The Bird Feeding Kind

The Spruce dot com

Overnight we had a big storm and are now covered in heavy white snow. I've put out a new bird feeder with lots of fresh birdseed for my little winter kin. I'm the bird feeding kind, after all. The bird watching kind, and the bird wannabee kind, too. The kitties sit by the window and watch the winter show that plays out right at the window. All they must do it sit down in their seats and wait for the show to start.

Bird Feeder

Here is the bird feeder. Here, seeds and crumbs.
Sprinkle them on and see what comes.
One cardinal, one chickadee, one junco, one jay.
Four of my bird friends are eating today.

~ Myra Cohn Livingstone 

Something is Coming

Something is coming soon. I wonder if you'd be able to guess the author based on this tiny glimpse of this pretty book set. It is one of my favorite authors that I don't talk about enough. Lots of this author's books that I haven't read yet, which is why this pretty bundle was so appealing to me. I'll reveal more when these arrive from the UK to my little mailbox.

In Vintage Form

The new old books have started to arrive. I'm loving what's been popping up in the mailbox. This will definitely be a process that will take months, but the plan is to choose and find all of my favorite classic books in vintage (antique) hardback form for my library, biographies of my favorite authors, as well as old beauties that I love for one reason or another. 

For reference, here is my list of favorites, (this list is old).

The books shown in the pictures are Poems of Emily Dickinson, America and England, Certain English Towns, a science book with a gorgeous cabin/tree image, a biography of Charlotte and Emily (poor Anne is left out again). Lest you think I'm leaving out the vintage paperbacks, no worries there. They still have a place in my heart, as does Anne.

Jean Valjean

I've been listening to the broadway production of
Les Miserables and continue to feel such a connection to the character Jean Valjean. His story is my very favorite in all of literature. He shows us that we can change. He shows us love and goodness. Time after time.
His story moves me so much, even after hearing it so many times, that to listen to his story being conveyed in words set to music, has me in tears, literally. A lot. To the point that the people driving near me must wonder why I'm sad. Well, I'm not sad, I'm swept away with emotion in a most wonderful way. Eponine's story, within Jean Valjean's story, also entirely moves me to tears nearly every time. That is another post altogether.

Shortness of Breath for the Beautiful

My body aches and I have no appetite. Which makes winter all the more miserable. I am longing to get things done, to accomplish something. Yet all I can do is sit and hope that I feel better tomorrow, perhaps. Not being able to get things done when they need doing is causing me a shortness of breath for the beautiful. Not literally, but figuratively speaking.What is this necessity I have for beauty around me. I need it to function properly. I need to breathe it in and out constantly to feel alive.

About four years ago, we moved to a little cottage home that looked much like Walden, which felt like the right thing to do, ...and in a lot of essential ways it was. The goal was to live simply and with not a lot of space or things. It felt like living the Thoreau dream, which I've always wanted to do. "To live deliberately." To live simply. It was about two years and two months that we lived here deliberately, ...which is about how long Thoreau lived in his cottage, too. It payed off financially because housing prices went up which boosted the equity in our little Rose Cottage, (which is what I and no one else called it). After the first year, things started to close in on me and I felt claustrophobic. We started planning a move which took another year or so. Now we are settled in a different home, where there is space to breath in and out. No shortness of breath here.

The desire to make this new home beautiful, yet still simple and deliberate is where I am at now. We'll get there one step and one day at a time. I still feel that living simply is where things are at, but I now realize that you can still live simply with more space, and that that space is what allows you to breathe. Thoreau was only able to live simple because he had a forest and a pond as his backyard to breath deliberately in and out in, after all.

These are some beautiful things currently inspiring me.