Skywatch Friday

Wind blown clouds and a pretty Saturday sunset in the Similkameen

For more lovely skies from hither and yon visit here at Skywatch Friday.

ABC Wednesday

The letter this week is zig-zagging Z

Z stands for Zither

The Zither is a musical stringed instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, northwestern Croatia, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and regions of southern Asia, including China.

In modern entertainment the zither is most famous for its use in the film, The Third Man where Anton Karas composed and played this familiar theme. 


And here he plays it again for your enjoyment.....





For more takes on the letter Z (z)lither on over to ABC Wednesday here with thanks to all those who participate and those who organize this long-standing meme.  Who's for A again!

Monday's Mosaic

We go to a party;  the congregation surprises me;  I am wide-eyed at what big gusts of wind can do;  another wheelbarrow full of produce from tidying the garden;  the weekend has been pleasant but hot!

Charles (on the left) smirks a little as I snap a picture of him and another old time singer at the pot-luck and singing session on Sunday night.

The weatherman gave us an option, - heat, mosquitoes, or a gusty wind that blew hats off and left empty chairs lying on the grass.  A windy but pleasant evening amongst friends and fellow singers.  I do not count myself amongst the good singers as I require ample support on both sides to enable me to carry a melody in the manner it deserves.  But Charles is a fine singer, and has a sweet and true voice.

We have a motley crew of singers at church.  They hold old familiar tunes close to their hearts and can get quite testy if the picker-of-hymns surprises them with new melodies.  And so I was quite apprehensive when the itinerant lay leader who was to take yesterday's service chose an unfamiliar hymn to open the worship.......
However, she was confident that if she sang the first verse everyone would sing along on the other three.  Oh yes, I thought (with some misgivings)!

However, she had a lovely strong voice, and the hymn was really quite appealing, so we got through the first verse and then surprisingly the congregation joined in with some enthusiasm and by the time they got to where the Amen would be if they still sang Amen after hymns, they were all smiling pleasantly and agreed that it was a tune they would like to put on the Sacred Familiar List.

A word about the wind that kept us cool and mosquito free last night....when we came home there was only a breeze on the hill, so we opened doors and windows to let the cool breezes in.  However before long  the breezes were punctuated by great gusts of wind that whirled around the house accompanied by loud noises and bangs.  We rushed to close the windows and any doors that had not already slammed shut.  In the kitchen, where the upright paper towel holder sat in front of an open window, I found a great billowy mound of paper toweling piled on the floor where the wind had caught the edge of the paper on the holder and twirled the paper around until the holder was empty.  There are mischief makers everywhere!

The wind was still perverse and erratic this morning when we rose early and opened up the house again to cool, fresh air.  This time the imps that ride the wind blew in and scattered a basket of potpourri, leaving a carpet covered with dried rose buds and petals, yellow daisies and bits and pieces of other flowers that I cannot bear to throw away - much to Charles' chagrin.  All of which leaves me to believe that it was HIM that opened the dining room window where the basket of dried flowers sit!!!

This did not deter me from going out into the garden early and gathering another collection of chick grass, newly sprung violets, visitors from the Chinese Lantern Underground Railway and a little pail of dead headed roses to add to the potpourri!!!

A night out.......

Since getting ancient we favor evenings with the rocking chair, the knitting, a little TV to encourage dozing, a game or two of Free Cell and a bit of surfing on the Internet.

But last night we were treated to a most marvelous evening - dinner at the Dream Cafe with our oldest son and his wife, and afterwards a performance by Boogie Woogie pianist Michael Kaeshammer, drummer Mark McLean and bass Marc Rodgers.

We had a lovely drive to Penticton, - incredible greens through the pass, - the yellowy green of the lake glittering in the evening sun, the brightness of the surrounding trees, that have flourished in the cool June weather, and the pale, pale green of the grasses along the lakeshore.

I didn't have my camera, - but never mind - enjoy the concert. Ignore the three instrumentalists in the back, - the Dream Cafe is not big enough to hold them, but the trio were remarkably attuned to each other and great entertainers.

It was a lovely present for which we send hugs and kisses and many thanks.

Skywatch Friday

Sunday evening skies in the Similkameen

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West:

the fair, frail palaces, the fading Alps and archipelagoes

and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.  Thomas Aldrich

For more beautiful skies from around the world visit here, at Skywatch Friday

ABC Wednesday

The letter this week is Y

Y is for Yogurt

Until a decade ago Yogurt was the' plain Jane' of the dairy family, but now it has assumed Star Quality with so many health conscious people acknowledging its benefits.

And with the advent of Frozen Yogurt as a dessert its wonderful creamy texture and the great variety of flavours have made it a splendid way to replace all the calories in Ice Cream, - at least at our house.

So what kind of frozen yogurt will you have today?, - Capuccino, Peach and Almond, Deep Dutch Chocolate, Wild, Wild Berry, Maple Walnut, Nanaimo Bar - all exotic and sweet to the taste.

Or perhaps you will  choose an unfrozen yogurt, - the one that makes me weak at the knees - Lemon Meringue!

Can you imagine folding these luscious lemon meringues  into a carton of yogurt and then trying to put it back into the fridge before every delicious morsel is scraped from the bottom of the container!!

I could tell you how to make homemade yogurt, but instead here is a recipe for a Lemon Meringue Loaf that should delight your taste buds.

In a large bowl combine 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 4 tsps of baking powder, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tbsp of grated lemon rind, whisking all ingredients until well blended.

In a separate bowl combine 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, 4 large beaten eggs, 3 tbsps of lemon juice and 1 1/4 cups of lemon meringue yogurt, plus 1/2 cup of milk.

Mix the dry and wet mixtures together, just until combined, - pour the batter into 2 greased leaf pans and bake in a 350F oven for 30 to 35 minutes.

Glaze it with 1/4 cup of sugar, 3 tbsps of lemon juice and 2 tbsps of lemon rind, brought to a boil and cooked for two minutes.

Fabulous!

For more examples of the letter Y click here to go to ABC Wednesday.

The Devious Ways of Blogging

When I went to post my entry to Skywatch Friday I discovered that the Titivillus* had been causing havoc with my ability to compose anything new.

* Titivillus, the Patron Demon of Scribes who have morphed over the centuries into The Typo Demon, and now, it appears take great delight in messing around with computer programs causing the modern scribe to become very wily in their search to bypass the mischief makers.

I finally discovered that I was able to use 'Edit' and so I published a blank post, and now I am editing it and imagine the Titivillus dancing with rage.

First let me show you the fiery sky that brought everyone outdoors to ooh and ahh last Monday.

During the week we slid into July, still with the cool and showery weather that the gardens are loving this year.
I swear the Shasta Daisies are as tall as the proverbial elephants ear.

I cut down the Delphinium and will watch for them to bloom again in September and October.  The Oriental Poppies are a tangled mess of sodden leaves and great large seed heads.  I decided to forego the seed heads in order to clean the plants and make way for a second blooming in the fall.  And the roses are coming to the end of their first flush and provide continual fodder for deadheading.

I love the way the garden changes, almost imperceptibly, - one plant finishes and another blooms overnight.  It is the day of the Bee Balm and the Shastas and the Lilies, with a few shaggy hollyhocks smiling smugly at those in the family who are not enamoured of them.

Out the back the volunteer wildflowers make a gay pictures as they sway and bow in the breezes that have been blowing.  Individually they are delicate in their silken beauty, and I plan to make a little slideshow to feast on when November comes and the days are dreary.

And the ubiquitous hollyhock!

We went to a dear friend's ninetieth birthday party and I learned how to make a delicious icing from instant pudding, whipping cream and milk....

And Barbara Crafton posted an inviting recipe for home made bread when it is too warm to bake which I will tell you about when the hot days come.  Next week, perhaps, according to the weather man.

Even as they fade the poppies are heartbreakingly beautiful......

As is the Abraham Darby rose.....

If I can continue to outwit the Titivillus I will be back!  

ABC Wednesday

The letter X

X is for Xanadu

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree,
And here with forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!


Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an excerpt

lKubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816. According to Coleridge's "Preface" to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium influenced dream after reading a work describing the Tartar king, Kublai Khan.. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by an individual from Porlock. The poem could not be completed according to its original 200-300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. Although the specific details of Coleridge's "Preface" are debatable, he most likely composed Kubla Khan during autumn 1797 and let it lay unpublished and kept to private readings until 1816 when, on the prompting by George Gordon Byron, it was made available to the public. - from Wikipedia

In modern times the poem inspired a 1980 romantic musical directed by Robert Greenwood and starring Olivia Newton John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly.  XANADU is the Chinese province where Khan established his enchanted pleasure garden.

For other takes on the letter X, well X marks the spot where you should hop over to ABC Wednesday.

A recent report from the Official Inspector of Rural Lines Instituted and Maintained by the Chinese Lantern Underground Railway.....

I am out in the garden deadheading roses and pushing aside this great vibrant growth in an attempt to clear the garden paths that were first such an important part of ny original penciled dream plan - beautiful artistic stepping stones (that I have since discovered cost an arm and a leg) winding through the garden, separating the delphinium from the bee balm and the roses from the lilies, - leading through scented plots of nicotiana and spidery cleome.

Alas, can you find them - these beautiful orderly pathways....

A marvelous garden for a cat's meandering, through shady undergrowth (chickweed)  and errant sweet alysum that tickles a cat's whiskers with delightful fragrance.

After a great deal of staking and pruning it is possible to corral the most vigorous and splendid plants, but the shoots that dismount from the Chinese Lantern Underground Railway Stations and push their way up through daisies and peonies and poppies and any other plant that takes their fancy are impossible to control.  They tower above the peonies and shade the Sweet William, and much as I love the beautiful orange lanterns they produce in the fall, a whole garden of them is just too much.  Their railway lines are long, straight white pencil thin roots - miles and miles of them that traverse the garden, back and forth, back and forth,  and sometimes crosswise.

It is a lethal Corporation, and one intent on establishing itself in the vicinity of anyone who innocently plants and tends this vagabond who goes under the name of Physalis.  Well organized too, as I am sure the Company maintains an army of Inspectors who ensure that the line runs efficiently and enthusiastically.

I am led to believe this by a small scrap of paper I found in the garden whereon it was noted, in tiny cramped handwriting, that the Line was being vandalized repeatedly by a bedraggled human who searches out the various stopping stations and destroys the lovely green shoots who depart the train and who want nothing more than peaceful co-existence with the other inhabitants of the garden, and to light up their brilliant orange lanterns when Fall comes, and with it the more sombre colours.

Should I feel guilty?

Skywatch Friday

Thunderheads in the Similkameen on Saturday, the 19th of June.

In the end it was all a big bluff, - the clouds went thither and the skies grew friendly again.

For more interesting skies from around the world visit Skywatch Friday here.

ABC Wednesday

The letter this week is W

And I have turned to Sesame Street once again and one of their interpretations of the Letter W.

Enjoy.....



If you want to hear about more of the wonderful letters that start with W, like wind and wave and who and why and where and whither make your Way to to ABC Wednesday, Which is found Here.

Where, oh where did this glorious jewel of a day come from. 

The weather forecast said clouds and showers, but this morning I was first up and 'what to my wondering eyes did appear' but an upside down bowl of pure blue with just a few wisps of white like the remnants of whipped meringue dropped from a heavenly spoon.

After turning on the percolator the camera and I flew down the steps and into the garden.  Such bliss, - faint fragrances, long shadows and poppies shimmering in the morning sun.

Around in the shaded borders the delicate volunteers that have taken up residence crowd

 together in delicate cheerfulness.

The Abraham Darby catches the morning rays

The lovely new yellow rose lies shaded under its bright green leaves

A few new Stargazers open their petals to the sun

Down the path a little way, and the remnants of the peonies gathers itself together

 for a surprise day of sunshine.

The Philadelphia Orange flings its creamy blossoms against the heavenly bowl

I stop to admire the last of the iris to bloom 

and then to go in and retrieve a cup of fresh perked coffee to enjoy with

the quietness, the lovely mystical air of the morning garden

and the wonderful serendipity of this gift of sunshine

amidst days of lowering clouds and showers.

Skywatch Friday

Variable Similkameen Skies

Sunday evening, as the sun slipped away the skies to the north resembled an approaching forest fire....

The next morning blue sky and pure white clouds promised a fine day.....

By mid-afternoon things were looking troublesome to the south ....

Though the evening sun in the west lit the pasture a few miles to the south it was dark and foreboding.

and it's been raining off and on ever since!   The Optomist  amongst us watches the cherries ripen and knows by the time they are ready to pick the skies will have unloaded all their moisture and sunny cherry picking weather will be with us again....

For more worldly skies visit here at Skywatch Friday.

ABC Wednesday

The letter this week is the veritable V

V is for Vanity

One of the Seven Deadly Sins.

To paraphrase Wikipedia, Vanity is the conviction that one's own attractiveness to others exceeds reality.

This was not always the meaning of Vanity, - at one time before the 14th century it merely meant futility, and perhaps in the end that is what self idolatry is all about.

"The stories of Lucifer, Narcissus, and others attend to a pernicious aspect of vanity" - resulting in one becoming divorced from the graces of God(s).

Two famous painting depict the peculiar self-pride that is vanity, one by Frank Cadogan Cowper and the other by Titian.

Cowper

Titian

And poor Narcissus "As divine punishment he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, not realizing it was merely an image, and he wasted away to death, not being able to leave the beauty of his own reflection."

But perhaps the picture that most morbidly depicts the reality of Vanity  is that of C. Allan Gilbert.

His picture is an optical illusion in which what appears to be a large grinning skull reveals itself to be a young woman gazing at her reflection in the mirror, reminding us that the passage of years will rob one of shallow vainglory.

An unsettling thought, but one that speaks to the virtues of humility and its comfort in old age.....

I am sure there are more cheerful aspects for the letter V at ABC Wednesday and you can visit them by clicking Here.