The Road Not Taken

These are the lily studies,



I will have to rephotograph the red lilies, the shot came out a bit blurry. The idea of the red lilies painting was better than the execution and I am not sure what I don't like. Red watercolor can be difficult, you can lay down what seems like a brilliant red and when it dries, it fades, add a bit of blue for shadow and you can easily end up with an almost black that does not exist in nature. I liked the dark rust door and the red lilies and the white fence. Hmm.

It is so humid here that this morning after my shower I actually turned on the bathroom fan. I never turn on any bathroom fan, they make too much noise. I felt really grateful that I did not choose Austin, Texas, because I am sure the temporary humidity here pales in comparison to Austin. Dry weather is back on Wednesday.

Last night the thunderstorm came in around 9 pm with big thunder, lightning, wind, and rain. Spit made it for under the bed and Cruiser under the coffee table. I was standing looking out my front window, wondering if I should move my car because my street tree has a branch that arches over where I park and I'm sure that branch is not coming down anytime soon, but I cannot afford for my car to get flattened, and I saw Tia. Kurt wasn't home and the thunder sent her over her own fence and scurrying back and forth between his yard and Sarah and Joe's yard looking for shelter and company. As soon as I opened my door, she was headed inside, she was having no part of the lonely shelter of the porch, so I took her over to Sarah and Joe's, where she ran in even faster than she tried at my house. My neighbor's cats have experience with Tia, mine do not and were terrorized enough.

The next enlightenment topic is Independence, with a poem by Robert Frost,

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I'm not going to comment, since the meaning is obvious and the poem well known, but I forgot the part about never being able to come back and try the road more traveled. Once you pick the road less traveled you are on it, there is no going back, and I think that it is interesting that Frost named his poem after the road not taken, the more traveled road, as if the poem was about that longing to go back, even though not choosing it made all the difference.