Fairyland

Though the calendar may not agree...

When you see an elderly gentleman riding an old bike with a brown basket, carrying within it a little black dog, you know it's summer.

When the birds wake you in the early hours of morning with their singsong chatter, you know it's summer.

When the sound of a faraway lawnmower buzzes your ears like the bees buzz outside your door, you know it's summer.

When the days become lazier, you can do as you please, and on a whim you can walk outside and cut flowers for the taking, you know it's summer.

You wonder, here at the very start, what this summer will become. Right now, it's all wishes and dreams, but soon the wishes will take off and the dreams will land - like a fairyland just waiting to unleash it's magic on you. Dream on.



Photo by Arthur Rackham

Do you know this house?

It is the Anne of Green Gables house on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Anne is fictitious of course, but the house/museum is not. There will be royal visitors at the house this July. Surely Anne would be proud. Apparently, the new Duchess is a childhood fan and requested this stop be put on their schedule. Wouldn't you, if you could!

Past Shabby

I thought this a clever way to present an old book that is past shabby and beyond its reading years. Beautiful and practical.

*Photo credit - MJ Porter Design

God's Brush Stroke Strikes Again

Lightly damp from freshly fallen rain.

















Lovely enough for a bride's bouquet.





With every leaf a miracle . . . and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-colour'd blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green
A sprig with its flower, I break.
- Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd
(III, Leaves of Grass)

A Mouthful of Words and Syllables

Broonhilde. Jane. Earnest. Fitzwilliam. Anne, with an e.

Names. They are stuck with you for life. At least until you change them. They are only words, but important words, at that. Imagine a mouthful of words and syllables dedicated all to you. You want them to be good. So it is with children...and pets.

Naming a pet is like naming a child...well, almost. When we got our kitty almost 2 years ago, he was nearly called, "Winston," after Winston Churchill. Seriously. He had that name for two days, but the syllables just didn't come out right when you said it out loud.
A few other names were tried out before the name "Keeper" stuck. It's not for what you might think, although he is a keeper.

Emily Bronte had a dog named Keeper. A romantic name for a canine companion pet to one of the best writers in the English language - very fitting. I imagine him to be her keeper while she roamed those moors beyond the safety of her parsonage home. I couldn't help myself in copying her. So it went, the name fit, everyone liked it, and it now flows out as naturally as it was meant to. When the words and syllables come out just so, there is pleasure in knowing you got it just right.

Words are meant to be woven together like a beautiful tapestry, one stitch at a time.
If the stitch is not put in properly, it must be undone and tried again. ~Bookish Kind

Goodnight Moon

"I see the moon, the moon sees me.
God bless the moon, and God bless me."That amazing white ball in the sky is appearing again, a little thicker each evening as it hangs solitarily in the southwest sky, like a dull night light that needs a bulb replacement. Tonight it's just a sliver, a mere shadow of the near-sphere in the photo, (taken sometime last fall), barely visible to distracted eyes many country miles away. But I saw it, and I am glad. Goodnight, Moon.

Trees in the Abbey

I don't intend on talking about the royal wedding ad naseum, and hope I'm not there yet, but one of the most stunning and lovely aspects of that day, I thought, was the avenue of trees just inside the entrance, surrounded by centuries of architecture. It really stood out as a beautiful gesture of inviting nature's presence into such a sacred setting.