“Biologically speaking, blue is rare. Most examples in nature — the clear autumn sky, the blue jay’s vibrant feathers, butterfly wing spots — originate in light refraction. They are blue because of physics, not pigment. But there is no trick to the Asiatic dayflower’s hue. Its flowering may be brief, but its blue is true.”

~Excerpt from “The True Blue Asiatic Dayflower,” New York Times, by Dave Taft, September 20, 2017

Home tonight, a drive from Oak Bluffs to Chilmark, with the top down under a sky full of stars and lit by a half moon, the quiet of meeting no other cars, and the dogs home alone, greeting us by the door, peering out into the dark. This morning, hot and fresh after rain, Roaring Brook spilled into the Sound as we splashed across on our long morning walk to Great Rock Bight. No question about my swim this morning: I had to cool off in the icy salt water. On the dirt road back to the house I saw the little blue flower. Blue again - noticing blue, appreciating blue, and blue in a wildflower so rare. This one a sweet tiny beauty: later, I learn, an Asiatic Dayflower. A day flower. Short lived bloom. How lucky am I to be long lived and sixty. Yes, today, in the water, as I swam in the early morning, I thought, how glad I am for this almost year of being sixty years old, and how much I enjoy being sixty, whatever that is. I have made sixty an enjoyable age. Oh, how I grieved last summer, at 59, until I realized how glad I would be to be sixty. The grieving was about changing roles, and now I am new again. I am not the mother of young children. And tonight, as I waited for the concert, a harp player, at Featherstone, Natalie Lurie, to perform, I got a text from the youngest who needed her paper proofed. A short one. In the ten minutes before the harp I did it. A very good paper. Her first paper as a graduate student! Now I am a mother with two graduate students. The harp concert, with Frank beside me in the beautiful Featherstone gallery was sweet and peaceful and delightful. I worked on my monthly newsletter today - writing about celebrating, this August, the THIRD year of writing #NewThisDay EVERY DAY! The third year! And I was invited to read my poetry at the Lily Poetry Salon in Needham by my friend Eileen Cleary in September in Needham, nice and close to home. Blue is the color of the throat chakra:

Vishuddi, the Throat Chakra: Blue Color

The pure blue of the throat chakrais the link between the green of emotions in the heart chakra, and the indigo reasoning of the third eye chakra.