Plein Air Watercolor on the Beach

A sand piper tiptoes across the sand while a herring gull flies over the waves.  I painted this water color on the beach in the morning.  The distant clouds are rosy and the waves roll in.  Many writers like to paint.  I am one of them.

Summer Time on the Great Lakes

Delight.  Happiness. Joy.  Kids love to play in water and run on the sand and build castles.  That’s what this time of the year is about around the Great Lakes. People relax to the sounds of the waves and see the blues and greens of the water. 

We share these waters with many species of birds.  Sometimes we can see the American bald eagles scavenging the beaches for dead fish or we may see other species such as the rare piping plover.

Read about the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Barnes & Noble, Schulers Books and Music, The Bookman and many other stores on the web and elsewhere.

Lake Michigan Wind for Sports and Alternative Energy

Lake Michigan has wind power.  That is why it is suitable for producing energy from wind.  Board sailing and kite flying are popular. Sailing regattas dot the lake this time of year. The potential for producing clean energy with wind turbines is great.

 

Read about the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.  The book is widely available at Amazon.com, Amazon's Kindle reader, Barnes & Noble and many independent bookstores and museums.

Historic Tightrope Walk over Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls are immense.  All the water from Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and their tributaries flow over Niagara Falls.  Yesterday a Wallenda walked a two inch wide tightrope over Horseshoe Falls to the Canadian side.  Below is a link to this historic walk along with some other famous dare devils
http://news.yahoo.com/niagara-falls-high-wire-walk-nik-wallenda-fulfill-170535660--abc-news-entertainment.html

Salmon Fishing in the Great Lakes

http://www.publishamerica.net/product95488.html Order the Dynamic Great Lakes from the publisher.  In this book you will find information about salmon fishing in the Great Lakes and how this came about. You will also learn about how the Great Lakes were formed as freshwater seas and their importance.

The book may also be ordered in paperback and for Kindle from Amazon.com and is available at Barnes & Noble, Schuler Books and Music and many other fine independent bookstores.

So Much to be Learned from Nature

Trees are for crossing streams, for playing and for dreaming.  A young girl has crossed the stream and will have to walk back as if on a balance beam.

School is out for the summer and so much can be learned from nature.  There is health in the fresh air and freedom of the outdoors.

Birds of the Great Lakes Shores

I sold some paintings yesterday at an art market, but not the one above.

The birds love the cherry tree in our yard.  Orioles, cat birds, robins.  They are gobbling up the cherries so I do not think there will be any left for us.  This morning I saw chickadees in the little birdhouse I painted.  There are a pair of wrens in another birdhouse hanging from a tall conifer and a pair of mourning doves raising a second brood in the bushes in front of our window.  Ruby throated hummingbirds visit our yard and if their feeder is not filled, they peer in our window knowing someone indoors fills it.

We hear the herring gulls and crows talking constantly and we see hawks and eagles flying over our house. This is a delightful time of year and the birds know it.

Persephone Brings warblers, catbirds, mayflies, foam flowers

 

Persephone Emerges

Under willows’ first fuzz

Eden green

goats graze

feeding unborn kids.

The warbler haunted woods

flickers green fire—

the river brims a billion suns.

Persephone burst

from under earth covered with leaf mold

and blinking in the fawn spotted dawn

in the cool wooded dunes.

Above her head, flecks of foam

flowers, bloodroot and trillium

splash the dark soil,

spilled milk

at a sacrificial rite.

Persephone emerges.

Morning light veils her body

darts through her jewels

her crown of diamonds, rubies, emeralds.

She carries sweet spring

time in her

with the vision of night.

On the mirror still surface of a lake,

mayflies suffer breech births,

wiggle out of wetsuits

nymphs no longer

and with wings clear as water

they wobble into flight

rise like clouds of smoke

in golden light.

A catbird speaks in tongues

its throat bubbles out ineffable delights.

Bees spin in dusty pollen,

melt water burbles,

rises through red veins of leaves,

Persephone’s footprints fill with water.

--Barbara Spring

Excerpted from The Wilderness Within

This book is widely available in bookstores and on the web at Amazon.com, bn.com etc.