Basket of Beauty

Well, I'm thinking this is my 4 yr bliperversary... but the truth is, have been far too busy to plan anything - slightly unexpected house guests, and cooking for Bia's 52nd birthday, and visiting a neighbour who had a stroke while we were away - but this photo says a lot about Blip for me...

For a start, the colours! and that it feels like a basket of love 'specially for me, and yet it's just the vine leaves outside my bedroom window, on the neighbour's scruffy wall, on a dull, rainy morning.

Blip, for me, is above all, a way of seeing everyday beauty, wherever I am, however I'm feeling - and being grateful, and learning to love the place I've been put - see Genesis 2:8, if you have a Bible to hand.

Started this journal at the instigation of my goddaughter, Hamp5on, at a very low point in my life, having left a life I loved in the Sertão of NE Brazil, and feeling like there was nothing worth photographing anymore... And now, here I am again, having learned to love suburbia in Sutton Coldfield, UK, leaving it all, and learning once more, to love yet another place - the Alentejo in Portugal.

And daily blipping is the discipline that keeps me at it, each new day, looking for, noticing, and recording, the beauty that my God has gifted me with on this day.

(As a celebration, have joined Flickr - I think this will take you to two others I took today - our Sunday morning grapefruit in an Alentejano bowl, and a happy one of Bia singing Happy Birthday.)