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Category Archives: Postaday 2016

Birthday, Sally-Boots and A Football Game

It is our oldest Live-wire’s birthday today and he has requested Grannyburgers for his family birthday tea tonight! Grannyburgers are Arlene’s Longanisa shaped into small burgers rather than meatballs and they go down a storm! The recipe is here on Arlene’s blog should you wish to try them. I was really touched that these were his choice of the day.

It has been an indoors day today and I have finished a pair of tiny Sally-boots for C’s new baby due soon.

Sally Boots

Sally Boots

Rooting about in Mum’s desk to find something else I came across several little games. Do you remember these? This one is rather special being about football. Most were number or letter puzzles.

Football puzzle

Football puzzle

 

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Renghan Reveya, Christmas Tree and Thich Naht Hanh

A couple of days ago I asked if anyone had good ideas of how to use the beautiful little Fairytale Aubergines that I had just bought. Well, the greengrocer did! He had put a recipe book on the stall open at the page for Renghan Reveya, Round Aubergine Satay. What a brilliant feast-like meal we have just enjoyed! The recipe has been taken from Prashad Cookbook: Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Kaushy Patel. What a find!

Tonight The Ingleheart Singers have sung for the switching on of the tree lights in Troon. It was a delightful affair.

Troon's Christmas tree

Troon’s Christmas tree

The following words are so important to remember and resonate with me just at the moment. Help in the form of love and kindness is what everyone needs to help through the suffering. Love to all my readers.

Think on this

Think on this

 

 

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Peace, Tree Festival and A Wild Sea

What a delightful evening of words and music, a shared meal and friendship at The Mylor Mix last night with an emphasis on working for Peace in whatever way we can.

We were in Falmouth for a good friend’s birthday lunch today with wild winds and seas and discovered in the gardens of the Princess Pavilions, the trees all ready for the Christmas Tree festival later this evening.The labels tell you which community group made the decorations, all on the theme of Cinderella.

 

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Baby Hats, Singing and Ted Hughes

I have finished the two Christmas Tree hats in case the twin Grand-babies arrive earlier than expected! The colours of the stars were chosen by their excited big sister.

Tree hats

Tree hats

Last night The Ingleheart Singers and The Suitcase singers sang carols for the Open Evening at Krowji where all the artists’ studios were open and it was a brilliant evening.

Singing for the artists

Singing for the artists

We are having some bitterly cold times and this poem by Ted Hughes came to mind. I just love all the similes. I hope you enjoy it too.

The Warm and the Cold – Ted Hughes

Freezing dusk is closing
    Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
    That can no longer feel.
        But the carp is in its depth
          Like a planet in its heaven.
        And the badger in its bedding
          Like a loaf in the oven.
        And the butterfly in its mummy
          Like a viol in its case.
        And the owl in its feathers
          Like a doll in its lace.

Freezing dusk has tightened
    Like a nut screwed tight
On the starry aeroplane
    Of the soaring night.
        But the trout is in its hole
          Like a chuckle in a sleeper.
        The hare strays down the highway
          Like a root going deeper.
        The snail is dry in the outhouse
          Like a seed in a sunflower.
        The owl is pale on the gatepost
          Like a clock on its tower.

Moonlight freezes the shaggy world
    Like a mammoth of ice –
The past and the future
    Are the jaws of a steel vice.
        But the cod is in the tide-rip
          Like a key in a purse.
        The deer are on the bare-blown hill
          Like smiles on a nurse.
        The flies are behind the plaster
          Like the lost score of a jig.
        Sparrows are in the ivy-clump
          Like money in a pig.

Such a frost
    The flimsy moon
        Has lost her wits.

          A star falls.

The sweating farmers
    Turn in their sleep
        Like oxen on spits.

 

 

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Penryn River, Crows and Sunset at Mounts Bay

Here is a gallery of a beautiful day. Click on any photo for the caption and detail.

After six weeks of trying to get our sickly iMac made better and six weeks of posting via the iPad, we have invested in a new computer for Christmas and birthday presents…….  Now I can post again properly! Hooray.

 

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Calvin and Hobbes, Wheelbarrow and Roots

I was looking for a birthday card in the store in Mum’s bureau today and came across this that I had cut out of the paper aeons ago. I love it!dscn8999

We have a new wheelbarrow!
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I have brought the Hyacinths out of the fuse cupboard as they have brilliant root growth, mostly. Now in the light, the tops should develop and I should have Hyacinth flowers for my birthday, New Year’s Eve.dscn8998

 
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Posted by on November 29, 2016 in Beauty, haiku, nature, Photography, Postaday 2016

 

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Memories of Happy Times

It is five years today since we took the phone call in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art bringing us the sad news that our beautiful friend, Kath, had died. It is for her memory that I write my blog every day. She was the most positive person I have ever known, full of life and spirit and optimism. She would have loved this daily record of things that have made us smile or say, ‘Wow, that’s beautiful!’

 
 

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Rain Drops, Clematis and Seamus Heaney

After a rainy night we awoke to a beautiful Autumn day and we have spent most of the day gardening. The young Lambs’ Ears  are fluffy and gorgeous, especially with fresh raindrops on them.

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The delightful yellow of the clematis Bill Mackenzie brightens up the trellis.dscn7078It is 50 years since the publication of Seamus Heaney’s collection, Death of a Naturalist, and Radio 4 devoted a whole programme to readings of poems from this collection, one of which is Mid Term Break, which I have always found almost unbearably poignant. The last couple of lines are just the saddest and come as a culmination to a beautifully constructed poem.

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home.In the porch I met my father crying–
He had always taken funerals in his stride–
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my handAnd tell me they were “sorry for my trouble,”
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Here you can hear Seamus Heaney himself reading this autobiographical poem.
 
 

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Weekly Photo Challenge – Nostalgia

I made Blackberry and Apple Crumble for tea – just scrumptious, especially with cinnamon and oats added to the crumble mix. Every Autumn since I was a little girl we have picked blackberries from the lanes and my Mum made just the best Blackberry and Apple Crumble. Every family gathering sees some B&A Crumble on the table!

Served with vanilla ice cream or custard

Served with vanilla ice cream or custard

For others in this challenge, click here.

 

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Hebe, Hyacinths and My Research

I love the little pink bits in our white Hebe.dscn7062

I have planted up prepared Hyacinths in my Mum’s lovely glass jars, three white and three blue. Something went wrong last year so I am hoping all will be well this year. They are in a dark cupboard now for about six weeks until there is good root growth and then I will bring them out in the hope that they will be in flower between Christmas and New Year.dscn7063

I am spending many hours researching some of the ‘residents’ buried in our local churchyard, St Uny. We are working towards a production in May next year and I am finding myself consumed by the story of one young man and his mother. His is a War Grave – born in Colorado, he died in 1916 at the tender age of 19 and his mother died just six months later. There is such a story to tell.    I went back to my collections of poetry from the First World War this afternoon and came across this and leave it with you here…….

The End of a War 

In former days we used to look at life, and sometimes from a distance, at death, and still further removed from us, at eternity. Today it is from afar that we look at life, death is near us, and perhaps nearer still is eternity.

written by Jean Bouvier, a French Subaltern, February 1916

 

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