friday i'm in love

taken in my back yard

{every friday on The Artful Life I celebrate by sharing what I am in love with this week... little loves and big loves... click here to see all the fridays and all the loves...}

Even though it's Midsummer, it's been a bit dark lately. Some struggle and difficulty. I feel like I've been fighting hard, but today I just
let go.
It felt good.

I turned off the phone and e-mail
shut the book on my monster to-do list
put on my softest clothes
grabbed a trashy novel, my journal, my pug, and a big cup of tea
I pulled the curtains on my bed
(I love that I have bed curtains)
sprayed some rosewater
and just settled in

At 3pm I came out
put on a pretty dress
my sweetie poured me a glass of wine
and we sat in the late sun on the patio

we talked about how a well-timed surrender
is sometimes actually
the best strategy towards victory.

Life is sometimes (always?) dark and mysterious. This friday's loves and images celebrate that.

1. I love Bed Days!!! See above.

2. I love the long crazy dawns and twilights we get around summer solstice here at the 49th parallel. The picture at the head of this post gives you a sense of the magic around my place in the deep night in summer. For a hit of this beauty, watch this gorgeous video.

3. I love the mysterious mechanics of the cosmos, and the possibility that these huge energies effect our lives on a subtle level. Read about today's solar eclipse. You won't see it unless you are in Antarctica, but you can still appreciate its archetypal beauty.

my white rambler, around solstice last summer.

4. I love my white rambling rose. A dear friend gave me this rose when we closed on our property almost ten years ago, and I planted it outside my bedroom window. We had to prune it back hard this year, because it was invading the eves of the house. My sweetie's idea of hard pruning looked pretty intense to me, and I was worried. But right now this rambler is crazy lush and has just started to bloom, sending intense fragrance and the buzz of bees in through my window. Object lesson: trust that strong, dense root system.

5. I love the poetry of Rilke. You should go read some now.
"If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. "
— Rainer Maria Rilke