life@thebackyard

As usual, when I was about to call it a day..this photograph happened. This is not the first time it is happening, very often the best happens  at an unexpected time, in an unexpected way. Be patient. Never give up. lumix fz200, iso 400, f2.5, flash on

I went to the St.George's saw mill near by for a plank of wood and captured this photograph...What could be their stories....

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.” 
― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“Much of the vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities".” ― James Fredericks

Clicked this photograph during one of those solo walks through the paddy fields behind my brother's home at Thrissur. Canon 550D.

Bengali @thebackyard, helping us..

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man orwoman, I shall feel that I have worked with God. Gilbert K. Chesterton

A beautiful sunset near the backyard. Canon 550d, tokina 

New ...life@thebackyard

life @thebackyard

the spirit of the spider, life @thebackyard

Dimple the chameleon @thebackyard

Today is the second time I came across this chameleon @thebackyard. She emerged from somewhere by around the sunset time, and posed for some photographs. This is the first one of the set of photographs I clicked  with the Canon 550D, and the 300mm lens. After this one, I clicked the rest with the lumix fz200, which has a more powerful zoom at 600mm. Will post those photographs clicked with the lumix later. Whenever I am at the backyard, I started searching for this chameleon, and today I named her Dimple :-), hoping to meet her again..

life @thebackyard

breakfast @thebackyard

Kathakali

life @thebackyard

The traditional easy chair...@thebackyard

Puttu in the making

beauty @thebackyard

Baptism

That is the baptism bowl at the nearby church, which is more than two centuries old. How many generations would have gone through it?

Environment

Black gold

Co exist