Walking the dogs in April

[summer_jackel]

It's a beautiful time of year, with all the newness and green, the little flowers lifting their heads everywhere, that very specific taste the air has in spring. The trees are having sex all over the place, and the bigleaf maple out front dusts my truck and everything in the vicinity with enough golden pollen that, when I move the tarp off of the woodpile, it falls to fill my cupped palm with softness, to fill less tangible parts of me with delight. It's young. Full of promise and life and the threat of hope.

I am pretty wounded. It's hard to admit, and I don't talk about it much, but I suppose breakups aren't fun for anyone, and I accept that my healing process will be a long one. At least it feels like a healing process now. I find it so strange how heartbreak, something I always dismissed as a thoughtless metaphor of popular culture, is literal: an ache in the chest, the little ball of pain behind the shoulder that unfolds like a bloom when one acknowledges it.

I tend to be the kind of person who does not bond, or love, or whatever you want to call it easily; once given, change to a lesser degree of trust is yet slower and more difficult. But I'm still here, still breathing, still alive in this glorious and shivering newness of the year. Several scars the warier, I am nonetheless so full of gratitude for all of the blessings bestowed upon me by this green and living world, alive, humbled by her beauty, receptive. Life is short and unfair and full of pain. But it is spring, and the daffodils are blooming, even though they are brief.





Oz is easily moved around using a dowel perch now, and is becoming more trusting. He has been a really rewarding little guy to work with.




Awww, little conure face.


Wood sorrel in bloom.


Coba! The little guy is growing up so prettily.


What is Rogue thinking about in this pic?








I love it when Pryde and Rogue greet each other. Melt.




Happy, dirty dog


Tiger in a jungle.




Tiger's dog.






Magic!


As you can see, Coba's coat is coming in.




My backyard


I love the texture of everyone's fur in these, which are a couple of weeks older.

Comments

[a-rowan-dryad.livejournal.com]

How on earth do you handle the sheer bliss that is your daily life? I mean serious, I know it isn't easy to take care of my three cats so I can only guess at the amount of work your zoo takes... but still. The cute, the cuddles, the smiles... wow.

[yathin.livejournal.com]

Beautiful photographs! I love the expressions on the dogs!


> I tend to be the kind of person who does...

I probably don't understand the whole context, but I believe there's so much joy in nature that bad things are much easier to forget and forgive when in spending time in the realm of wilderness and wildlife. I obviously don't understand a thing about breakups or the healing process, but I wish you all the best. You have the best company in the world living with you!

[troubleagain.livejournal.com]

I tend to find a lot of healing in nature. My animals, my garden....and most of all, a trip to the shore....they really help me heal whatever my pain is.

Your photos are EXcellent.

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

During the most painful years of my life, in my younger years, it was my time spent in nature that kept me alive. Mostly, the birds I saw and spent so many fond spare hours with, and the (non-threatening) people that birding brought me into contact with.

Those birds are what shaped my soul. And to this day, I firmly believe, bizzare as it sounds, that I have low grade avian empathy -- I used to have quite a talent at drawing little birds to myself, and to some extent still do. Got Maggock's social little conure quite enamoured of me, too. :>