
To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges and what is most commonly praised. And sometimes its invisibility is a blessing. Swamps and bogs are places of transition and wild growth, breeding grounds, experimental labs where organisms and ideas have the luxury of being out of the spotlight, where the imagination can mutate and mate, send tendrils into and out of the water.
~ Barbara Hurd, Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination

I do love swamps and bogs. I suppose I have to given how we almost always end up living near swamps and bogs.
Looking down into the water of a swamp at just the right time of day can make you almost dizzy, and unsure if you’re looking up or down. Sometimes I imagine that while I’m looking down, I am falling up.

In a swamp, as in meditation, you begin to glimpse how elusive, how inherently insubstantial, how fleeting our thoughts are, our identities. There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home.
~ Barbara Hurd, Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination

To me, exploring a swamp or a bog is a little like stepping back in time, into the primordial soup from which, it has been theorized, life originated.

That’s about all I have time for today. We are swamped with kitchen work here at the Wabi-Sabi Ranch. It’s exciting, but exhausting. We have a saying here: “Nothing is ever easy.” We cleaned the bay window in the kitchen only to question why it continued to fog up which brought about the discovery that the wood under the frame was wet, moldy, and rotting. Changing a faucet resulted in broken pipes and almost a full day with no water. To borrow from Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

Thank you for visiting. Be careful on your way out. Things are starting to get a little spooky around here. It must be the season for it.

Be good, be kind, be loving. Just Be. 🙂

Ah yes, renovation realities.
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They’re a lot different than the plans and dreams, Carol, that’s for sure. 🙂
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Ah….so it’s never easy but worth it in the end. And I love the ghostly shots of the trees!
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Thank you, CM. 🙂
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the best writing I have read on swamps, I so agree about them being places of change, transition, rebirth … after all we have evolved through swamps over time 🙂 We have one here too, The Wetland …. when it fills up the Striped Marsh frogs begin their loud chatter, mating quickly before they need to burrow down again and wait for the next rain … but swamps in the kitchen/dining room are not welcome!
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Thank you, Christine. 🙂
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The ghostly shot is awesome. And it does look like you’re falling up. I haven’t been to too many swamps, but I have felt like I’ve been stuck in one. I wish you luck with everything.
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Thank you, TBM. 🙂
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And so it goes…
Truer words were never spoken (especially about house projects!)
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So true, Marie. 🙂
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I wanted a pantry. 11 years later our house is finished…with a new laundry room, new breakfast room, new master bathroom…and it turns out…every single wall moved. In the house. I feel your pain.
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Thank you, Dawn. 🙂 Every single wall? Wow. That’s a lot of renovating.
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Love all of the boggy, tree photos, Robin. We’ve been swamped here, as well. You have my empathy–that’s for sure.
Hugs from Ecuador,
Kathy
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Thanks, Kathy. 🙂
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It’s not easy,I agree it’s a very exhausting task, but very exciting 🙂 Love these tree photos!
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Thank you, Amy. 🙂
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Ah, Robin, your Barbara Hurd quotes take me back to April of 2012, when we went with our son and his family to visit Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. The very next day I found a used copy of her book at a flea market. I love swamps, too – I grew up on Cedar Swamp Road and the swamp was in the woods behind our house… the one in Connecticut so different than the one in Georgia. I love the reflections you captured!
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Thank you, Barbara. 🙂
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I love these photos, especially the first and the last!
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Thanks, Shirley. 🙂
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