One of the things I’ve learned about mindfulness, is how looking at things up close can keep me in the moment. Recently I’ve been taking photos of things around my yard and really seeing things up close.

It’s been a lot of fun and giving me ideas about how patterns in nature are mimicked in our human-made world.

I have a thing for patterns. I love to explore them in my painting.

And here’s a feather I added to one of my patterned watercolor designs.

Before I was retired and living in Baja Sur, I seldom took the time to stop and look closer. Now I can hardly go anywhere without digging in deeper.

The details are surprising. I’ve found a lot of uneven numbers show up in flower petals. Not always, but often.

I am mesmerized by the patterns in the palm and cactus plants.

Looking at things with the perspective so zoomed in, sparks my imagination for abstraction in my painting too.

The birds are full of patterns too.

This guy is a Grey Thrasher and is only found in Baja California. I never would have known that, had I not used my Cornell bird identification app. I keep learning! While this bird is not that colorful, his breast is definitely in my pattern wheelhouse. I use a lot of dots in my paintings too.

Hibiscus are fascinating and this detailed shot of the stamen will help me to capture it in watercolor.

This reminds me of curly hair. It’s part of the blossom that comes out of the Washingtonian Palm tree.

I turned the urchin skeleton right side up for this shot.

I’ve been dehydrating a lot of fruit lately. This is from one of the oranges I did to add to our Mocktails we have every evening. I love the patterns in the cut orange.

Thanks for stopping by. I’m going to leave you with a photo I took of the sun in the clouds.