"White rabbits, white rabbits" I said to Caspar early this morning, as he was the only one awake besides Miss Callie, and she doesn't believe in such nonsense.

And Welcome to February!

We are having mild, damp weather. The clouds hang low in gloomy despondency, but in the garden things are happening!



A week ago I looked speculatively at the forsythia in the garden, and decided to break off a small bit. Popped it into a narrow container and put it on the kitchen windowsill, along with the gourds and a bit of dried flax from last summer, (which has lost almost all its heavenly blue bits).



And in the big bathroom a pot of pink tulips are promising a treat in a couple of weeks, along with the red geraniums which are just coming back into bloom





Weird old Christmas cactus bloomed in November, and now is doing an encore, but only a half-hearted effort.



Charles did a tour of the garden this morning, and the rising sap awakened in him his Master Pruner spirit! After sixty-five years and the deep down knowledge that he knows exactly what he's doing, it still makes me nervous when he gets the pruning shears in his hands and that enthusiastic gleam in his eye.

However, he is welcome to prune the forsythia sometime very soon, and I will fill the big bathtub with its branches and we will have a glorious golden froth to complement the red geraniums.

I poke and peer along the pathway, but all I have found so far are a few daffodil bulbs poking through the ground, and the Lenten Roses pushing their vibrant scarlet stubs into the balmy air.




The quail and a sharp shinned hawk take turns patrolling the garden.





What will tomorrow bring when the groundhog wakens momentarily to sniff the air for spring?????

Skywatch Friday

Two mid-summer sunrise photos from 2007.

To brighten up the despondent skies of January.






Here be more pictures of the skies of the world to bring you awe and pleasure.

Home Alone

On Wednesday Charles goes singing, and I am 'home-alone' for maybe three hours. I think about that little space of time quite earnestly, and wonder how I will spend it.

Do some cleaning? / Play some music? / Read a book? / Bake something yummy?

Last night our oldest son, (the one who plays the piano in a way I wish I could), sent me a link to a wonderful Horowitz YouTube performance of the first movement of Mozart's Sonata in C Major K330. The original performance was in Moscow in 1986 when he was 83 years old. It was so profoundly beautiful, and I went on to listen to the 2nd movement, during which the audience was shown to be as quietly enthralled as I was.

I decided I would spend my time alone with Charles' magical machine that he uses to transfer old tapes of interviews with pioneers and peers to spanking new CD's. And so I did, - the task took me along into the afternoon and I ended by ripping Horowitz's Last Recording on to my own computer, rescuing it from a shady spot on the bottom shelf that holds CD's. some of which get quite forgotten.

I had never seen Horowitz play and was impressed with his technique, - the restraint and control which yet produced emotion and drama and a 'speaking quality', as if his music was a mirror of the way he lived his life. (I read that somewhere)



It is said that "Horowitz's hand position was unusual in that the palm was often below the level of the key surface. He frequently played chords with straight fingers, and the little finger of his right hand was often curled up until it needed to play a note; to Harold C. Schonberg, “it was like a strike of a cobra.” For all the aural excitement of his playing, Horowitz rarely raised his hands higher than the piano's fallboard. His body was immobile, and his face seldom reflected anything other than intense concentration. Horowitz preferred performing on Sunday afternoons, as he felt the audience would be more well rested and attentive than during a weekday evening".

Have a listen, - I think the music is truly beautiful and captures one completely!



There, wasn't that splendid!

ABC Wednesday

B is for Blue Skies



This is quite a Beautiful rendition of Irving Berlin's Blue skies, - well worth listening to, I Believe.



And B is for Bluebirds, sitting on your shoulder, on the wing, or out by a little puddle.....



Both symbols of Bright cheer - marvelous antidotes for the January BLAHS

An Update on the Sock Project



Just starting the second sock of the second pair - establishing the habit.

I'm going to be one of those people who say, virtuously, "I just can't sit without doing something with my hands!"

Not only that, I plan to be a paragon of multi-tasking...

Have been listening to e-books while I knit in the evenings. I just finished C.S. Lewis's allegorical tale of the "Great Divorce" which he wrote in response to Blake's "Marriage between Heaven and Hell". Philosophically Lewis was trying to diffuse Blake's theory that all roads lead in the end to the same place, and that there was no advantage to choosing the high road over the low road. Interesting, but I'm not sure that Lewis is a shining light to today's society.

Now I am just beginning Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose". Both this book and "Wolf Willow" sat on our shelves for many years, but were victims of the Great Downsizing when we moved from the house we rattled around in and filled with the Great Accumulation that resulted from six children and sixty years of marriage.



I read both books a number of times, as well as Stegner's "Collected Stories", and look forward to knitting two, purling two while enjoying them both again.

When I scribbled down my own childhood memories I was mindful of the words Stegner used in the foreword to his Collected Stories concerning autobiography...

"I am not to be trusted with it. I hate the restrictiveness of facts. I can't control my impulse to rearrange, suppress, add, heighten, invent, and improve. Accuracy means less to me than suggestiveness; my memory is as much an inventer as a recorder."

Is this the mark of a great story-teller, and if so, what of truth????

Skywatch Friday

 

This year - a rare cloudless winter sky in the Similkameen.

January slipped in a preview of spring this past week, - I could have drowned myself with pleasure in the deepness of the blue, blue sky.

Most days this month have presented clouds and mist and drizzly rain - beautiful in their own way, but oh, how one eventually begins to yearn for sunshine!



For fascinating sky views world-wide visit Skywatch here.

ABC Wednesday

A is for Absent Minded!

The days slipped by and I got distracted, and now it is bedtime Wednesday evening, and I have just remembered about ABC Wednesday.

Oh dear.....

here to ABC Wednesday as they start a new round of the Alphabet.

And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

My dears,

I cannot let this gloomy day pass without telling you about yesterday.

It all started the night before, - towards midnight, when the little dog and I went out to attend to his business, we stepped outside into a nippy evening. The clouds had lifted, - only a few wisps clung to the mountaintops, and in the dark bowl above the stars were cold and brilliant.

I lingered a few moments, looking for the winter constellations, and dared to dream 'sunshine in the morning!'

Yes, yes, yes!!! The morning dawned with nary a cloud in the sky.

Slowly the blue of the sky deepened, - the snow along the ridges glistened, and the faintest hint of spring came tickling Old Man Winter's fancy, just for a few golden hours. The branches of the neighbour's peach trees took on an orangey glow as the sap responded to the sunshine.



The morning grass was frosted and white, but as the day wore on there were bright green patches, speaking of earthworms stirring underneath.





All day the blue sky continued to delight the winter-weary.



And there were SHADOWS - imagine, shadows....... Here is the red rose climber that was so badly injured last winter, reflecting itself against the wall.



I poked around in the Hellebores and found lovely crimson stubs, pushing their way through the rain soaked ground.

Towards sunset a few clouds began to gather, and when we woke this morning the mist was back and it was raining.



But yesterday lives on in my Journal of Gratitude.

I hope that where you are a little peek at spring comes to lift your spirits.

Hildred

Do you have the January Blahs???? Me too....

Close your eyes and imagine...
The sky is blue, - a few clouds drift lazily in the south. The sun shines gently, and a small breeze wafts the perfume of the garden your way......

Double Click on the picture below, - come and lose yourself in the mid summer garden.... believe it, - it is only six months away. All that wonderful, lush green growth.....




Callie the Cat is curled up in a cool spot, watching with one eye for errant mice or grasshoppers and with the other looking down the path to the sky beyond.

The fragrance of the roses is pure bliss.



The bees are a-buzzin' and the small birds sing. Would you care for a glass of lemonade?



I see that Charles is almost finished cutting the pasture, - perhaps he'll come and join us for a cool drink...



Ah, June.....

Skywatch Friday

The skies are gloomy, day after day after day, so I am reaching
into the past. These photos were taken on July 7th, 2007 from our home in the Similkameen Valley.







The clouds are quite unusual, but what really enchants me these gloomy days is the bright blue sky!

To see more wonderful skies click here and you will arrive at Skywatch Friday.

We have been traveling.


Yesterday up and over the Yellow Lake Pass to Penticton, and today through the fog and the mists and sometimes the heavy rain we found our way over the Richter Pass Road to Osoyoos.

The camera came along for the ride on both trips, but the results of my quick snaps as the car rolled along were far from satisfactory.

Yesterday we saw snow on the Pass, and low clouds.



We passed groups of enthusiastic ice fishers, enjoying the mild weather and the companionship and pleasures of the sport. It brought back memories of the days we spent with family, boring a hole through the ice, dropping in the bait, enjoying coffee and sandwiches, the tingly air and good conversation.

Today we started off with a few drops of rain spotting on the windshield, but were soon into a heavy downpour, mists that encircled the hills and fog that made visibility on the winding road quite twitchy.



We arrived safely and had a satisfying lunch with our old friend (who is now 102 plus 3 weeks) and his daughter, who once taught our children piano when she was very young, but now has pupils in Vancouver who won seven out of a possible ten silver medals in Toronto Conservatory examinations.



Lots of talk of old times, old friends, old hunting trips, old buildings, the country when it was much younger, the generations that came here before us and the ones that are following after. Charles' memory was stirred by reminiscing with our friend, who has a most amazing memory and is sharp as a tack about present day events.

It was a lovely day, despite the gloomy, wet weather. I apologize for such dour pictures and leave you a rose to compensate.



And a sunflower or two.....



It has been days and days and days since we've seen the real thing.

ABC Wednesday

Z is for Zills

The finger cymbals used in belly dancing.

Here is a video to educate you and to entertain you!



For more interpretations of the letter 'Z' zlither on over to ABC Wednesday and see what the site has to offer.

A day of Utter Delight

It certainly wasn't the weather that made it so gratifying, - nippy, windy and treacherous ice underfoot.

But the library yielded a new book by Alexander McCall Smith - 'The Lost Art of Gratitude'



and my venture into the knitting of socks on a grand scale took off most satisfactorily when I reached the heel of the first sock.



In a recent posting I spoke about this splendid idea I had for making wonderful woollen socks for all the fellows on my Christmas list. The number of socks to be made expanded to thirteen pairs. Perfect!! I like things to be mathematically orderly. Thirteen pair of socks equals twenty-six socks, and by knitting one sock each two weeks (theoretically) I should be finishing off the last sock Christmas Eve, 2010!!!! You will note I make no allowances for contingencies, - they are not allowed this year!

I am making the socks from washable wool to save the washers of socks from shrinking them and becoming martyr's to Grandma's Christmas Sock Project.

As if this were not enough to make the day notable let me show you what I received as a birthday gift from our son and daughter-in-law who live away and are wonderfully creative.



A most beautiful wooden ring!

The primary wood is magnolia.....

The centre band is Ancient Kauri, - timber that is aged from 30,000 to more than 50,000 years. It has been discovered in prehistoric forests buried at the time of the last ice age, located on the Northern Island of New Zealand.

The ring is bordered by Apple Wood and Grenadilla (African Blackwood)

It fits perfectly and I am just so pleased and honoured to have such a lovely gift.

The ring with it, in the little wooden box that David also made, is one of the first rings he made some years ago. It is aged to perfection, as is the lovely olive wood ring he made for Charles.

A sweet brooch....



and a bracelet....



David and Nicola live a rather romantic life, off the grid in the Cariboo country of British Columbia. They send their beautiful rings to all corners of the world.

Vincent, our youngest son, lives there too, and between them and their neighbours they run a sustainable logging operation to utilize the beetle infested pine wood on their property.

A simple and truly authentic way of life, and they made my day delightful!

As are the blogs they write about their way of life and its accomplishments.

We are often overwhelmed by the love and time and generosity which all our children give us.

SkyWatch Friday



Sunrise in the Similkameen, 7:38 a.m. January 6th, 2010

The Day of Epiphany honouring the visit of the Magi and the beginning of the season of Epiphany in the Christian church. Epiphany is the Season of Light, spreading throughout the world, - it begins after Twelfth Night and ends with Ash Wednesday.

Light from Darkness, - I thought this a most appropriate and beautiful beginning to Epiphany.

For more beautiful skies click here and marvel at the beauty.

ABC Wednesday

Y is for Yesterday



I was not a great fan of the Beatles, - wrong generation I guess. But now as I age (a little) I think, "what a sweet young man' And Yesterdays are very dear to me....

Look for more Y's at ABC Wednesday here.

My daughter mutters 'Scrooge' as I contemplate taking down the Christmas decorations. I think she would gladly leave them up all during Epiphany and right into Lent, and so be it for her, but something in me begins to long for simplicity and order. I can carry the spirit of Christmas forward, but not the tinsel and the garlands and the glitter.

So this morning I telescoped the little golden tree we accepted this year as our nod to outdoor greenery. I put the most delicate of our decorations on it, - mostly the ones that had been passed on to me by a dear friend - white and gold and clear and crystal.



I slipped it back into its little flat box along with the paraphenalia that holds it upright, and went on to the garlands and the angels and the Santa Claus.







All the little snowmen and the Christmas candles and their silver and brass candlesticks got tucked away for another year.



I left a few that were small delicate, just to remind us of the joys of the celebration, but when everything else had been boxed and blessed and put up on the tall shelves in closets and cupboards my thoughts turned to the tins of shortbread and fruit cake that linger in the pantry to tempt us.



Off with their heads, I said (aloud)! They will be abundant on the tea table (or in the freezer) until simplicity reigns along with good healthy oatmeal cookies.

I looked around the fairly orderly house (no pine needles) and before Charles came in for lunch I sat down with my new daily journal and made out a list of the men in the family who could do with nice warm woollen work socks next Christmas.

There were nine of them!

The knitting urge is upon me.....

Yesterday was a kaleidoscope of emotions as I celebrated my 85th birthday.

Firstly, as I woke to a still dark morning, there was the WOW factor. A surprising rush of gratitude that I have attained this age in good health and with an awareness of the beauty that surrounds us in both complex and simple things. The complexity that accompanies our relationships with family and friends, and yet the simplicity that is reflected in the way these intricacies are dissolved in love.

Birthdays are family affairs, - warm and loving. Birthdays so soon after the celebrations of Christmas and the New Year are in some danger of being viewed as just a tag-a-long tail of the comet, but I have found that on the contrary they absorb all the love and good feeling that is floating around as a result of the meaningfulness of Christmas.

My younger daughter made a delicious cake that was parceled out to a succession of young visitors, and I reveled in the chance to be in their company. There were wonderful phone chats, beautiful and loving cards, happy birthday wishes in my 'in-box' and on Facebook, and I felt thoroughly spoiled, - even unto today when we shared the last little bit of the delicious cake with family from down the hill.

I went to bed, pleasantly weary and smiling, - thankful to all the dear ones who made the day so sweet.

A Happy New Year Re-run from December 31st, 2007 - the thoughts are still the same, - the wishes for happiness in the New Year still as warm as ever.

Where the night is starry, bright and clear do enjoy the blue moon, the second full moon of December. Hidden from us, alas, by low clouds and a snowy sky.


I am starting to write this post early, as I'm sure I must have something profound to say about the passage of time, even if it is just a matter of discarding the old and pinning up a new calendar, full of hope and promise and good intentions. A little mundane catalyst.....but one that springs eternally and with great hope.....

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
~T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

Profound thoughts do not always come easily, - they float around like vaporous clouds for some time before taking shape and form. And sometimes the end result is not as profound as one would wish.

Memories keep confounding any attempts at serious speculation about 'how times change', 'where are we headed', 'what is truly important as we skid along, day by day' and 'who is in charge of this wild ride'?

New Year's Eve has always been a special time in our lives. Christmas was for the children, but New Year's Eve was for parents, partying and compatriots. With six children we had to make a stand somewhere and strike out on our own.......

When we first came to this valley almost sixty years ago we settled on a DVA project along with forty or fifty other veterans of World War Two. We were all poor, - the fellows had spent the early years of their young manhood in Europe, and by today's standards the compensation was very sparse indeed. But we were rich in friendships and community, and our memories of those years are sweet (well, sometimes bitter sweet - it was an adventure, but also a struggle).

We partied in half built homes, - we organized dances (the old fashioned kind) - we went on scavenger hunts and played bridge at every opportunity. And New Year's Eve was important to us in many ways, - a relaxation, a time of hope that next year would bring good crops and markets (the orchardist's perennial optimism).... Sometimes New Year's Eve extended well into New Year's Day - always it was an expression of friendship and good fun.

In later years New Year's Eve was quieter. A game of bridge, some reminiscing, a drink or two, always crab sandwiches, - and always the same fondness for the dear friends we celebrated with. Time has a way of changing the things we would like to cling to. Death intervenes, and now we have come full circle, and New Year's Eve is usually spent with our children and grandchildren.

Precious moments, but still we are overcome with nostalgia for old friends and Auld Lang Syne. Midnight finds us tender and maybe teary-eyed.

So where are the profound thoughts? Awash in a sea of sentimentality I reach for the words to express the direction the world seems to be taking.

Two poems come to mind... the first one written by Minnie Louise Harkins and quoted by George Sixth in his 1939 Christmas address to a world so recently embroiled in war.

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied, 'Go into the darkness and put your hand
into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer
than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention."

Words that brought hope and kindled feelings of faith and trust and courage in those dreadful times, but I wonder if today they seem merely 'quaint' (at best) to a majority of society.

The other poem I puzzle over is 'Invictus" by William Henley. "Invictus" I have read, is "...the culmination of a long and torturous struggle for life and truly as an epilogue to all the poems Henley wrote". His life was a struggle, - economically in his younger years and as a result of tuberculosis in his youth he lost one of his legs, and suffered immense pain all during his life. In spite of this he contributed greatly to the lives of young writers in his role as an editor, but I find so many of his poems melancholy and despairing.

Therefore, "Invictus" seems to be a triumph over all the vicissitudes that he bore, and it has been an inspiration to many who suffer hardship. It inspires a stiffening of the spine, a determination to maintain integrity, and to cope with whatever life sends us.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

So why does it puzzle me, when it is clearly an admirable poem?

It is the last two lines.... I know that Henley meant them to express his courage in overcoming adversity and fate, and that in this context they have helped many to deal with despair and seemingly hopeless hardship.

And yet, and yet - they almost seem like a rallying cry for those Darwinian scientists who place their belief in genes and neurons and a natural progression from the slime of the ocean to the art, the music, the culture, the search for knowledge, the altruism and the faith that has, alas, faltered in the last four hundred years. And while they nurture their belief it seems to one who was brought up in a more innocent and moral age that the world is careening on a hand-cart to hell.

It is a paradox, indeed, that Christianity allows mankind the right of self-will and conscience, whereas the modern scientific outlook chains one to a theory of evolution which controls our actions, our thoughts, our mind and our very soul (if they but admitted that the soul exists...)

Then, I have to ask myself, how can those who accept their version of evolution as gene-controlled be "master of their fate" or "Captains of a soul" that they deny, - and I end up more perplexed than ever....

But there, after all these memories and musings I finally wish you all a blessed New Year - keep the faith, whatever it may mean to you, and strive for goodness.......

Another sweeter poem by William Henley...but still with a hint of the inevitable............

O, gather me the rose, the rose,

While yet in flower we find it,

For summer smiles, but summer goes,

And winter waits behind it!

For with the dream foregone, foregone,

The deed forborne for ever,

The worm, regret, will canker on,

And time will turn him never.

So well it were to love, my love,

And cheat of any laughter

The death beneath us and above,

The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,

The sunshine and the swallow,

The dream that comes, the wish that goes,

The memories that follow!

ABC Wednesday

X is for Xanthocomic

And with the discovery of the meaning of this word I have finally come across the origin of Blonde Jokes.

Xanthocomic means yellow hair, and there is a whole cluster of words with the prefix "Xanth"

Xanthic means yellowish

Xanthippe refers to an ill-tempered woman (with yellow hair????)

Xanthochroic means yellow skinned, and if your teeth, alas, have a yellowish cast, they are said to be xanthodont.

It is Xanthophyll which causes the yellow colour of autumn leaves, and if a plant has yellow seeds it is then Xanthospermous.

Just recently I was told about an Xanthocomic woman who went into the Post Office, asking to buy fifty Christmas stamps.

"What denominations would you like?" asked the clerk in the PO

"Good gracious" exclaimed the Xanthocomic woman, "has it come to that!!!!" And tossing her Xanthic hair she airily said -

"Then I'll have 22 Roman Catholic

3 Baptist, 10 Presbyterian, 8 Anglican

and 7 Pentecostal."

My apologies to all blondes, - I used to be one myself!

X is a difficult letter, - skip along to ABC Wednesday and see what others have discovered about X.