snowflakes
Feb. 9th, 2025 10:27 amThe snowflakes were very beautiful this morning (you can click through to see them larger)
( one more--blurry, but I like the sparkle of it )
( one more--blurry, but I like the sparkle of it )
February Fancy
Feb. 1st, 2025 12:11 pmHere are three photos for you. Two I've shared elsewhere on the interwebs, so some of you will have seen them before, but the first one is making its world premiere right here, right now!
Dancing a cumbia with a candle.
Last month we went to see Yeison Landero and his band play cumbia in Amherst. (Here's what his music is like--he throws his head back and goes into a beatific trance as he plays.) It was marvelous.
When we were last in Colombia, we had one very brief session of learning to dance ;-) The teacher showed us several different styles of cumbia dancing, including one where one partner (traditionally, the guy) takes off his hat and holds it high, then low, as the two partners twirl round. That night in Amherst, the venue was full of people dancing their hearts out, including this one girl wielding a candle like a hat. How great to be dancing with fire!**
Ice Eye
Sometimes the frozen beaver pond glares up at you with a critical eye! (The eye is created by people opening a hole in the ice for ice fishing. It refreezes, and then it's opened again, and so on.)
Popcorn Blossoms
From swollen buds, just about to unfurl, to a double-petaled flower in all its glory, popcorn blossoms are rightly celebrated for their beauty. As the classical poet wrote
Seeing them explode
ought to be the end of it.
These popcorn blossoms!
--Nothing can keep their buttery goodness
from lingering on my fingers.
(apologies to the poet Sosei and the translator![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
larryhammer for my abuse of Kokinshū poem no. 47. You can read more of Larry's for-real translations in Ice Melts in the Wind: The Seasonal Poems of the Kokinshu.)
**Actually we think it was an electric candle. But let's imagine!
Dancing a cumbia with a candle.
Last month we went to see Yeison Landero and his band play cumbia in Amherst. (Here's what his music is like--he throws his head back and goes into a beatific trance as he plays.) It was marvelous.
When we were last in Colombia, we had one very brief session of learning to dance ;-) The teacher showed us several different styles of cumbia dancing, including one where one partner (traditionally, the guy) takes off his hat and holds it high, then low, as the two partners twirl round. That night in Amherst, the venue was full of people dancing their hearts out, including this one girl wielding a candle like a hat. How great to be dancing with fire!**
Ice Eye
Sometimes the frozen beaver pond glares up at you with a critical eye! (The eye is created by people opening a hole in the ice for ice fishing. It refreezes, and then it's opened again, and so on.)
Popcorn Blossoms
From swollen buds, just about to unfurl, to a double-petaled flower in all its glory, popcorn blossoms are rightly celebrated for their beauty. As the classical poet wrote
Seeing them explode
ought to be the end of it.
These popcorn blossoms!
--Nothing can keep their buttery goodness
from lingering on my fingers.
(apologies to the poet Sosei and the translator
larryhammer for my abuse of Kokinshū poem no. 47. You can read more of Larry's for-real translations in Ice Melts in the Wind: The Seasonal Poems of the Kokinshu.)**Actually we think it was an electric candle. But let's imagine!
Frost and ice
Jan. 9th, 2025 08:56 amIt's cold here.
The water in the marsh froze clear--where it's deep, you can see all the growing things, the mud, the bubbles ... the tossed cans... frozen in it. In shallower places, you can see the marsh grass is frozen in it and on it, held down by hoarfrost stitchery.
On the paths in the woods, water in the soil has frozen in the formation known in Japan as 霜柱 (shimo bashira), frost pillars. Sometimes they look like ribbon candy, other times like tiny stalactite formations, and other times, as here, like ghost moss.
( Here's a microfiction from a couple of days ago )
The water in the marsh froze clear--where it's deep, you can see all the growing things, the mud, the bubbles ... the tossed cans... frozen in it. In shallower places, you can see the marsh grass is frozen in it and on it, held down by hoarfrost stitchery.
On the paths in the woods, water in the soil has frozen in the formation known in Japan as 霜柱 (shimo bashira), frost pillars. Sometimes they look like ribbon candy, other times like tiny stalactite formations, and other times, as here, like ghost moss.
( Here's a microfiction from a couple of days ago )
seen along the way
Dec. 31st, 2024 11:09 amYesterday I was walking to the post office, and I came across one of those plushie reindeer antlers that people put on their cars as a seasonal decoration. It was lying by the side of the road.
"Either the car was a male, shedding late, or a female, shedding very early," I mused. [Reindeer antler facts here! Learn the truth behind the social media posts!]
Later I passed a small silver glint. A dime.
"Hey! Hey!" the dime called. "You're just going to walk by and leave me here, as if I were a PENNY or something? You're so rich you can't use a dime?! Well not for long, sister, not with that attitude!"
I went back and picked it up.
On the way back from the post office, I saw a perfect, long, tapered, thick orange carrot lying in the middle of someone's front lawn.
Ah, evanescence. One moment you're a snowman in the prime of life, and the next moment, you're just a carrot, waiting to be carried off by a posse of squirrels or an opportunistic deer.
"Either the car was a male, shedding late, or a female, shedding very early," I mused. [Reindeer antler facts here! Learn the truth behind the social media posts!]
Later I passed a small silver glint. A dime.
"Hey! Hey!" the dime called. "You're just going to walk by and leave me here, as if I were a PENNY or something? You're so rich you can't use a dime?! Well not for long, sister, not with that attitude!"
I went back and picked it up.
On the way back from the post office, I saw a perfect, long, tapered, thick orange carrot lying in the middle of someone's front lawn.
Ah, evanescence. One moment you're a snowman in the prime of life, and the next moment, you're just a carrot, waiting to be carried off by a posse of squirrels or an opportunistic deer.
tiny snowman
Jan. 25th, 2024 02:44 pmYesterday some wet snow fell, and also yesterday, we got a delivery of propane. Afterward, when I went outside to check my tanks, I found that the delivery person had left us a tiny snowman on a metal saddle that's supposed, in the summer months, to hold a hose (we don't actually use it for that).
It's a charming snowman!
The delivery person was doing their rounds, filled up the tank, and then took the time to make three wet snowballs and stack them--voila, snowman.
I have no way of thanking them--and indeed, if I somehow were able to get a message through the corporate bureaucracy, it might backfire and they might get in trouble for not HURRYING RIGHT OFF TO THE NEXT DELIVERY. But I was delighted. Happy too for them, that they were in a cheerful mood that made it possible to do this fun thing.
It's a charming snowman!
The delivery person was doing their rounds, filled up the tank, and then took the time to make three wet snowballs and stack them--voila, snowman.
I have no way of thanking them--and indeed, if I somehow were able to get a message through the corporate bureaucracy, it might backfire and they might get in trouble for not HURRYING RIGHT OFF TO THE NEXT DELIVERY. But I was delighted. Happy too for them, that they were in a cheerful mood that made it possible to do this fun thing.
snow, woodland marimba, Netflix
Dec. 12th, 2022 09:07 amIt snowed!
I knocked the snow off the clothesline and it fell all at once, from the entire length of the clothesline, a rope of snow hitting the ground.
I'm back from my dad's house, but while I was there, I found a tiny nature preserve that has been set up across the street from my high school. It's on low-lying land unsuitable for development: a land conservancy has bought it and made it into a preserve, so high school students can learn about wetlands and local people can go for walks.
Because it's a wetland, there are sections with plank walkways to keep you above the water. For one of them, the beams are laid out lengthwise, and when you walk on them, it's musical, like a marimba (you have to turn your sound up to hear; it's a not-great 10-second phone video):
The creator signed it:
The other walkways have the planks laid out crosswise--they don't give the same music (but are fine for walking on!)
I saw an odd but funny and entertaining movie on Netflix, Army of Thieves (2021). In it, a young German bank clerk who has been mastering safecracking in his spare time is recruited to break into a series of bank vaults designed by a master locksmith and themed on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung operas. (The vaults are named Reingold, Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.) For each vault, the guy tells the story of that opera, and the music plays in the background, and then you get an image of all the gears and tumblers moving as he goes into a trance, listening to the clicks and slides and whirs. So cool! And the rest of the gang are hilarious characters. I feel likesartorias would enjoy it.
Weirdly, the movie is a prequel to a zombie film, Army of the Dead. This film is not a zombie film at all! Is this a thing that happens often? A prequel that's a totally different genre from the original film? The only way zombies figure in Army of Thieves is that you hear news stories about this zombie outbreak in Nevada, and sometimes the hero has bad dreams about zombies. I think he's the only carryover from one film to the other...
I knocked the snow off the clothesline and it fell all at once, from the entire length of the clothesline, a rope of snow hitting the ground.
I'm back from my dad's house, but while I was there, I found a tiny nature preserve that has been set up across the street from my high school. It's on low-lying land unsuitable for development: a land conservancy has bought it and made it into a preserve, so high school students can learn about wetlands and local people can go for walks.
Because it's a wetland, there are sections with plank walkways to keep you above the water. For one of them, the beams are laid out lengthwise, and when you walk on them, it's musical, like a marimba (you have to turn your sound up to hear; it's a not-great 10-second phone video):
The creator signed it:
The other walkways have the planks laid out crosswise--they don't give the same music (but are fine for walking on!)
I saw an odd but funny and entertaining movie on Netflix, Army of Thieves (2021). In it, a young German bank clerk who has been mastering safecracking in his spare time is recruited to break into a series of bank vaults designed by a master locksmith and themed on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung operas. (The vaults are named Reingold, Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.) For each vault, the guy tells the story of that opera, and the music plays in the background, and then you get an image of all the gears and tumblers moving as he goes into a trance, listening to the clicks and slides and whirs. So cool! And the rest of the gang are hilarious characters. I feel like
sartorias would enjoy it.Weirdly, the movie is a prequel to a zombie film, Army of the Dead. This film is not a zombie film at all! Is this a thing that happens often? A prequel that's a totally different genre from the original film? The only way zombies figure in Army of Thieves is that you hear news stories about this zombie outbreak in Nevada, and sometimes the hero has bad dreams about zombies. I think he's the only carryover from one film to the other...
postcard for a pine tree
Mar. 5th, 2022 12:09 amI delivered** minoanmiss's postcard to the pine tree whom I had to deprive of mail some weeks ago (described in this entry).
It was close to sunset and the light was very long and golden.
( I took a video (it's 55 seconds) )
And here's a still photo
**I say "delivered" but I didn't actually leave it there; I just shared it with the pine tree the way you do with mail that's addressed to both of you. "We got a postcard from Minoan Miss! Let me show it to you and read it to you."
minoanmiss's postcard to the pine tree whom I had to deprive of mail some weeks ago (described in this entry).It was close to sunset and the light was very long and golden.
( I took a video (it's 55 seconds) )
And here's a still photo
**I say "delivered" but I didn't actually leave it there; I just shared it with the pine tree the way you do with mail that's addressed to both of you. "We got a postcard from Minoan Miss! Let me show it to you and read it to you."
Postcard for a pine tree
Feb. 10th, 2022 05:39 pmToday I went out to mail a letter, walking through the woods, like I did the day I dropped a card by a pine tree. It was much warmer today, but the path through the woods was still covered with ice. If I had been wearing ice skates, I could have sped along it, my own tiny Rideau Canal.
On the way back from the post office, the clouds were thickening and the wind picked up, and I worried about trees falling on me. I never used to worry about this in the woods, but winds that bring down trees are much more common now. At home, I picked up mail from our postbox... and there was this postcard:
It's fromminoanmiss --she sent it for me to share with the pine tree.
Isn't that great?
Next time I walk that route, I promise I will! Thank you, MM!
On the way back from the post office, the clouds were thickening and the wind picked up, and I worried about trees falling on me. I never used to worry about this in the woods, but winds that bring down trees are much more common now. At home, I picked up mail from our postbox... and there was this postcard:
It's from
minoanmiss --she sent it for me to share with the pine tree. Isn't that great?
Next time I walk that route, I promise I will! Thank you, MM!
This past week gave us plenty of cold days for frozen bubbles. I blew one beautiful big one that floated up past my neighbor's pussy willow tree and eventually snagged in the upper branches of my apple tree:
(The black blob in the sky is a crow)
Tangled up
One day I decided to walk a birthday card to the post office--to get there I chose a path along trails and through the woods. There were many animal tracks. This photo is from a different day, but it gives the sense of the busy traffic:
Eventually I emerged from the woods, patted my pocket, and--oh no! No birthday card! It had come out at some point! So I turned around and retraced my steps and retrieved it from beneath a pine tree. I mentioned this on Twitter, and the Healing Angel responded:
Meanwhile, a very lonely pine tree droops when it realises that this courier was not for it, and that it will have to wait still longer for the letter it anticipates
OMG blood of my blood, soul of my soul.
(The black blob in the sky is a crow)
Tangled up
One day I decided to walk a birthday card to the post office--to get there I chose a path along trails and through the woods. There were many animal tracks. This photo is from a different day, but it gives the sense of the busy traffic:
Eventually I emerged from the woods, patted my pocket, and--oh no! No birthday card! It had come out at some point! So I turned around and retraced my steps and retrieved it from beneath a pine tree. I mentioned this on Twitter, and the Healing Angel responded:
Meanwhile, a very lonely pine tree droops when it realises that this courier was not for it, and that it will have to wait still longer for the letter it anticipates
OMG blood of my blood, soul of my soul.
winter mist
Dec. 22nd, 2020 10:30 pmThis morning was enchanting--the Fedex driver I encountered agreed that it was a fairyland out there.
... or a ghostland?
So **full** in its empty-seemingness
Don't let go of the guide rope!
And then everything became bright, tangible, solid--and that had its own beauty. Can't get enough of Jiji these days, lovely boy. We're so glad he's home.
... or a ghostland?
So **full** in its empty-seemingness
Don't let go of the guide rope!
And then everything became bright, tangible, solid--and that had its own beauty. Can't get enough of Jiji these days, lovely boy. We're so glad he's home.
the dangers of a spectacular sunset
Dec. 7th, 2020 11:27 pmI set off at 3:30 to deliver cookies to those of my children who live within driving distance (the other two live a continent and an ocean away--a different continent and ocean depending on which direction you tackle the journey from). By 3:30 the light is already long, and by the time I was leaving from my first stop (4:10), the tips of the bare trees were already red from the setting sun.
It was a 30-minute journey south to the next stop, during which time the sky did such tantalizing things with pinks, purples, and golds that I was quite beside myself. "She was the kind of person for whom sunsets pose a driving hazard," said my internal narrator. Eyes on the road, Asakiyume!
Here's another song by Dona Onete, Lua Jaci--the beginning, when she's singing a cappella, is just beautiful, and the simple melancholy of the overall song really speaks to me right now.
The woman herself is quite wonderful. Here's the blurb about her and her 2017 album, Banzeiro, from Bandcamp:
And here's a great quote from a 2019 piece in a Brazilian magazine:
It was a 30-minute journey south to the next stop, during which time the sky did such tantalizing things with pinks, purples, and golds that I was quite beside myself. "She was the kind of person for whom sunsets pose a driving hazard," said my internal narrator. Eyes on the road, Asakiyume!
Here's another song by Dona Onete, Lua Jaci--the beginning, when she's singing a cappella, is just beautiful, and the simple melancholy of the overall song really speaks to me right now.
The woman herself is quite wonderful. Here's the blurb about her and her 2017 album, Banzeiro, from Bandcamp:
Whether she’s championing gay rights, singing about the delights of indecent proposals or praising a former lover for his ‘crazy ways of making love’, Banzeiro is defined by Onete’s honest reflections on life, love and sex, as well as her delight in the everyday pleasures of life in the Amazon, whether that’s spicy seasoning, salty kisses or fishy-smelling water.
Formerly a history teacher, folklore researcher, union representative, culture secretary and children’s author - “I never thought I would be a singer” she claims - Onete recorded her debut album Feitiço Caboclo at 73. A cult figure in Brazil and an ambassador for Amazonian culture, the music she sings is a unique mix of rhythms from native Brazilians, African slaves and the Caribbean - epitomised in the joyous carimbós that are her trademark. (Source)
And here's a great quote from a 2019 piece in a Brazilian magazine:
Eu canto carimbó, bolero, rock. Faço o que eu quiser. Não sei o que desce na minha cabeça para fazer uma coisa assim... uma mulher da minha idade.
[I sing carimbó, bolero, rock. I do what I want. I don't know what gets into my head to make me do a thing like that ... a woman my age.] (Source)
maple syrup season
Mar. 5th, 2019 07:02 pmI subscribed to a local newspaper, a physical paper that comes to the house, for the first time ever, and it's a decision that delights me. Even the ads delight me. If it weren't for the ads, I wouldn't have found out about a place nearby called the Strawbale Café (built with straw bales, but then plastered over), which, at this time of year, makes its own maple syrup.
We went for a visit this past weekend.
The bottom part of their evaporator dates from 1959.
Here is the main line, reaching up into the sugarbush. (Isn't that a great name for a stand of sugar maples?)
And here you can just about see the much thinner piping that goes to each tree. In the past, people would collect sap in buckets and then carry it somewhere to boil it down, but now they generally use piping like this.
When I used to tap maple trees, I gathered the sap in old milk jugs:
But back to the present: This apparatus pumps water back up the line at the end of the season to clean the lines and (somehow) help seal things off (I didn't really understand that part).
And here are the sap storage tanks.
Last but not least, inside the Strawbale Café, where everyone was enjoying fresh maple syrup on pancakes, and the manager was urging people to come back in the summer, when they have a much more extensive menu.
We went for a visit this past weekend.
The bottom part of their evaporator dates from 1959.
Here is the main line, reaching up into the sugarbush. (Isn't that a great name for a stand of sugar maples?)
And here you can just about see the much thinner piping that goes to each tree. In the past, people would collect sap in buckets and then carry it somewhere to boil it down, but now they generally use piping like this.
When I used to tap maple trees, I gathered the sap in old milk jugs:
But back to the present: This apparatus pumps water back up the line at the end of the season to clean the lines and (somehow) help seal things off (I didn't really understand that part).
And here are the sap storage tanks.
Last but not least, inside the Strawbale Café, where everyone was enjoying fresh maple syrup on pancakes, and the manager was urging people to come back in the summer, when they have a much more extensive menu.
At 6:30, this windstorm knocked out the power, and I freaked out, picturing us without power for days in the well-below-freezing temperatures. The pipes would surely freeze and burst and then cost extravagant amounts to fix, and anyway we wouldn't be able to fix them right away because everyone else's pipes would have burst too, and so the helper-fixer people would be in short supply.
I went to the supermarket to get milk and maybe another candle. In the parking lot, I met Wakanomori, who'd just gotten off the bus; he said the town to the west had power. I knew from the gossip in the supermarket that the town to the east didn't.
"We'll just have to sleep in one huge bundle in the living room under coats and blankets to keep warm," I said as we drove home. Without street lights or house lights, it was deeply dark everywhere.
As we were about to turn in at our driveway, our headlights illuminated a huge and unearthly creature, the color of smoke and about as corporeal, standing where we usually park. It was a deer--standing in the middle of the driveway. It stared at us a moment, then ceded us the parking space and walked away down the slope into our neighbor's backyard accompanied by a friend who'd been standing by our apple tree.
"National Grid estimates the power will be back by 11 pm," the healing angel reported, once we were inside.
"Please let it be so," I prayed.
And a minute later, the lights came on.
I think it was a blessing from the deer.
I went to the supermarket to get milk and maybe another candle. In the parking lot, I met Wakanomori, who'd just gotten off the bus; he said the town to the west had power. I knew from the gossip in the supermarket that the town to the east didn't.
"We'll just have to sleep in one huge bundle in the living room under coats and blankets to keep warm," I said as we drove home. Without street lights or house lights, it was deeply dark everywhere.
As we were about to turn in at our driveway, our headlights illuminated a huge and unearthly creature, the color of smoke and about as corporeal, standing where we usually park. It was a deer--standing in the middle of the driveway. It stared at us a moment, then ceded us the parking space and walked away down the slope into our neighbor's backyard accompanied by a friend who'd been standing by our apple tree.
"National Grid estimates the power will be back by 11 pm," the healing angel reported, once we were inside.
"Please let it be so," I prayed.
And a minute later, the lights came on.
I think it was a blessing from the deer.
pine grove cows
Dec. 28th, 2018 06:52 pmThese cows are here, winter and summer--under these pine trees. Up the hill from them right now is a huge pile of butternut squash which I think? they must be eating? I like them; they are shaggy.
BTW... there are two entries before this one that I think possibly didn't make it into people's feeds. I did some hijinks with postdating and initially making private entries and then changing them to public, and I think they may have fallen into a friends feed oubliette.
BTW... there are two entries before this one that I think possibly didn't make it into people's feeds. I did some hijinks with postdating and initially making private entries and then changing them to public, and I think they may have fallen into a friends feed oubliette.
ice lantern
Jan. 4th, 2018 09:35 amFirst it will be snowstorming, then it will be back to the deep, deep freeze. Keep the home fires burning and a light out for the stranger.**
**Rich of me to say this since my outdoor lights don't actually work. But now I have the ice lantern, so it's all okay, right?
**Rich of me to say this since my outdoor lights don't actually work. But now I have the ice lantern, so it's all okay, right?
It is very satisfying to walk out into the deep cold well enough wrapped up to not be bothered by the chill.
I paid a visit to a frozen creek. I didn't pick the ice flowers.
( here abide frozen things )
Last year I resolved to write creatively at least two days a week, to work on Spanish every day (or to make up days I missed), and to record the things I notice each day. I failed at the first and third of those, but I did the second and am pleased to know significantly more this year than I did this time last year.
Two of my goals this year are related:
(1) Continue to work on Spanish in the same manner, but added to that: find a person or people to practice conversation with. The duolingo bots have their limits. I'm aiming for in-the-flesh rather than online, although with skyping, etc., I know online can be very good ... I should probably set a date by which I'll achieve this. How about the end of January...
(2) Write a bit every day. Maybe phrasing it that way will make it more achievable than saying "Write at least two days a week."
(3) This is the different goal: Read a bit every day (not counting social media). I can double-dip with this a little as I have a Spanish-language book to be working on.
I'll be looking at my friends' entries to see if they've got goals/resolutions, but if you haven't shared in an entry and want to share in comments, I'm all ears!
The bite of cold iron
Dec. 27th, 2017 01:38 pmIt's cold out today. I grabbed my car key in my bare hand after driving a brief way in the cold car, and it *stung* my hand. I felt like I'd been bitten or burned--I guess because the key was so cold? But I've never felt cold metal like that before. Maybe I always have gloves or mittens on? But suddenly I understood exactly what it must be like to be one of the fairy folk and touch cold iron.
