Rain-dappled - Missoula, Montana

"Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then." - Garrison Keillor

Good Night For Ice Cream - Missoula, Montana

Evening's golden gloaming is the perfect time to walk downtown Missoula's Higgins Avenue toward Sweet Peaks Ice Cream, my fave venue for locally sourced, ever-changing wunderkind flavours. 

Recent samplings included Moscow Mule, Raspberry Beet, Licorice Chocolate Fleck, Orange Cardamom, Rhubarb Swirl, Salty Caramel, Huckleberry, & Orange Juice Sorbet. 

(Full disclosure: While I HAVE been there three times in the past seven days, I did NOT have a scoop of ALL those flavours. Rather, I went with people amenable to  trading a taste, plus added the influential magic words, 'I'm buying!')

After The Rain - Lily Of The Valley - Potomac, Montana

"...Whisper of wishes and worries subside

Soft is the raiment of midnight’s rain-tide

Seeping its sigh to the core of the soul..." 

- from "Autumn Morning After Midnight Rain..." by Janet Martin

Read all the lush lines of this summer rain poem here.

Future View - Missoula, Montana

"The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it--for a little while." -Willa Cather, 'O Pioneers!'

Alley Gold - Missoula, Montana

"But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Morning Glory - Missoula, Montana

"I want to start my day with the earnestness of the morning glory, the way it's blossoms open with the sunrise, ready to shine no matter what." - Sarah Jio, 'Morning Glory'

Global Graffiti - Missoula, Montana

"Weeds are nature's graffiti." ~ Janice Maeditere

Wild Rose About Town - Missoula, Montana

"...Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose looming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade..."

- from The Wild Rose, by Wendell Berry