On the 7th of July, I completed a beautiful day by sitting on the front steps to watch the fireflies flicker above our local stretch of the Flatbush Malls and the neighbors’ lawns across the way. The Malls, incidentally, are not shopping centers: they’re narrow parks set in the middle of the street that have survived since 1899. In front of our apartment building, the kids who love to play there have named it “Traffic Island.”

Yesterday morning, it was cloudy and promising rain, which prompted a photo session of the flourishing flora before they were potentially flattened in a torrent. Sixty-six snapshots later, I realized it wasn’t possible to truly capture the intensity of emotion seeing these colors and forms evokes in life. But a bit of the glory is reflected here, including a few of the many bumblebees that were everywhere working away.

Catherine Rutgers © 2015

P.S. Here are links to two of my very favorite blogs, revealing the lushness of nature found in every season – “Leaf and Twig” by Catherine Arcolio aka seedbud, https://leafandtwig.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/shout-of-color
“Green Lizard’s Blog” https://lizard100blog.wordpress.com/setting – for delightful photos of the English countryside and fascinating tales of “grow your own, make your own, save your own, do your own” in The Netherlands, respectively. Enjoy!