Surrounded by blue

Blue is September's color for the photo challenge that artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth have inspired these last several months. For many years I have thought of blue as my least favorite color, yet I do like many shades of blue. My first pair of starter earrings, chosen at age nine, were set with sapphires, and I remember consciously switching my favorite color to blue while watching fireworks on the Fourth of July the summer I was thirteen. Since college I have been partial to tubes of Prussian Blue oil paint, and the depth of blue at twilight still takes my breath away...

As with 'ORANGE', 'YELLOW' & 'GREEN', this month's selection of photos also features Venice. At the top of the page is an all-time favorite view of the lagoon...I just love all of the sparkles that appear when the sun is behind the water. Next are a few sets gathered from past visits, and they are followed by several more from our beach stay on the island of Lido last month...this is actually the first chance I've had to look through them properly. Some were shot with an eye toward this month's color, but out there on the eastern edge of the island, with a direct view of the sea, you can hardly escape all of the blue! (And, coincidentally, the public beach where we rented umbrellas/chaise lounges was called Blue Moon...)

It was a truly wonderful, restorative trip. On the chaise lounge next to me, my daughter read literature assigned as summer reading & guitar magazines, reviewed drumming rhythms and listened to hours and hours of music. But I found that following the coming and going of the gentle waves held my attention much of the time.

I've been very behind with my blog-following and blog-writing in the last month or so, and am happy that the latest photo challenge has given me a little push to put together a new entry (the followup to GREEN that I had mentioned last time has been hovering at 'almost-ready', but then BLUE snuck up on me). I hope to begin catching up again soon...autumn tends to have that effect—of getting things back on track again—I think.

And below is one last image, this time of the Arno (which is not blue as often as one might think a river should be!).

Happy autumn to those of you above the equator (and lucky those of you enjoying spring!)...

{Please see the guidelines here if you'd like to participate in the color-themed photo challenge in future. October's color will be 'INDIGO'.}