Gracelaw Simmons
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walecarg.bsky.social
Gracelaw Simmons
@walecarg.bsky.social
370 followers 920 following 220 posts
Worried. Former librarian and philanthropoid, longtime volunteer with Royall House and Slave Quarters in Mass. Reading novels, enjoying flora and fauna in retirement. She/her. ⭐ Please don't forget to add ALT text to your photos! ⭐
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walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Sky.

The promise of spring. Near Boston. April 2025.

#EastCoastKin
On the left is a maple tree covered in tiny yellow-green flowers, on the right a white birch just beginning to blossom, with a deeper green pine at the back. Beyond the trees is a perfect cloudless sky shading from deep blue at the top to pale turquoise. 
December 6, 2025 at 1:14 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Warmth.

Thanks to indoor warmth, forsythia branches cut in January bloom in February. 

Near Boston. 2012.

#EastCoastKin
On a table in a sunny corner, yellow forsythia flowers bloom in a clear glass vase, alongside an oregano plant in a green pot, a tower of rainbow-colored wooden blocks, and a wicker basket.
November 29, 2025 at 6:46 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Small.

Lemon verbena and planthopper. Near Boston. July 2025.

#EastCoastKin
In this close-up, a white-painted porch railing angles across the frame, with a blurred brick path beyond it. Three narrow pointed lemon verbena leaves, each about three inches long, cast sword-like shadows across the railing from the unseen morning sun to the left. A small green triangular insect -- a planthopper, looking like a jaunty tiny leaf with skinny legs -- casts its own small shadow among the leaf shadows. 
November 22, 2025 at 5:54 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Bright.

Near Boston. August 2025.

#EastCoastKin
A sun-splashed nasturtium flower in shades of orange nearly fills the frame, with small green leaves, stems, and a just-opening flower bud around it. 
November 15, 2025 at 1:46 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
Oh, of course. I hadn't made that timely connection.

I've loved seeing them along the road in your part of the world. And I recently noticed them (I think?) in a motley untended planter here in the Boston area!
Street-side planter with a few of what I think are golden California poppies, along with a sweet small lacy white flowering plant, perhaps both "volunteers!?"
November 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Evening.

It snowed all day in the Boston area on February 5, 2016. Then the storm ended, just in time for sunset in a winter wonderland!

#EastCoastKin
The narrow corner of a house and a dark tree trunk are on the far left. Most of the frame is filled with snow-covered branches. The bits of sky that show between them are pale pink. 
November 8, 2025 at 8:56 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
Norway maple that's at least 75 years old.
Towering green and gold maple tree that dwarfs the house it's behind.
November 1, 2025 at 8:48 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Autumn.

What grows up must come down! Near Boston. December 15, 2015. (View of the back yard in replies.)

#EastCoastKin
61 leaf bags and 1 barrel are lined up in rows along the curb in front of a green turreted house with bare trees around it. Christmas wreaths hang on either side of the porch stairs.
November 1, 2025 at 8:43 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Autumn.

Near Boston, Mass. October 29, 2025.

#EastCoastKin
A crabapple tree's green leaves and deep red fruit against a sugar maple tree's gold and orange fall show, with glimpses of pale blue sky beyond.
November 1, 2025 at 12:19 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Inside.

Near Boston. October 2015.

Begonia clippings rescued from an expected frost, in two of my favorite milk bottles.
Sunlight streams through a tangle of orange and red flowers and leaves in two clear glass milk bottles on a patterned tablecloth. The bottle logos read Sicomac Dairy Products, Wyckoff, N.J. and Nauset Moors Farm, Eastham, Mass.
October 25, 2025 at 12:05 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Vertical.

Royall House and Slave Quarters, Medford, Mass. July 2023.

#EastCoastKin
#HistoricPreservation
#SlaveryHistory
Tall green stalks of Common Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa) with fuzzy white flowers and round buds stand in front of the gray trunk of a towering black walnut tree and part of an 18th-century two-story brick building showing two white-framed windows.
October 19, 2025 at 9:09 AM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Vertical.

Royall House and Slave Quarters, Medford, Mass. July 2023.

#EastCoastKin #Photography #HistoricPreservation
This view of a blue 18th-century house includes both architectural and natural verticals: a three-stories-tall white pilaster on the building's corner in the center of the photo, muntins on three visible windows to its right, the end post and five pickets of a white wooden landscape fence in the foreground, tall oak tree trunks beyond the house to its left, and growing just in front of the fence, a dozen nearly vertical green spikes of black cohosh with round white buds and fuzzy white flowers. 
October 18, 2025 at 12:52 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Glow.

Ranunculus bouquet. April 2024.
Open ranunculus flower and a bud behind it that both have bright orange petals edged in red, with greenery behind them.
October 11, 2025 at 1:03 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Relax.

Wellfleet, Mass. October 2021.
A tall blue coffee mug stands on a square white table on a cement patio. Beyond it are low shrubs, then a sandy beach and Cape Cod Bay.
October 4, 2025 at 12:31 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #TheRoad.

July 16, 1954. New Jersey.

Ready to go!
In this black-and-white photo, a little girl sits behind the wheel of a child-sized pedal car, looking back over her shoulder with excitement. White print on the side of the car reads BMC Blue Streak, along with a graphic of a zooming rocket. Leafy plants fill the background. 
September 27, 2025 at 6:20 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Angles.

Near Boston. May 2022.
Bright light green fern fronds tilt at many different angles.
September 20, 2025 at 11:59 AM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Home.

Granby, Connecticut. August 1954.
A little boy is sitting on a new set of concrete stairs, petting a black-and-white tuxedo cat. The ground is the rough dirt of a construction site. The stairs lead to a white door in a light colored exterior wall. A small sign beside the door reads SOLD.
September 13, 2025 at 7:09 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
The theme of this week's #BlueSkyArtShow is #Summer.

"Look, Mommy, a sandbox!"

Nauset Light Beach, Cape Cod National Seashore, Eastham, Massachusetts. August 1990.
The photo shows the back of a white-painted raised wooden lifeguard stand on a sandy beach on a summer day. A few people are sitting in beach chairs, walking, or in the ocean surf. Two lifeguards, seen from behind, sit high in the chair, with a red-and-white cooler and a blue duffel bag on the platform at their feet, and first aid and rescue gear nearby. The only person looking at the camera is a little blonde girl wearing a flowered bathing suit and a white sun hat. There's a small shiny hoop in her hand and the yellow handle of a bucket is just visible in front of her. She's sitting below the lifeguards, beside a cement block and a couple of beer bottles tucked in a shady corner, in the square of sand created by the base of the lifeguard stand.
September 6, 2025 at 1:17 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Shiny.

Indoor begonia leaves shine in sunlight. December 2018.
Sunlight on a begonia with vibrant red flowers causes some of its glossy dark green leaves to shine. The rest of the plant and its background are in deep shadows.
August 30, 2025 at 1:20 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Skyline.

Assembly Row, Somerville, Massachusetts. July 2018.
The "A" monument in the mixed-use Assembly Square development in Somerville, Massachusetts, is a remnant of the steel-truss framework from the former Ford assembly plant that gives the neighborhood its name, repurposed as public art.  A large letter A is supported by metal uprights, framing a bright blue sky. Beyond the sculpture, a leafy green tree and several buildings obscure the horizon. A construction crane makes a diagonal red line across one building, and signs read "Caffé Nero" and "Leasing Now LiveMontaje.com." 
August 23, 2025 at 12:19 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Pieces.

Dungeness Spit, Sequim, Washington. August 1994.
A small boy with a blue hat and a wide smile looks out of a rectangular human-made opening in a pile of large sun-bleached logs. Visitors to the country's longest natural sand spit build and rebuild driftwood wind breaks and other structures on the beach.
August 16, 2025 at 2:54 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Jagged.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) against a brick wall. September 2024. Royall House and Slave Quarters, Medford, Mass.
Eight coneflower stalks against a section of 18th-century brick wall. The leaves are still green, but the flower petals have largely fallen and only the dark spiky seed heads remain. The rough hand-shaped bricks are various shades of soft pinkish brown.  The Echinacea genus is named after the Greek word for hedgehog, echinos, because of its cone-like center, which attracts butterflies, bees, and goldfinches.  The brick pattern is American bond, which alternates a row of short headers with an odd numberm of rows of long stretchers. 
August 9, 2025 at 12:49 PM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Gratitude.

Sunrise in Reykjavik, Iceland. February 2017.

I'm grateful for every sunrise: this one after a record snowfall, those I've been privileged (and up early enough!) to see over the Atlantic, and each one that peeks between the houses across the street.
Soft streaks of a backyard sunrise through a window: 20" of new-fallen snow on a shed roof and a line of snowy trees beyond.
August 2, 2025 at 11:20 AM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Alternating.

Morning sun on a porch near Boston. October 2023.
Low morning sun coming through the balusters of a porch railing creates bars of light and dark on a wooden table and the red-painted porch floor. A sprawling scented begonia on the table interrupts some of the sunlight, resulting in some deep green shaded leaves and others bright green in the light; one leaf against the railing is half dark and half light. A bit of lawn, brick sidewalk, and paved street show through the railing.
July 26, 2025 at 11:31 AM
walecarg.bsky.social
This week's #BlueSkyArtShow theme is #Smooth.

Shells found on Sanibel Island. March 1994.
An assortment of whole and partial shells, their rough edges smoothed by sea and sand.
July 19, 2025 at 1:16 PM