Figs are a hallmark of the Virginia seasons for me.
Their picking has stood out as the last height-of-summer activity, and the beginning of ushering in fall.
(I have written about figs a time or two before, as seen here… And here… They have also made it on the instagram a time or two or three…)
They’ve also been the happy excuse for the visitation ties between beloved family members.
I used to bike from The Fan in Richmond to Northside to pick and revel in my Aunt and Uncle’s juicy fig offerings. In other seasons I’d drive further East to my Grandparents to partake in their riverside tree’s bounty.
Recently a friend, my first in this county I started calling home a number of years ago, offered to share her fig supply and I jumped at the chance. It had been a few years since I’d been able to steep myself in the nostalgia this fruit picking always brings up for me.
It was a happy sun-soaked, mosquito heavy afternoon.
More of nature gifts were shared, and stories swapped.
Friendship of this type is an enduring gift in all times, but especially in the midst of uncertain ones. A beautiful constancy and promise of goodness amidst a world in a heightened state of upheaval.
It is my dream to have a home, a piece of nature similar to this, with budding plants and growing gardens to offer to and share with others in the way of love and familiarity.
One day…
In the meantime, I am grateful for the yards and gardens of others so near and dear in my life who don’t mind impromptu sunkissed-barefooted-visits on hot August afternoons.
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Want to know one of the things I’ve been up to since I’ve been in Portland?
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I’ve been working with Anna of @experimentalvintage and photographing this months curated vintage rug collection!
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Can we talk about a dream job?
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Hanging out in the beautiful space of @homebodyportland, taking photos of pretty old things, surrounded by plants and inspiring bad-ass women who run their own businesses?
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Yea. I’m in my element.
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It’s such an honor to work for and with people I admire so wholeheartedly.
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Siobhan is someone who you might recognize my having talked about before here on the journal. I visited her in England last fall and took these portraits but she and I have been virtual friends for nearly eight years through our blogs and social media. She is quite definitely my favorite virtual-turned-real-life-friend and though my practice of doing that throughout my life baffles some people (you mean you’re going to somewhere you’ve never been to meet someone in person that you met online… that you don’t even know…) I have to say that it is that very openness that has invited what I would deem some of the dearest friends I have in this world.
She has taught me many things in the way of bringing artistry and beauty to all that you do (we share love and vocations with photography and knitting for one thing, though she has many other talents besides).
But one of the primary ways I’ve witnessed this is through her relationship with her daughter, Rory.
Being a mother is a thing that in most societies, defines a woman once she becomes it. All-at-once she loses her identity as anything other than Mother.
Motherhood is an incredible roll to have and embody. One I hope to have myself one day. Indeed, it is through my own spectacular Mother raising me in just the way she did that I have the view and independence I do in the world. If it weren’t for the way she helped shape my view of myself and others and the world around me, I wouldn’t view it as the miraculous and beautiful place that I do.
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There is something special about being intimately invited into people’s spaces, lives and routines in a way that photographs cannot always capture.
Though, truth be told, it is that very specific situational aspect of life that I am most often drawn to in my photography work. Capturing the raw and unposed moments that conspire within the framework of the mundane and attempting to convey the interpretation of that perceived beauty.
Raven is someone I’ve met here in New Mexico who has taught me so much about the caring for a type of animal I, admittedly, have not thought too in depth about aside from eating their eggs for breakfast most days of the week…
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I wish I remembered exactly how Jeanie Tomanek’s work came into my life.
I do remember a Winter afternoon in 2015, looking at her Etsy shop and being captivated by the elusive and etherial figures and scenes she depicted in her paintings.
I favorited nearly every single one.
I soon discovered she had an instagram and after following, would regularly click on her account, drawn time and time again to the peaceful and dreamlike imagery that, to me, conveyed this spirit of hope and resilience.
A theme she often focuses on when painting, I later learned after meeting her.
I finally purchased one of her originals, which you can see here, titled Tiny Bit of Faith, which reminded me of the great many leaps of faith I’ve taken in my life, and how each and every time I have always landed after leaping.
A thing you can forget when you are on the precipice or in mid air.
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