The grasses of Summer.

It is mid summer now and the landscape is drying out to the bleached appearance we associate with dry, warm, sunny weeks. Even as we water our gardens and orchard every day we look beyond to the forest and rocky, dry-moss covered outcrops and drink this precious summertime in. Soon enough the seasons will change and cloud and rain will return. This is the season of grasses going, going, gone to seed in all their variety.

The other day I walked a new piece of Saltspring Island and marvelled at the sheer variety of seedy tops in this conservancy owned ex-golf-course piece of land. The fact that many of these waving grasses are imported golf course varieties that we do not usually get to see un-clipped and manicured does not detract from my appreciation of their beauty. Down the fairway glades between lake and forest I walk and photograph, seeking to capture the feel of this place.

It is such a delicate moment in the mind when I meet new landscape, I resist rushing to judgement, categorizing and marching on unchanged. Because this is the opportunity that may not present itself again, a fresh look, a fresh opportunity to receive.

I was saying to a visitor from Korea last week that landscape and seascape, clouds, the stir of leaves in the breeze, are like personalities to me. I think that fine distinction was lost in translation somehow, but that is how I felt as a child, swept up in a personal relationship with nature, and I find it a useful and satisfying way to frame things for my creative self today.

“ I see you, grasses, waving to me there!”