July 10th, 2012

Texture Tuesday submission

A spring morning at Ginty's Pond.  After a while a nesting

pair of Mallards and a family of Racoons  enlivened the waters

but the resident turtles stayed under their log home.

Kim's Phoebe at Multiply 41% and

Luminous Soft Light at 46%

ABC Wednesday
July 10th, 2012

Z is the letter for this week, and we are once more through the alphabet with hundreds of

 wonderful postings to this great meme.

Z is for Zillah

Ah yes, Zillah, who drank too much gin - the last of the Gashlelycrumb Tinies, created by Edward Corey

And Zillah, Dorcas's faithful servant in Lark Rise to Candleford

Zillah, in Genesis, was one of the wives of Cain's descendant, Lamech

and the mother of Tubalcain and Naamah

I have no pictures, - you will have to use your imagination!!

However, somehow this biblical Zillah has become one with 

Zillah, a second generation Vampire from White Wolf Wiki,  (as far as I can understand)

and some of you may have read or seen this fantasy character

or played the game.

But,  Wikipedia has a picture of Zillah, a vampire from The Lost Souls,

written by Poppy Z. Brite

Just a few hundred miles from the Canada-USA border in Yakima County

I came upon pictures of the town of Zillah, named after

Zillah Oakes, who cried so pitifully when she was being moved to this town with her family

that her father promised to name the town after her, if she would just stop crying.

I read that in Wikipedia!!!

It is vineyard country, that probably at one time was full of apple orchards. and an old 

picture of the town looks very much like Keremeos in early days.

A remnant of those olden days in Zillah is an historical building.

The Teapot Dome Gas Station

It was built in the 1920's as a gas station, and a reminder of the Teapot Dome scandal, originally

located on the outskirts of town, but the building was moved into the center of Zillah

where it is now used as a Visitor's Information Centre. (Center) 

Zillah, a lovely, musical name that I was not familiar with before,

but find slipping off my tongue quite pleasantly.

For more Z's click here, with many thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt for originating this meme

and to all her Zany helpers who assist in keeping it fresh and fun.

July 8th, 2012

By cool Siloam's shady rill
how sweet the lily grows
How sweet the breath beneath the hill
of Sharon's dewy rose.

Richard Heber

It is the time of the lilies, and they are so beautiful here in the town garden, and in the

garden on the hill.

Mary Oliver writes endearingly of the Lily, - of all lilies

I have been thinking

about living

like the lilies

that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall

in the edge of the wind,

and have no shelter

from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.

Still I would like to be

as wonderful

as the old idea.

But if I were a lily

I think I would wait all day

for the green face

of the hummingbird

to touch me.

What I mean is,

could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?

When Van Gogh

preached to the poor

of course he wanted to save someone -

most of all himself.

He wasn't a lily,

and wandering through the bright fields

only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.

I think I will always be lonely

in this world, where the cattle

graze like a black and white river -

where the vanishing lilies

melt, without protest, on their tongues -

where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

just rises and floats away.

And do you know,  it is the last two lines of this poem that touch me most, and

which I find quite sweetly enticing.

"where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

just rises and floats away.

illustration Amy Wolfe