Sunday, the 20th of May,  2012

What we knew as 'Victoria Day' in honour of the Queen's birthday, when we went to the lake and had fireworks and a picnic and waved flags, has now become May Longweekend!!!!!  Everyone takes to the road to go hither and yon to various celebrations and early summer fetes and I doubt if many remember Queen Victoria's birthday is the cause celebre.  It is twittered about and there is great excitement on Facebook

What we have here in the village is the 74th  Annual Elk's Rodeo, with bulls and bareback riding and steer wrestling and barrel races.  We have the Firemen's Pancake Breakfast, a Cowboy's Church service under canvas, a Big Parade, a Children's Chicken Run, an all day Beer Garden and although the same events are probably firing up a dozen communities in British Columbia, we also have  thousands of visitors wearing cowboy hats.  Well, it seems like thousands.

What we were most excited about this week-end was the Centennial Celebrations at Charles' High School - Pen High.  O.k., we were mildly excited - as excited as those in their late eighties allow themselves to get about a great crowd of people, tremendously noisy and hiding quite effectively in their midst the very people you would like to visit with - your OWN old classmates.

So at the last minute we arranged a nice quiet luncheon at the Frog City Cafe in the middle of Linden Gardens in Kaledan; an especially lovely day - sunny, but not too warm, with just the faintest breeze and the very best of company.  The gatherings diminish somewhat as one by one people are wafted off to that great classroom in the sky, but that makes those who are left even more precious.  

Braving the wicked traffic we picked up our old and dear friend, Jill, - not yet easy with her widowed state and newly released from hospital but looking surprisingly fit, abandoning her walker for just a cane!  

We turned in at the Gardens and joined the remnants of the Class of '42, sitting around the patio, sheltered by the lovely greenery that surrounds Frog City and off in the distance flashes of colour where the azalea hold centre stage now the spring bulbs have all faded.

We had a great lunch, - Charles and I had a nice borscht and a Hippie Hobo sandwich made out of twenty grain bread and avocado, cheese, ham, tomato and various other goodies.  The ones who were game took a little turn around the gardens and were in awe of the marvelous colours and the shady pathways.

Eventually we had to move on, but we drove home, contented, happy, full of the satisfaction of having touched the lives of dear and familiar friends once again.

Please ignore the video

below, - it is

recalcitrant

won't work, and won't disappear.......

ABC Wednesday
and the letter this week is the Royal R

R is for Roses

My favourites are the Abraham Darby for colour, form and fragrance

the Mister Lincoln for its amazing deep red velvet colour and texture, and the wonderful scent that fills the air as you brush past it

and the Prairie Princess for its lovely icy pink hardiness.

For more delightful R's. or perhaps some not as delightful, click here
to visit ABC Wednesday with thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and her Rowdy crew.

Monday, May 13th, 2012

The whole town is awash with lilacs, 

and up the streets and down the lanes great bushes 

 scent the entire village with this glorious iconic fragrance

that marks the middle of May.

I miss the creamy white blossoms of the Philadelphia Orange. and its sweet, tangy fragrance,

but I am so glad to have lilacs again in this town garden.

They are complemented by the virginal clusters on the Mountain Ash

and it is so lovely to sit in the back garden and listen to the green grass growing

and breath the heady perfume of spring.

Amy Lowell speaks of the universality of  the lilac -
"the great flood of our souls, bursting above the leaf-shape of our hearts,"
In excerpts from her poem "Lilacs" she says

"Your great puffs of flowers
are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
above a cellar dug unto a hill.
You are everywhere."

and again.......


"Lilacs...
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms."

Beautiful!!!!

What a contented week-end we had, working in the garden.
The sun shone, the breeze was cool, but not chilly,
the bleeding heart and the peonies and coral bells
that came with us into town are catching up to their village buddies
who were well established and quite at home when we came here.

All is right in this small corner of the world...

Apple Blossom Time

May 12th, 1945

We celebrate a quiet anniversary.....happily!

Friday, May 11th, 2012

May and June

Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year:  cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights.

The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin.

Peter Loewer

Yes, and so this morning I have put some sweet pea seed to soak

 (I know it's late but the the first batch didn't take)

and I will go out and make a nice earthy trough for the sunflower seed, just outside the

fence.  In my mind's eye I can seen them leaning their lovely heads across the top, 

in discourse with we who will enjoy

the privacy that their large leaves bring to the back garden.

I am not impressed with the seed to be planted, - scrawny little things, but hopefully they will grow.  I regret not saving some inventory from the Sunflower Bar and Grill we had in the garden on the hill, but the birds came in such flocks they left contented, with their tummies full and the seed heads bare.

We used to have Seedy Sundays here, where you could go and buy all sorts of exotic and healthy seeds that thrifty people had saved from their garden plants, but that seems to have gone the way of Fall Fairs and other bucolic happening.

I'm not sure where the big seed companies get their inventory, but in these two packages of sunflower seeds it looks as if they swept them off the floor, alas....

Well, now I have complained enough, - it is time to get the poor wee things in the ground and see if they respond and we will have sunflowers such as these below against the bright blue of the sky.

It is very chilly here at nights, and in the late afternoon if the wind

comes up it almost feels like March.  There is still snow on the high hills

and everybody is storing their bedding plants until it all disappears, - the snow, that is.

ABC Wednesday
May the 9th, 2012

The letter this week is Q and I love all the words it stands for, except maybe querulous.......

But quicken and quirky and quack and quiz and quince and quotient are all quite pleasant words.

Here is a picture of the Quince that is blossoming in my garden right now, - as we speak!

And here is a poem written by Salvatore Quasimodo who was born in 1901 of Sicilian parents.  He was an engineer with the Italian Government, but in 1930 he gave up this post and in 1938 he became the editor of the weekly magazine, Tempo and three years later was appointed to the chair of Italian Literature in Milan.

He was the recipient of many literary prizes.  In 1953, together with Dylan Thomas, he was awarded the Etna-Taormina International Prize in Poetry, and in 1959 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Street in Agrigentum

There is still the wind that I remember

firing the manes of horses, racing,

slanting, across the plains,

the wind that stains and scours the sandstone,

and the heart of gloom columns, telamons,

overthrown in the grass.  Spirit of the ancients, grey

with rancour, return on the wind,

breathe in that feather-light moss

that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven.

How alone in the space that's still yours!

And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more,

the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea,

where Hesperus streaks the sky with morning

the jews-harp vibrates

in the waggoner's mouth

as he climbs the hill of moonlight, slow,

in the murmur of Saracen olive trees.

I like the rhythm and the imagery.

For more stories about the letter Q do quicken yourself over here to ABC Wednesday and see what Mrs. Nesbitt and her quirky helpers have for you to enjoy.

Monday, May 7th, 2012

A day of great efficiency for me.  I did the laundry, cut the lawns, shined the floors and dusted, paid the monthly bills online and snipped some rhubarb  - baked a rhubarb crisp for supper and put together a colourful gingery stir fry......

I don't get that much accomplished every day, but I wakened quite energized and one must not let these moments go to waste!!!!

Tomorrow we plan to go to Penticton, where I am going to visit that most dangerous of shops, - the plant nursery at Knapp's Plantland!  I figured if I got the house into ship-shape condition I could spend the rest of the week in the garden, and surely that Rhubarb Crisp will last us most of the week!

May continues to be a perfect sweetheart of a month, and the weatherman's chart shows great sun icons for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

I will be on the lookout for hillsides golden with Balsam tomorrow, the bridal veil of the Saskatoons and leaves that cling to springtime green, making an aura around the newly awakened trees and shrubs.  I think we will take a thermos and some lunch and have a picnic!!!!

 These last two pictures were taken on Eagle Bluff by Al Tinka,  on May 3rd, 2012, and I am hoping he won't mind me sharing their beauty here.

Sunday, the 6th of May

Is it so small a thing

To have enjoy'd the sun,

To have lived light in the spring,

To have loved,

To have thought,

To have done...

Matthew Arnold

Saturday, May 5th, 2012

In anticipation of the SuperMoon
  The full moon rises behind Statue of Liberty replica atop a hotel in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Saturday, May 5th 2012  (AP photo Visae Kryeziu)

Here the sun still lingers close to the horizon and it will be an hour before the moon 

rises into a clear blue sky.

I think I will not frustrate myself with trying to take a picture without a tripod, but instead will just enjoy the beauty of the night sky, and the fullness of the porcelain moon and Walter de la Mare's

poem about its silvery qualities that I remember so well from my childhood.

Slowly, silently now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way and that she peers and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel like a log

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep

A harvest mouse goes scampering by

With silver claws and silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Silver by Walter de la Mare

It has been a long and emotional day.  I was up picking scarlet and yellow tulips

 for the church, just after six this morning, before they had opened their glorious petals.

At the funeral we sang the hymn 'Those Hearts that we have Treasured".  The tune is rather prosaic, but the words are beautiful and mindful of  abiding love.

Our older daughter brought us some deliciously scented lilacs.

After I had put them into water and placed the vase on the table

Callie, the cat, climbed up to sniff that wonderful odour.....

Our younger daughter came around with some tender pork cutlets

to use in a stir-fry, but Callie wasn't interested in them!

We will have them for supper tomorrow night.

But now, tonight I think I will go to bed  and when the moon finishes its journey

across the sky it will be shining into our bedroom window from the west

and we will have a silvery sleep-in.

Friday, May 4th, 2012

The storm clouds have fled.  The sky looks peaceful - palest blue and serenest clouds.

When the rain quit about four o'clock I put supper in the oven, gave Charles his dram of scotch for happy hour and went out to pick anemones. When I had gathered them, and a little greenery from the willow tree and some small closed tulips I took them all to the church to decorate the tea tables for the reception to follow my dearest friend's funeral tomorrow.

When she died twelve days ago I could not cry for her.  I was so relieved that her hours of waiting were over and her precious spirit was released from the frustrations of five years of Altzheimers and the gradual depletion of her body and of her mind and the long wait for death to claim her, tenderly..

She never lost her smile.  And she never lost the ability to make people smile with her.  And she didn't lose her long term memory.  We reminisced about times when we were young and when our children were young;  the parties we had, and the quiet moments we enjoyed together. 

 And she could still laugh about the silly things that we did, and that the young ones did, and the times we would gather for dinner and a game of bridge, and the lemon pies she used to make for Charles..  Just a few things at a time, and. towards the end. only for a few minutes at a time before she became tired and confused and distracted.  It was enough to sit and hold her hand.

Now I can cry grateful tears for this friendship I was so blessed with, and for all the happy years.

Tomorrow Charles and I will go to say goodbye, as we said goodbye to her husband, ten years ago, and our hearts will be full.  And if our eyes are bright it will not only be with unshed tears, but also with the pleasure of being with her family, and celebrating a beautiful life and knowing that somewhere, in some form, she is again a living and vibrant part of the universe.

Say not in grief that she is no more, 

but say in thankfulness that she was.

A death is not the extinguishing of a light 

but the putting out of the lamp

because the dawn has come.

Life is eternal and love is immortal

and death is only a horizon

and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

Rossiter Worthington Raymond

Thursday, May 3rd

Oh May, - she fled to the hills today, cavorting with the blooming Olalla bushes and the yellow balsom root, and sent in her place grey skies, rain and chilly winds. She copies April's fickle ways....

I cannot tell you how it was,

But this I know; it came to pass

Upon a bright and sunny day

When May was young; ah, pleasant May!

As yet the poppies were not born

Between the blades of tender corn;

The last egg had not hatched as yet,

Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,

But this I know; it did but pass.

It passed away with sunny May,

Like all sweet things it passed away,

And left me old, and cold, and gray

Christina Georgina Rossetti,  MAY, 1880

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2012

I have been putting away the things of winter; warm garments, the decorations of  house-bound days that make the home seem cosy. Pillows and throws get thrust into cupboards, and all the plants have found a new conservatory in the little sunroom at the back of the house.  In order to not be too rash I leave the pilot light on in the electric fireplace, having learned over the years that even May evenings can be chilly

 and a little heat is welcome.

The doors stand wide open to the spring breezes, and the house bares itself to their caresses (good heavens, that sounds a bit exotic and over the top,,,,)  Anyway, if I were Martha Stewart I would get out the white linen slip covers and fill creamy vases with spring flowers and go and read a good book, but I notice as I dream about such things that all the pictures on the walls need to be polished (maybe I should put them away for the summer) and the woodwork could do with a good washing, and the side lawn needs to be cut - and if I DID take all the pictures down I would leave little gold picture hangers decorating the walls, and I would have to take THEM all down, and put them all back again in the fall when the house needs to look cosy once more.  

Far too much for an ancient lady, but it's nice to think of simple, clean, crisp surroundings, with light music and birds at the fountain.

I will just post another bit of spring poetry, - this one The Enkindled Spring by D.H. Lawrence,  1916

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and game-filled bushes,

Thorn blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

Of Green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,

Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among

This leaping combustion of spring?  My spirit is tossed

About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost. 

Tuesday, the first day of May

The tulips open their lovely petals to the sun, and to any fairies who might still be around after their merry May Day celebration under the pretty moon that flooded the bedroom window early this morning..... Charles told me about it, - (the moon, I mean - he's not one inclined to fairyland).  I didn't see it myself, being fast asleep enjoying a pleasant dream which I can't remember now, but when I wakened I did remember it quite happily as it seemed that whatever was happening  was better than what usually happens in real life.  Wistful dreaming I guess.....

I'm not sure if whoever ordered up the weather for the first of May realized we had flipped over the calendar, as it still seemed like a typical fickle April day, - sunny one moment, cloudy the next, and a chilly wind came down occasionally from the very tops of the highest mountains where the snow still sparkles in the sunlight.

I'm not sure why Labour picked the first of May to broadcast their discontent, or why the media makes such a big thing of it.  Down at the other end of the country,  in Montreal, some of the students from the University have been causing  a great deal of annoyance to everyone else who lives there; marching in the streets, masked and arrogant, protesting a raise of $300.00 in tuition fees over the next five years (or is it seven) when they already enjoy tuition fees which are half of the average of those in other Provinces.

Only some of the students are striking, - those who are passionate about Entitlements and the Student Union.  Those who are passionate about obtaining a degree are back in their engineering, law, medical, mathematical and science classes being diligent and mature and sensible.

What I find particularly sad and puzzling is the involvement of some of the more leftist faculty members in this meaningless student strike; and what makes me particularly angry is the financial support which the Student Unions are obtaining from Canadian Public Unions.

I watched one of the students camped out in a city park twirling around in a hoola hoop, and I know I rolled my eyes!!!

Well, never mind, - it is the first day of May and through all the ages poets have written fair words about the beauty of the month.  I'm sure I could find one for each day of May, - and perhaps I will.....

A delicate fabric of bird song

Floats in the air,

The smell of wet wild earth

Is everywhere.

O I must pass nothing by

Without loving it much,

The raindrop try with my lips,

The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure

I shall see again

The world on the first of May

Shining after the rain?

Sara Teasdale  MAY DAY

We have a friend who sends wonderful pictures of treks in the mountains and the woods, and here are some of the earliest spring flowers on the mountains

and some anemones from the little bed outside the picket fence at the front of the house

As you can see I have been messing about with Photoshop again!

and a P.S.

this is post # 901 for Daybyday

Happy May Day!!!

ABC Wednesday
May 2nd, 2012

P is the letter for this week, and it stands for one of my favourite old time pieces, Peg o' my Heart written in 1913 by Alfred Bryan and Fred Fisher.

Here is this lovely song played tenderly by Jerry Murad's Harmonicats.

Enjoy, and visit here at ABC Wednesday  to find out what else P stands for.

Friday, April 27th, 2012

The storm clouds rolled away and there was no more rain.

The whole world was just fantastically green!!

Charles installed the snap on hose connections that came in the mail via an inviting TV ad, and I cut the handkerchief lawn in the back garden.  This is a man sized handkerchief lawn, - not like the front one that is dainty and has a little tatted lace edging around it.

The newly planted grass said thank you for the rain and all the great fertilizer it brought with it out of the sky (Charles tells me this is so) and also for the sun that is making all the plants smile.

The people I met on the street while grocery shopping, too, - they were all smiling and cheerful, and only one person said to me "Oh, you just wait, - we'll all be complaining that it's too hot soon enough"!!!  I hate to admit that she is probably right.

I went to the pharmacy to buy sympathy cards and a birthday present, and to pick up three one inch cane tips that Charles had ordered for his three legged stool.  Alas, - only two came in.  He will have to wait. Or sit lopsided on his three legged stool.

I found a pretty straw hat for a birthday present though, all floppy and romantic.

It's been a lovely day, and now it is almost Happy Hour, I still have some  meat balls in barbecue sauce to warm up for supper and Doc Martin is on TV tonight.  What more could a girl ask for......

ABCWednesday

Oh, Oh, Oh  - the letter this week is O


O is for Opulence

An 'Opulent' Hotel in Budapest

Opulence is such an ambivalent word.

The sumptuous beauty and the gilded richness it describes

somehow carry with them a faint hint of Obscenity and Decadence.

Centuries ago Aeschylus said.....

'Human prosperity never rests but always craves more, till blown up with pride it totters and falls.  

From the Opulent mansions pointed at by all passers-by none warns it away,

none cries, 'Let no more riches enter'

And although there is a certain opulence in nature,

in an over-the-top sunset

or a majestic sea-scape

still, I'm with Wordsworth.....

The World is too much with us;  late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.........

I figure that true happiness and sensibility lie in moderation

but a glimpse of opulence is nice

if not our passion!

For more comments on the letter O visit here at ABC Wednesday

with thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and her Obedient helpers.

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes.  Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith:  what we need

is here.  And we pray not

for new heaven and earth, but take

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear.  What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

This morning I was able to catch part of Wendell Berry's conversation at the
National Episcopalian Cathedral in Washington.

A humble farmer as well as a great conservationist
he spoke about being part of the 'low life'
the closer to the earth the better!

He spoke also of the importance of broadening conversation
to make the peoples of the world more aware of stewardship.

And wasn't it the gardener and the farmer who first held
the earth precious, and planted trees they may never sit beneath
but which will provide shade and life when they are gone, and make
the world breath easier.

Here is another of Wendell Berry's poems......

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

April 18th, 2012

Taking the camera out for a run....

Praise the spells and bless the charms,

I found April in my arms.

April golden, April cloudy,

Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;

April soft in flowered languor,

April cold with sudden anger,

Ever changing, ever true -

I love April, I love you.

These lines from 'Always marry an April Girl' by Ogden Nash, used the very adjectives that described last Sunday afternoon, -  the sun played tag with chilly breezes, but it was such a charming afternoon we decided to go for a drive to see what was happening in the countryside half way through the month of April.

We turned left as we backed out of the yard,  The sun shone brightly, though there were clouds in the sky

and a certain haze that dimmed the brightness of the blue.

Down the street, up the town hill, turn left along the highway and then right at the Upper Bench Road, along which road we found a lovely acres or so of apricots in full bloom

and further on a beautifully unpruned tree, awash in tender yellow leaves

Down at the Rocking Chair Range the mother cows had the little ones out to graze

 and further down the road, as we turned towards the river and the valley bottom around Ginty's Pond

the colours were just as bright and beautiful as I decided to make them as I played with

Photoshop and its magical tools.

More subtle tones as the old bullrushes in the pond, dry and sere and beautiful,

 make way for tender new shoots

such a colourful array of willows and shrubs and pond grasses 

against the Cawston Hills

candle light in Ginty's pond as the sun illuminates the cottony heads of the bullrush

We turn towards home and snap a pretty forsythia growing on the corner

and when we stop for a moment to visit the garden on the hill we find a host of golden daffodils

along with great quantities of the ubiquitous cutch grass, which I do not deign to photograph!

A lovely drive, - sometimes sunny, sometimes windy, sometimes the clouds scudded by

but such a treat to wrap our arms around April!

ABC Wednesday
April 18th, 2010

N is the letter and it stands for Nonsense Poetry by aNonymous and others....

The Great Panjandrum  by Samuel Foote

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf

to make an apple pie,

and at the same time

a great she-bear, coming down the street,

pops its head into the shop.

What! no soap?

So he died

and she very imprudently married the Barber;

and there were present

the Picinnies,

and the Joblillies,

and the Garyulies

and the Great Panjandrum himself,

with the little round button at top,

and they fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch can,

till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

(there is a nice story about the source of this nonsense verse if you care to Google it)

The Quangle Wangle's Hat by Edward Lear

On the top of the Crumpetty Tree

The Quangle Wangle sat 'But his face you could not see,

On account of his Beaver Hat

For his hat was a hundred and two feet wide,

With ribbons and bibbons on every side

And bells and loops and lace;

So that nobody ever could see the face

Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

The Quangle Wangle said
To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, -
'Jam and jelly, and bread
Are the best of food for me!
But the longer I live on this Crumpetty Tree
The plainer than ever it seems to me
That very few people come this way
And that life on the whole is far from gay!'
Said the Quangle Wangle Quee.

Well, to make a long story short, as this is a very long poem and you might not 
have time to read it all,
two canaries, The Stork, the duck and the Owl, the Snail and the Bumble bee, a Frog and the Fimble Fowl with the Corkscrew leg, and the Golden Grouse and the Pobble, the small Olympean bear and the Dong with the luminous nose, together with the Blue Baboon who play the flute, the Orient Calf and the Attery Squash - plus the Bisky Bat, all came and asked permission to build their nest on the Quangle Wangle's Hat.

And the Quangle Wangle said
To himself on the Crumpetty tree -
'When all these creatures move
what a wonderful noise there'll be!'
And at night by the light of the Mulberry moon
They danced to the flute of the Blue Baboon,
On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree, And all were as happy as happy could be,
With the Quangle Wangle Quee.

You could amuse yourselves for hours if you just google 'Nonsense Verses'
and probably giggle a great deal besides.......
You will find many poems by aNonymous there, as well
as it seems to have been a favourite pastime for that sort of fellow.

For more takes on the letter N nod off over to Mrs. Nesbitt's, here.