Helen Keller

Photo Challenge: Dramatic – Part 2*

Here is the second (and final) instalment of dramatic photo highlights from my blogging archives. I’ll start with two “vivid skies” left over from Part 1:

I wasn’t long running for my camera when this giant funnel cloud appeared by our house a few years ago. At first I thought it was a tornado!

***

Cotton candy clouds at sunset are always a summery treat:

***

A perennial favourite—my clothespins encased in a glaze of ice:

***

A spider and her web I discovered on my kitchen window one misty summer night. I was amazed by the detail:

***

This ghostly tree caught my eye one November, outside a Grand Falls-Windsor inn:

***

Berg watching in Greenspond was a delight that day in June 2015.

Admiring Nature’s sculptures in Iceberg Alley. Check out the entire blog post here.

***

“Study Nature, love Nature, stay close to Nature.
It will never fail you.”

—Frank Lloyd Wright

*Photo Challenge: LAPC: Dramatic

Photo Challenge: Dramatic*

When I think of dramatic photos I have taken, vivid skies and sunsets come to mind. And what better place to find them than on Perry’s Point?

Sunsets are proof that endings can often be beautiful too.

—Beau Taplin
Sunset on Perry’s Point

The sky broke like an egg into full sunset, and the water caught fire.

— Pamela Hansford Johnson

Here’s a favourite of mine from Newtown branch:

Long before evening sets on the Point, the sun is often brilliant, dancing on the surface of the waves:

Lots of beauty elsewhere, of course. I captured this curtain of a cloud on a tropical holiday:

Another favourite. This time from Bonavista NL, with the sea and sky together:

Sea and Sky

Stay tuned! Part 2 of Dramatic Photo Challenge coming soon. ☺️

*Photo Challenge: LAPC #282: Dramatic

For Mom ❤️

“Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.”

– George Eliot


Happy Mother’s Day to all the loving moms.
Enjoy your special day.

You deserve it!

Exploring my Island: Port au Port Peninsula

They say that travelling to places you’ve never been before is good for your brain, especially as you age. The island of Newfoundland is quite large and is the perfect place to accomplish this, with its ancient rock formations, dense forests and breathtaking coastlines and seascapes.

I know, I know—there’s no big culture shock from travelling within my own province, but it’s still nice to sightsee in locales we haven’t visited before. As I mentioned in a previous post, Paul’s work affords us many short road trips to all corners of the island, and we try to visit little nooks and crannies of interest in between.
So when we found out about site visits to two schools on the Port au Port Peninsula last August, we were particularly happy to go. We’ve both been up and down the west coast but never there. And this would be our chance to visit the only peninsula on the island that we’d never been!

Port au Port Peninsula is that tiny arrow shape on the west coast.

We booked a two-night stay at The Inn at the Cape on Cape St. George. It was lovely, the host was friendly, and the breakfasts were wonderful.

Inn at the Cape

Discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

Gulf of St. Lawrence
Limestone cliffs of Port au Port

We didn’t get to take in everything on that trip but would gladly go back to sightsee what we missed.

“I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me.”
– Walt Whitman

*INN AT THE CAPE

Invincible Summer

Perry’s Point sunset

RDP Wednesday – SUNSET

A new addition to our family…

Introducing Sophie Rae, my son’s new dog. She is a white golden retriever.

Isn’t she a darling? Welcome to our world, little girl! 💕

“Happiness is a warm puppy.” — Charles M. Shulz

Photo Challenge: Close-up

Cee Neuner’s challenge for photographers yesterday* reminds me of this photo I took back in August. I captured the spider and her masterpiece through my kitchen window that fog-shrouded night, not knowing how the outdoor light on our house would illuminate its detail so well, especially the misty moisture that clings to every intricate strand of the web. The overall effect reminds me of fine gold chain.

PERRY’S POINT, NL – AUGUST 13, 2022

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” – Pablo Picasso

*Cee’s Midweek Madness Photo Challenge: Close-up or Macro