Welcome to my blog Upstate Girl, (a.k.a Follow Your Bliss Part II), I am an independently published author. This blog is all about writing and the stuff that inspires me to write, the joys and obstacles that come along with the writer's life, and my fascination with the psychology of people and what makes them tick...the human condition, as is...and my love for words, playing with them and making sense of them...and I throw in a few photos from my acre of the world just to make things pretty...sometimes there are things I have no words for, only pictures will do.

*Copyright notice* All photos, writing, and artwork are mine (
© Laura J. Wellner), unless otherwise noted, please be a peach, if you'd like to use my work for a project or you just love it and must have it, message me and we'll work out the details...it's simple...JUST ASK, please.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Morning glory days...

You know it's the end of summer when these sky colored flowers bloom! Morning Glories have fascinated me since I was very young... I haven't had much luck growing them for a few years because of certain little bunnies seem to love eating the seedlings (but not the purple ones of which I have plenty!) or the seeds themselves have been duds (and some times they bloom the smaller purple.) These I rescued from the wee hungry bunny and kept them out of reach on the porch table until they became a less tempting size, now they're growing in an enamel bowl, climbing on a trellis made from old lath from one of our deconstruction projects in the house... I've been going through the photos that I've taken over the last two three weeks, and these were the prettiest, and seem to speak of a time of year that is winding down... lilacs are spring, morning glories are fall...


My garden is a wreck ever since that big blow we had when the last tropical storm ripped through here, today we have residual wind and clouds from Earl, it feels fall-like, in the 60's... yesterday was 90.


These two cluttered together during the early morning bloom...


This photo was taken just yesterday morning... I was shuffling around like an old woman and had a tough time keeping the camera steady... I've been having a great deal of trouble with my FMS lately, been over-doing things again, but that's my own fault, I just can't sit and let others do the work, and since I do my best to maintain my flexibility I have a false sense of "I can do it" and bang, my body is on fire by 3PM and my head is spinning, ears ringing, my stomach queasy, and all I want to do is immerse myself in a hot bath and go to bed... so I'm hoping to get lots of rest this long weekend to combat the aches and fatigue...

My new novel, The Fractured Hues of White Light, received its first bad review, a two star at Goodreads.com from one of the winners of the giveaway that I did there... it's unfortunate that giveaways tend to be random selection, so there's no telling who will be reviewing the book, and they don't necessarily attempt to match the book with an appropriate reader who would like it (or the people who sign up for the giveaway don't make the effort to research the book first before committing to the giveaway... I don't know, I'm a fussy enough reader that I would do my homework by checking the 'Look Inside' feature at Amazon to read a sample of the book to see if the writing interests me.) ...Anyway... the book wasn't the reader's cup o' tea and she said so in so many words...that's okay, it's part of the business, I can deal with that...you can't please everybody. This sort of review can either be good because it will warn off readers who share her book biases... or it will be bad because it will warn off readers who might be pleasantly surprised to read a book outside their comfort zone. Who knows. I'm running a second giveaway at Goodreads that ends on September 30th, and again, I'll hope for the best that I will get readers who will enjoy the book for what it is...

Even tho' this one is just a tad blurry, I still love the shapes in it, the movement...makes me think of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting...

6 comments:

ReUse Long Island said...

Great Blog. Was wondering if the name of your Blog is a play on Billy Joel's Uptown Girl?

Laura J. Wellner (author pseudonym Laura J. W. Ryan) said...

Yup, being a New Yorker, but not a NY,NY New Yorker, I had to make the distinction, because we in Upstate are the forgotten part of New York... but we are the frozen tundra that makes the news during snow storms, the Erie Canal was once one of the Wonders of the World, and then there's the rolling drumlins of Upstate New York, and the Adirondack Mountains, one of the largest state parks in the country. I'm in good company up here, lots of great writers come from the land of gray skies, Joyce Carol Oates, George Saunders, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolf to name a few...many from my alma mater, Syracuse University...(but I studied painting and art history there, not writing)... and Billy Joel is one of the University's biggest fans... so all are tied in neatly...

:)

Goodness knows, I wouldn't fit in as an Uptown Girl...

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!

Pat said...

The photos captured my mind and the thought came unbidden of Georgia O'Keefe. The way she tried to see the inside of nature is how I see your photos and your spirit.
And "you can't please allthe people all of the time". You seem to please a lot!

Gina said...

very Georgia O'Keefe (ish) ... luverly >>> Gina

Anonymous said...

EXCELLENT studies of morning glories - and i have seen georgia o'keefe's paintings up close - ah, they are better as smaller studies in my small opinion.
what is one trying to say when they draw or photograph a flower? i have yet to successfully paint one....

gabriel said...

Stunning photos of the morning glories - I thought I'd stumbled upon a close-up of an O'Keeffe - Thank you especially for that first, sublime shot.