bee creative

#23 feather the nest

I got a "bee in my bonnet" (Which is better than "bats in the belfry" I think?) and decided to move one of my bookcases from the back room to the living room.

I found things... like The Dictionary of Cliches by James Rogers.

 

More furniture was moved.

Things were sorted.

Widget is disturbed.

"That's the way the cookie crumbles," I guess.

There was flat bread for lunch.

Only change I made to the recipe was substituting wheat flour for the oat.

The spread was made of walnuts, re-hydrated tomatoes, the last asparagus from the garden, some oregano and olive oil.

I could eat this "until the cows come home."

 

#18 listen

Beth (Still life pond) pointed me in the direction of a very lovely podcast with Ruth Gendler who's book Notes on the Need for Beauty I read many years ago and loved.

Thank you Beth.

don't get stuck in why

What I need to tell myself frequently.

Why is good when it encourages curiosity and wonder.

And why is limiting when it creates doubt.

 

field notes

It's snowing, little tiny flakes.

23 F/-5 C, NE winds 21 MPH...windchill 8 F

It's a wind that blows over glaciers, down a river valley and across a sea to where I am and then goes on.

If you go to this wind map and zoom in, it looks like living fur.

This morning I remembered how much I like the word "resilience."

There is this little bit from a poem. 

Not sure how I feel about the whole poem,

but this bit...

Only stay quiet, while my mind remembers

The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

From "On Growing Old," by John Masefield

the picture-less 15

For some reason this has always stuck:

Parting at Morning

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountain's rim;

And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

 

Robert Browning

like a tree

Sometimes interesting things come from unexpected sources...

I've listened to a lot of the podcasts that have been produced by TOAST, this one is my favorite...about lines.

More books added to my "to-read pile."

This morning I took my collection of words and scattered them among the pages of my journal.

And altered photos.

And while playing, discovered a shadow like a tree.

For those that like On Being and haven't listened yet...the podcast with Katherine May is a good one. There is a 2 minute excerpt that she reads from her book here.

 

 

 

 

the mind wanders

Early in the morning...coffee, journal, an orange.

Adding blanket stitch to the bottom of a jacket and thinking about metaphors and things that are not.

"I have remembered when the winter came, high in my chamber in the frosty nights, when in the still light of the cheerful moon, on every twig and rail and jutting spout, the icy spears were adding to their length against the arrows of the coming sun..."

From "Within the Circuit of this Plodding Life," Henry Thoreau

 

knowing myself

For a variety of reasons, I need to get in the habit of posting in the morning.

Today's 15 minute project.

And, I take a lot of comfort in Wendell Berry's poetry.  Today there is this:

"I have planted by the stars in defiance of experts."  From "The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer."

Wendell Berry

Thinking a lot about where we get information, how we form opinions, what we consider truth.

The power of words.

poetry

A few things I listened to again tonight:

"The Language Issue" by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.  

And this, "Let This Darkness be a Bell Tower" by Rainer Maria Rilke.

 

open house, day fourteen

A poem I have loved for over 40 years...

It might have been on an invitation:

 

I heard a bird sing

in the dark of December.

A magical thing

and sweet to remember.

"We are nearer to spring

than we were in September."

I heard a bird sing

in the dark of December.

-Oliver Herford

*

 

Sunrise: 7:58

Sunset: 4:14 PM