Deepwater Blooming

I took these last week while visiting my parents and intended to post them days ago.

Sigh.

That's just the way it's been lately.

(Deepwater is the name of the neighborhood I grew up in, by the way.)

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off they sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

Wisteria dripped from thick vines woven through a trellis on the back porch.

Morning Glories turned the chain link fence into a work of art.

My grandmother planted these brilliant azaleas in the front of the house. 

They shout SPRING IS HERE!

Wisteria petals dotted the patio table. 

So delicate.

These are blossoms on a Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow plant. 

The petals change from purple to lavender to white. 

Amazing and gorgeous!

Just a carpet of tiny yellow flowers decorating a field in the middle of the neighborhood where all of the schools are located.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. 

I'm spinning in circles again, but will try to come around visiting everyone this week!

P.S.
My friend was able to recover my lost NEF files, by the way. He used a program called Rescue Pro by Sandisk. Whew! I'll be eternally grateful to him for taking the time to retrieve them and help me learn a little more about photo files. (And all it cost me was a 12-pack of Budweiser!)

Check out his beautiful website and if you have friends getting married in the Austin area, send them his way: Bruce Coville Photography

Deepwater in Color

I spent a weekend back in my childhood neighborhood

where shaded streets meander ever outward from a garden of schools planted in an open field,

like petals on a flower expand outward from the pistil.

On Sunday I laced up my running shoes and hit a path that circles through the field, connecting the campuses.

All around me color popped from the green grass, 

flowers I once took for granted because I saw them spring after spring after spring. 

Except primroses - they inspired my wedding colors.

I never took them for granted.

 Still so lovely...

My parents' backyard also exploded with color

from wisteria 

from a yesterday, today and tomorrow bush

and from tiny pink blossoms, nestled in the grass.

This fig tree has guarded the back fence for as long as I can remember, 

an offspring of one in my great- grandmother's garden.

I found tons to capture in my camera, just by stepping out into the yard. 

Not all of the color was from nature, but it was interesting, nonetheless, like this laundry tree in an adjoining yard...

Deepwater, in black and white

Walking through my childhood neighborhood always triggers mixed feelings...I'm flooded by memories, but the wear and tear of the years can't be disguised by memories turned rosy, filtered by time...

Where you just see a boarded up, run down house, I see myself telling jokes with my first best friend Ricky in the courtyard (before the faux Spanish re-do) and reading "The Little House" for the very first time in his mom's beauty shop (the center section)...
She gave me the book; I still have it. I treasure it and the memory.
But as much as I'd like to, I can't ignore the boarded windows. The emptiness. The neglect. And it makes me sad.

That's the story of Deepwater, and why I chose to post these photos in black and white; as I walked, I saw the neighborhood through two sets of eyes, past and present...

For me, the next two photos do a good job of depicting Deepwater as it is right now, a neighborhood straddling the past and the present..
...the first, an empty lot where the childhood home of my friend Brad once stood...

...and the second, a brand new picket fence bordering a sidewalk that has felt the weight of children's feet for almost 60 years...

Such a contrast, and the first one breaks my heart. But I feel that together they depict, more than anything, that this is a neighborhood in transition...faded in spots...perhaps even dead in spots,  but overall still clinging to life, refusing to give in to time.

While some houses, like Brad's and Ricky's, are boarded up or torn down, others have been given facelifts and corrective surgery, taking decades off of their appearance; children still ride their bikes, play basketball, walk to school...creating their own Deepwater memories.

For that, I am grateful.