Once Upon a Sunset…

Leave me alone, please! Yes, yes, sunset photos are a dime a dozen. But watching the sun set is one of the things I love to do. Taking photos of the sunset sky is another thing I love to do. And sharing sunset photos is something else that I love to do. So…

Once upon a sunset, a woman noticed the evening light against a cluster of palms….

She grabbed her camera and climbed the stairs to the roof of her house. From that vantage point, she saw the sunset sky…

She smiled…and looked closer…click…

She played with the zoom on her camera and looked at the trees, the hills, the clouds, the light…

From speakers somewhere nearby, oldies but goodies were playing. John Holt was singing: “I love you, darling, and that’s no lie, oh-oh, Stick by me and I’ll stick by you…”

Once upon a sunset, on a roof in Kingston, Jamaica, life felt really good….

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Cloudy Sunset

Every sunset different. Three hundred and sixty-five of them every year and every one of them different. And then consider all the different places from which you can view the same sunset…different geographical locations, different elevations, seaside, city centre, middle of a field on a plain…different, different, different.

A cloudy sunset, seen from up in the Blue Mountains, looking down towards Kingston…

…as the sun disappears and night falls.

Clouds and Wires

I looked up at the sky. Clouds and a criss-cross of utility wires. Cupped by trees. Click.

Breadfruit Tree Takes Flight…Almost

The breadfruit tree prepares to join a bird in a fiery morning sky…

Grey Days: Nature’s Colours

For mornings such as this…

…when Tropical Storm Zeta in the western Caribbean Sea…

…streams rainclouds across the sky, blocking the morning sun…

…nature provides a fallback of other yellows…

…to counter the grey….

Something Distinctly Pink: Nature’s Colours

The evening sky…look up…

something distinctly pink…

Pink Clouds at Sunset

I climb up to the roof and see the setting sun is turning clouds to pink. The traveler’s palm, the water oak, the Number Eleven mango tree all line up against the goodnight sky.

The smiling moon sits behind pink clouds at sunset. “My time now,” she says….

Sunrise Surprise!

Any morning that I head to the roof  to watch the sun rise, I am never quite sure what I will see.  Even as I climb the spiral staircase, navigating the narrow space left by the recently installed guttering, I am uncertain what will greet me. Like the morning I took this series of photos…a chilly, overcast morning. Grey was the main colour, as I sat and drank my tea. Little did I know the drama that was about to unfold!

A heavy bank of clouds hung low in the eastern sky, over a bowl where two hills overlapped. As the sunlight began to shine up from behind the hills, a pink pattern started to appear on the clouds.

I  realised that nature was deciding to dance this morning and I was a lucky witness! Brighter pink and over a larger area of cloud…

And this was the finale! The sky on fire…transformed…

Tea forgotten; no journaling done. I watched, transfixed. Bathed in this sunrise surprise….

 

Moments of Solitude: Weekly Photo Challenge – Beloved

“In this week’s challenge, share with us something that is beloved.”

Moments of solitude are something beloved by me.  To sit on my roof by myself and watch the clouds in their infinite variety of shapes and colours, like these mammatus clouds the other morning…

Or on a cottage balcony, way up in the hills, looking down at city lights…

Or having breakfast by myself in a town in a country a long way from home…Time alone…with a book, with a cup of tea, with a journal, in nature…lovely…

Weekly Photo Challenge – Beloved

 

Last Sunrise, First Sunrise

On Sunday morning, I sat on my roof watching the last sunrise for 2017. My tea for that morning was tumeric and ginger, sweetened with Belcour honey, from hives my brother and sister-in-law have in the Blue Mountains. There was very little cloud cover, providing a rather minimalist early sunrise sky.Later the sun came up over the hills……outlining them in differing shades of grey.The next day I was up on the roof again, to watch the first sunrise for 2018. Tea was peppermint…with Belcour honey. It was a very different morning, overcast, with heavy banks of grey clouds.But the sun came up. As it always does. With unremarkable regularity.

These divisions…such as the old year into the new year…are arbitrary but useful structures for us, reminding us of the passage of time and ordering our lives to some extent. I enjoy these formal endings and beginnings and some of the rituals associated with them. Not all, mind you. But what I am growing to love more and more are the rhythms of nature. As I view them from my roof…because I am not a great outdoor person, hiking or cycling or similar activities. I am the person who sits on her roof, observing the movement of the sun, moon and stars, the daily flight of birds through this space, the trees blossoming and other such things. It is amazing what I can see when I sit still for a while….

On the 4th day of 2018, it’s not too late to wish you a Happy New Year!