ABC Wednesday

The letter this week is the Sophisticated S

Ella Fitzgerald
Singing

Sophisticated Lady

Sensational

Do go and visit ABC Wednesday here

for more wonderful S stories.

Is it too early to plant the paper whites?  Will they be past their prime by Christmas Day?  Regardless, today the spirit moved me!!!

1. 
   

I planted a dozen bulbs in a shallow blue bowl

and hope they will look like this....

or perhaps a little shorter if we use the alcohol treatment!

I think I mentioned the alcohol treatment before.

It is recommended following the results of a  research program

conducted by William A. Miller, Professor of Horticulture at Cornell University

and a number of his students.

Here is the gen.....

Plant the bulbs in stones and water, as usual

After a week, when the roots have started to spread,

pour off the water and replace it with a solution of 4 to 6% alcohol

made from HARD liquor (this is important)

To get a 5% solution from a 40% distilled spirit you add one part of  alcohol

to 7 parts of water, and use this solution for further watering as needed.

Moderation is the keyword, - don't increase the percentage

of alcohol above 10%!

Plants suffer from alcohol poisoning too!

Rubbing alcohol works just as well, if you can't bear to use your scotch or rum

on a bowl of bulbs, but as it is usually 70% alcohol

when bought 1 part of alcohol to 10 or 11 parts of water

is sufficient!!!!!!

I rather liked the idea of individual bulbs in glasses, on a window sill

or in front of a mirror - perhaps I will see if we can go to the plant shop tomorrow

when we go to town.....????

Four Months....

One would think we would be well settled in by now, but I think the time it takes to be confident that you are at home with all your belongings is a relevant thing, completely proportionate to age.

You know where the knives and forks are kept, where the bed linens live and the very essential bathroom items are pretty well right to hand, and under control,  but occasionally you wonder about certain things and you vaguely remember having seen them, but was it here, in the house on the hill, or does your vision stretch right back to what shelf or cupboard housed them on the farm????

I have lost my knitting needle case, - the long. silver cylinder that my mother kept her knitting needles in and which I have used ever since she died.  I am relying on bits and pieces of needles that I pick up at the Bargain Centre to tide me over, but it MUST be somewhere, - perhaps in the weaving trailer which still picks up the sunshine and the wide stretch of valley up on the hill;  full of looms and yarn and forty years accumulation of weaving paraphernalia.  I must go and see, - maybe tomorrow....

I have reached the point where I feel the need to open each cupboard and drawer, empty them out, contemplate them, catalogue their contents in my mind and put them all back, duly noted.  They were so quickly filled up, those busy moving days, as the boxes came in and were emptied, put into drawers and on shelves.

Charles has spent a couple of these snowy mornings going through things that he swept into boxes at the last possible moment. and having a lovely time reminiscing and putting things safely away.  Will he remember where he put them?  Ah, there's the rub.....

The Christmas linens, - where are they now??  I have been following a backward path to when I last saw them, just before the big unsettling day arrived.  Still with some fragile things to pack and no packing paper available I can remember taking them off the shelf in the linen closet and wrapping things safely, - but what things?? Oh, that escapes me, but what I do know is that the tablecloths and napkins are not in the linen closet here, or in any other drawers or chests or basket or box.  So I continue my backward journey and perhaps in the middle of the night I will waken with an ancient Greek eureka moment, and the Christmas table will be set with the old familiar linens.

If not, I still have a couple of damask cloths, but such a devil to iron, - sigh.......

John Singleton Copley

ABC Wednesday
The letter this week is the Regal R
R is for Rhinoceros

You may have read this story before,

but even if that is so, another reading

is sure to delight you...

A Just So Story by Rudyard Kipling HOW THE RHINOCEROS GOT HIS SKIN NCE upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. It was indeed a Superior Comestible (that's magic), and he put it on the stove because he was allowed to cook on that stove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental. But just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior one Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners. In those days the Rhinoceros's skin fitted him quite tight. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere. He looked exactly like a Noah's Ark Rhinoceros, but of course much bigger. All the same, he had no manners then, and he has no manners now, and he never will have any manners. He said, 'How!' and the Parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree with nothing on but his hat, from which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and the Promontories of the Larger Equinox. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs and recited the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard, I will now proceed to relate:-- Them that takes cakes Which the Parsee-man bakes Makes dreadful mistakes. THIS is the picture of the Parsee beginning to eat his cake on the Uninhabited Island in the Red Sea on a very hot day; and of the Rhinoceros coming down from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior, which, as you can truthfully see, is all rocky. The Rhinoceros's skin is quite smooth, and the three buttons that button it up are underneath, so you can't see them. The squiggly things on the Parsee's hat are the rays of the sun reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, because if I had drawn real rays they would have filled up all the picture. The cake has currants in it; and the wheel-thing lying on the sand in front belonged to one of Pharaoh's chariots when he tried to cross the Red Sea. The Parsee found it, and kept it to play with. The Parsee's name was Pestonjee Bomonjee, and the Rhinoceros was called Strorks, because he breathed through his mouth instead of his nose. I wouldn't ask anything about the cooking-stove if I were you. And there was a great deal more in that than you would think. Because, five weeks later, there was a heat wave in the Red Sea, and everybody took off all the clothes they had. The Parsee took off his hat; but the Rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe. In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof. He said nothing whatever about the Parsee's cake, because he had eaten it all; and he never had any manners, then, since, or henceforward. He waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose, leaving his skin on the beach. Presently the Parsee came by and found the skin, and he smiled one smile that ran all round his face two times. Then he danced three times round the skin and rubbed his hands. Then he went to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on. THIS is the Parsee Pestonjee Bomonjee sitting in his palm-tree and watching the Rhinoceros Strorks bathing near the beach of the Altogether Uninhabited Island after Strorks had taken off his skin. The Parsee has put the cake-crumbs into the skin, and he is smiling to think how they will tickle Strorks when Strorks puts it on again. The skin is just under the rocks below the palm-tree in a cool place; that is why you can't see it. The Parsee is wearing a new more-than-oriental-splendour hat of the sort that Parsees wear; and he has a knife in his hand to cut his name on palm-trees. The black things on the islands out at sea are bits of ships that got wrecked going down the Red Sea; but all the passengers were saved and went home. The black thing in the water close to the shore is not a wreck at all. It is Strorks the Rhinoceros bathing without his skin. He was just as black underneath his skin as he was outside. I wouldn't ask anything about the cooking-stove if I were you. And the Rhinoceros did. He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed. Then he wanted to scratch, but that made it worse; and then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled the cake crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. Then he ran to the palm-tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it. He rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underneath, where the buttons used to be (but he rubbed the buttons off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. And it spoiled his temper, but it didn't make the least difference to the cake-crumbs. They were inside his skin and they tickled. So he went home, very angry indeed and horribly scratchy; and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside. But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of Orotavo, Amygdala, the Upland Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput. THIS Uninhabited Island     Is off Cape Gardafui, By the Beaches of Socotra     And the Pink Arabian Sea: But it's hot--too hot from Suez     For the likes of you and me         Ever to go         In a P. and O. And call on the Cake-Parsee! More wonderful tales of the letter R can be found here, at  ABC Wednesday, and this grand story by Rudyard Kipling can be found at Sir Google's address here http://boop.org/jan/justso/rhino.htm.

Sunday, November 13th, 2001

We are swept away by the wonderful help we get from our family, and the most recent was quite magical, - I am sure it involved a wand in the hands of a speedy son, here on holiday from the Caribou, and a flash-by grandson.

They arrived mid afternoon and by supper time had transferred the garage-cum-workshop into the neatest, tidiest space with room for the SUV in the midst of all the things that survived the Great Downsizing.

Christmas decorations, wrappings and ribbons flew up the lift from the garage into the walk-in closet.  Pictures that have not yet been hung went down into that lovely cemented space under the house, along with a half a dozen boxes whose contents haven't yet found a place to perch.

Suddenly all of Charles' bits and pieces. and his thousands of small tools that he cherishes and just might use someday, found a home on the shelves that line the west side of the garage and the pegboard they hung on the wall.

David went out and measured the SUV, - came in and measured the free space in the garage, and all was well!  Home for the vehicle, out of the wet snow that  fell this afternoon!!  When ladies get ancient one of the things that have little appeal for them is sweeping  the snow from the car, and chipping  the ice from the windshield.  I have become thoroughly spoiled with a nice dry garage, and am not prepared to give up this enormous luxury!!

Thank you, you lovely, big, strapping elves!!!

In case you materialize around here again, my dear wizards,  I am on the lookout for the Christmas lights whose 'putting up'  requires an agility that doesn't live in this house any more, alas..............

Remembrance Day in a Small Town

Late afternoon on the 10th of November when Charles starts looking for the new can of Never Dull, brings out the old toothbrush, the sliding thing he slips under medals to protect the ribbons, and last of all the Medals and the small and precious silver wings.

While he shines and polishes (the spitting comes later when he does the shoes) I re-sew the Squadron Emblem on the pocket of his jacket.

This is all in deference to our slower pace, - time was when Remembrance Day morning was a whirlwind of activity, but we move slower now, and find it best to start a day early.

As we prepare, the loss of Charles' two brothers in France and in Holland is ever present in our thoughts.

And I think of my father who was wounded at Cambrai a month before the signing of the Armistice in 1918, and how the effects of that wound left him walking with a cane for the last twenty years of his life.

Shortly after ten o'clock on the 11th Charles is looking pretty handsome and spiffy for an old Vet. He has received phone calls, e-mails and loving hugs from children who know how important this day has always been to him, and never fail to express their love and understanding.

We leave the house, hoping to get a parking spot close to where he will take part in the Remembrance Day service by reading the Names of the Fallen and citing the Act of Remembrance.

There is a cold wind blowing. People begin to gather, well scarved and hatted - many of them carrying wreaths. Friends and family stop to chat as we wait in the SUV for the first signs of the Parade. The crowd grows thicker (the owner of the town's grocery store says 400)

The Legion members who will conduct the service test the sound system and attend to last minute details around the Cenotaph.

There - we hear the music which accompanies the parade and led by red coated RCMP (no horses this year) the Colour Party, the Army Cadets, the Veterans who are still able to march, the Legion members, our oldest son, Steve, a peacetime veteran, the Brownies and Guides and Cubs and Scouts, the Elks, the Royal Purples and other Service Club members all right turn on to the grass and march across the park to the Cenotaph.

At one time the row of Veterans was long, and stretched for over a city block. Now there are only a handful in the Parade, a few more in wheelchairs and on crutches, but all intent on honouring those of their dead comrades who once, in the now distant past, were like brothers to them, still enshrined in their hearts.

The wind scatters leaves and causes collars to be raised. Everyone takes their place, and the service begins.

A wonderfully strong voice leads the singing of O Canada. There are prayers, and a poem written by a young student in the high school.

The Army Cadets who stand at each corner of the Cenotaph lower their Arms and Charles reads the Names of the Fallen Comrades.

The Bugler plays the Last Post and the flag is lowered.

The two minutes of silence is poignant, and heavy with emotion.

And after the Lament and Reveille,

The Act of Remembrance.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, or the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we shall remember them.

The tribute to the Fallen, the Laying of the Wreaths, the reading of a Remembrance poem and the singing of 'O God, our Help in Ages Past'.

The wind comes in gusts and chases the clouds around the sky, creating small gaps that allow a little sunshine through. Fingers and toes grow cold but people remain to the end, as they honour lost loved ones and those who died to make the present moments possible.

After 'The Queen' the parade marches off, - the crowd disperses and makes their way to the Legion Hall. Charles and I linger to talk to family and old friends.

When we arrive at the Hall we find a great long line-up of shivery people waiting for Hot Rums....

There is Beef Stew and wonderful warm Chili provided by the Legion.

Four long rows of tables are crowded with adults, - next door at the Elks Home the children have cookies and cocoa. People linger, talking, exchanging memories, up-dating news. Gradually the crowd thins. Some people go home, - others make their way downstairs for an afternoon of comradeship, old time tunes, dancing, a little Karaoke and a wonderful air of good fellowship.  

During the afternoon the Legion Brass visit, the Mayor says a few words, - unfortunately there are no pipers this year, but often we are included in their rounds of various Remembrance Day services.

Years have passed since our first Remembrance Days in this town, when the Veterans were young and plentiful and glasses were raised to comrades just a few years dead.

In later years Charles and others took rum and comradeship during the afternoon to veterans confined to their homes, coming back if not three sheets to the wind, at least two and a half.....

Now the Veteran finds himself a little 'out of the loop,' - honoured, and thanked, - questioned and perhaps even held in awe in some cases, but very conscious of being of another generation. Our appreciation is great for the Legion members who make this Day so special, and for all who Remember....

Well, this is how it is in one small town, and probably to a great extent the happenings would be familiar in hundreds of other small towns.... a people expressing their sorrow, their love and their need to pay honour to the Valiant hearts. And in doing so gathering closer together.....


(The pictures are from yesterday, but many of the words are archived from a Remembrance Day post of 2008 - still relevant to the honour  a small town pays to those who 'gave their todays for our tomorrows'  )

Nov. 9th, 2011

November comes to visit

Amy Hopp.com

We go to the house on the hill to admire the work of the floor installers as they lay 'Whiskey' laminate throughout the house, - completed pictures to follow.  Soon.......

It has been a dull day.  November tires of lurking in the hills and comes to visit the valley folk, bringing with him a dusting of snow in the early morning and dire portents of miserable days to follow.   There is no sun to catch the shadows in the hills or to highlight the rolling meadows of fall grasses.

Frost lends a more subtle air to the garden that last week glowed gloriously in the sun.

Remnants of the morning snow embroider the sedum

and the last roses, a little tattered, a little torn, but still icily delicate 

plump rose hips mark a memorial to their June sisters

The climber at the garden gate is surrounded with the rich shades of autumn

and along the way the small furled leaves of the burning bush turn wine and rose and crimson

By the time we leave to come down the hill into town, and home, November has relented, and sent a few fluffy clouds and small patches of blue sky to ease us gently into this melancholy month.

Tomorrow we will shine shoes and medals, press jackets and knife sharp trousers, in preparation for Remembrance Day on Friday.

ABC Wednesday
November 9th, 2011

Q is the favoured letter this week

I have always been fond of words that begin with Q.  Quicken, quiver, quaver, quintessence, quiet, quail, quest. quip, quietism, quicksilver - they all have a rather old fashioned romanticism to my ear.

And then there is Quatorzain, a poetic term used in English literature, as opposed to 'sonnet' for a poem in fourteen rhymed iambic lines.

The difference being, the Quatorzain ends in a couplet, as a sonnet never does.  Almost all the 'sonnets' of the Elizabethan period, including those of Shakespeare, Sidney and Spenser, are really Quatorzains, consisting of three quatrains of alternate rhyme, and the whole closing with a couplet.

This book will tell you all about the differences in the two forms!

Here is a perfect example of a Quatorzain, published by Michael Drayton in 1602.

Dear, why should you commend me to my rest,
When now the night doth summon all to sleep?


Methinks this time becometh lovers best;
Night was ordained together friends to keep.


How happy are all other living things
Which through the day conjoin by several flight,
The quiet evening yet together brings,
And each returns unto his love at night,
O thou that art so courteous unto all
Why should'st thou, Night, abuse me only thus,
That every creature to his kind dost call,
And yet 'tis thou dost only sever us?


Well could I wish it would be ever day,
If, when night comes, you bid me go away.


This small bit of information about the forms of sonnets and quatorzains may not be something you have been aching to know, but please do enjoy the poem, and the poet's lament at being separated from his loved one when night falls.


For more interesting interpretations of the letter Q visit here at ABC Wednesday with thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and her Quaint helpers.

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

The skies are a brilliant blue and against their depth the trees who have not yet cast their golden leaves are burnished by the fugitive sunlight.  The rest of them have dropped their glowing funeral gowns and raise naked arms into the November air.  

Nights are chilly and I pull a warm woolen blanket over the pots of geraniums that

 hug the house for warmth.

"This is the treacherous month when autumn days

with summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts.

Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts

her head and blooms again.  The soft, warm haze

makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,

and, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,

The violet returns........"

Helen Hunt Jackson, Autumn Sonnet  an excerpt


Friday afternoon I made a quick trip to the garden on the hill, looking for the remnants of the rust and wine chrysanthemums that linger long into November.  Across the path I saw a valiant poppy, brave against the night frosts and crumpled crimson with defiance.  Two more fat round buds lay nestled in the fresh greenery of second growth.  


I brought the poppy home and took it to the church today for Remembrance Sunday.

It is time to take the dried leaves out of the pumpkin man and fold him away for another Halloween.  He did yeoman duty, greeting the little princesses (a plethora of them - or was it a bevy?) and the frog that accompanied one of them - the witches and the ghosts, a warrior from space and a bluetailed dragon.

As soon as the day warms up we will scrunch up the leaves and spread them on the newly planted flower bed in the back garden.  November is being very gentle with us, so far.  Well, yesterday he fell prey to temptation and sent a rather strong and chilly wind to remind us he is on his way down the hills and into the valley, but on the whole there is a little period in the middle of the day when it is a joy to be outside.

It is true that November is rather a dreary month, but there are two ways of enduring it.  Cyril Connolly, an English author and a bright positive fellow, says that 'fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils'

while T.S. Eliot bemoans 'since golden October declined into sombre November / And the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud.........'  Eliot can be quite miserable.

I will go with Cyril this day.  The sun is just above the horizon and the clouds are shining silver  above it.

It looks like a perfect day to muck about!!!

ABC Wednesday

The letter P

P is for Paderewski

and here is Ignacy Jan Paderewski playing Frederic Chopin;  a Nocturne, A Waltz and his beautiful Etude in A Minor, Opus 25/11

Paderewski was a famous Polish pianist, who from his early childhood had a great interest in music.  He

made his musical debut im Vienna in 1887 and his brilliant playing inspired extravagant praise both in Europe and the United States.

During World War 1 Paderewski became an active member and spokesman of the Polish National Committee and in 1919 he became the Prime Minister of a newly independent Poland,and subsequently the Polish Ambassador to the League of Nations.

In 1922 he retired from politics and returned to his musical life, touring the United States 

in a private railway car with great success.  He was a wit, and a raconteur, and he once recalled "I established a certain standard of  behaviour, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.  When they began to talk I would stop.  I would say 'I am sorry to interrupt your conversation.  I deeply regret that I am obliged to disturb you, so I am going to stop for a while to allow you to continue talking'.  an effective ploy.

Paderewski died in 1941, still touring, still delighting his audience with his brilliant playing......

For more Perfect Ps visit here at ABC Wednesday.

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

We are going to town this morning.  We have made out a list and checked the order of errands, culminating in Charles' visit to the ophthamologist  for his second eye injection, which he assures me is nothing more than a faint little 'pinchy' feeling, and I take him at his word and hope it will do all the things that the doctor says it will in preserving his vision.

As I get ready to go my own vision is all too sharp.  I am paying somewhat more attention to my face than I usually do when I notice, to my horror, a new wrinkle amongst all the others that I try valiantly to ignore.  This one is across the bridge of my nose, and as I crinkle up my face to try to figure out how it arrived I see before me a real witch's face!!!!  Has Halloween come early and have I been bewitched?  Horrors!!!!  But no, I uncrinkle my face, and there are all the old familiar 'character' lines, and I resolve that I will try to stay as serene as possible so the new wrinkle won't get any deeper!

I read a query recently to the effect that if God wanted women to have wrinkles, why didn't he arrange for them to appear on just the soles of their feet.....I thought that was a good question, deserving of a good answer.....

On the way to the City Charles is driving and I am taking pictures, but on the way back the late afternoon sun lights the trees so that they are glowing and I am not clever enough to take pictures while I drive.  But I do nourish my love for autumn.....

We visit the garden shop where I buy some amaryllis to have for Christmas, and a few hyacinth's to make February brighter.  While there I take this picture of a lovely two toned tree

and a wagon of pretty fall pansies, which I resisted.

An endearing day (except for the new wrinkle) but now it is time to go and do bedtime chores and say goodnight.

October 27th, 2011 Here is a little Smilebox presentation of pictures we took when we went for a drive along the Similkameen the other afternoon. It takes about thirteen minutes so you probably need a cup of tea or coffee if you want to see what fall is like this year in the Valley, - not as many reds, but lots of gold and orange and some beautiful reflections in the river. Music is by Thelonious Monk.

Personalize a free photo slideshow

ABC Wednesday, October 27th, 2011

The letter this week is O

O stands for Jacques Offenbach who wrote this marvelous Galope Infernal taken from Act 2 Scene 2 of his operetta 'Orpheous in the Underworld',  first performed in 1858.

Offenbach used Greek mythology as a backdrop, the operetta being an irreverent parody and scathing satire on Gluck and his 'Orfeo ed Euridice'.

It culminates in this risque galop infernal that shocked some in the audience at the premiere!!!  It is famous outside classical circles as the music for the "Can-can.  BTW, Saint-Saens borrowed the Galop, slowed it to a crawl, and arranged it for the strings to represent the tortoise in 'The Carnival of the Animals'.

But this is Offenbach's day, so do enjoy this rendition by the FernsehBallett, and visit here at ABC Wednesday for more interpretations of the letter O, with thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and her 'orferly' good helpers.

October 24th, 2011

Oxtail Soup

Today, as I waited to hear the results of #3 son's back surgery, I distracted myself by emptying and rearranging the freezer portion of the fridge, and while doing so came across a package of Oxtails.

Are Oxen a rare species, - certainly the cost of their tails is in the rarified atmosphere, somewhere close to the price of rubies!!!  But they do make delicious soup - the tails, that is.  I'm not sure of the whole oxen, - don't have a pot large enough!

The recipe I found online (why did I need an online recipe, - the one in the Purity Cook Book, circa 1920 is quite adequate)...nevertheless, the online recipe advised that one should cut the oxtail into one inch chunks.  That was beyond me, - the bony part wouldn't co-operate, - so I floured and seasoned the pieces as they came from the Supermarket, browned them in some drippings and thought about what a delicious supper this soup was going to make.

Some nice diced and sauted onion,  a couple of carrots and a stick of celery, a bay leaf, some thyme from the pot at the back door and a few sprigs of parsley tied up in a cheesecloth bag (what a time I had finding the cheesecloth after the big move...) a bit of beef broth and six cups of water, and I put it all on to simmer in my nice new red soup pot.  Oh yes, I diced up a lovely fresh tomato as well, as I couldn't find any tomato paste.

Then I went away and saw Charles off to town, turned on the DVD and watched a video of the garden, sighing occasionally at the view we exchanged for the convenience and pleasures of town life.

Three hours later what an appealing odour filled the house - who knew ox tails could smell so delicious.

Supper is all ready, beautiful and tantalizing, and Happy Hour is upon us.

We still wait to hear about Sid's surgery, which the surgeon didn't get to until this afternoon......

Saturday, all day long

It seemed this day was one without imagination.  A dull day, with a lethargic spirit that somehow crept  inside and inserted itself into the bracelet of bright autumn days that have encircled our lives.  And so I went  looking for inspiration to quieten the melancholy and return to some semblance of creativity and mindfulness, and came across this lovely poem by Mary Oliver.

Mocking Birds

This morning

two mockingbirds

in the green field

were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons

of their songs

into the air.

I had nothing

better to do than listen.

I mean this

seriously.

In Greece

a long time ago,

an old couple

opened their door

to two strangers

who were,

it soon appeared,

not men at all,

but gods

It is my favourite story

how the old couple

had almost nothing to give

but their willingness

to be attentive -

but for this alone

the gods loved them

and blessed them -

when they rose

out of their mortal bodies,

like a million particles of water

from a fountain,

the light

swept into all the corners

of the cottage,

and the old couple,

shaken with understanding,

bowed down -

but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life which they had already.

And the gods smiled, as they vanished,

clapping their great wings.

Wherever it was

I was supposed to be

this morning -

whatever it was I said

I would be doing -

I was standing

at the edge of the field

I was hurrying

through my own soul,

opening its dark doors -

I was leaning out;

I was listening

October 19th, 2011

From 'A Calendar of Sonnets'

October

The month of carnival of all the year,

When Nature lets the wild earth go its way

And spend whole seasons on a single day.

The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;

October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;

The summer charily her reds doth lay

Like jewels on her costliest array;

October, scornful, burns them on a bier.

The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign

Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,

Or Empress wore, in Egypt's ancient line,

October,  feasting 'neath her dome of blue,

Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through

Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!

Helen Hunt Jackson

'O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained with the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest rest and tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe, and all the daughters of the year shall dance!  Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers'.    William Blake

Each day of sunshine is a blessing.  I fill my soul with each cool, crisp hour; the quick movement of the birds in the garden, the sunlight through the leaves, transparent gold; my hands in the damp earth planting purple allium; fortifying myself with all this loveliness against the dreary days of November.