“Feathers fall; soft as a song, light as morning dreams.”
― Eirene Evripidou
We think of feathers as soft and lovely but during WWI in England, women gave white feathers to men not in uniform in an attempt to shame them into enlisting, using white feathers to signify cowardice. Other less negative meanings have included peace, pacifism, and courage. To me, this feather was a small, beautiful sighting as I went for a walk, another chance to be amazed at the way errant feathers cling to plants.
No real Christmas tree this year because without family coming in, we decided for the second year in a row not to have a big tree, leaving many ornaments to languish in their bin in the garage. But we have the nature/bird tree. I’ve been collecting ornaments for this tree, which sits on our sideboard, for many years. We have birds of all sorts, snowflakes needle-pointed by my mom in better days (as well as other ornaments she made), several owls, a glass octopus I bought in a Christmas market in Philadelphia, a cricket from my s-i-l in France, and many others. It’s colorful day and night and gives me joy to see each year.
fantastic: conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable
…once again I have nothing, no Thursday Doors that is. It’s supposed to be the easy week, favorite doors from this year but I always find it hard to choose but mostly I’ve been busy.
A short explanation is in order because I haven’t been visiting your blogs nearly as much as I’d like. The simple reason is caring for aging parents, the reason we moved to Arizona in the first place but a task that’s become much more consuming in the last several months. I’m now generally at their house 3-4 hours a day to fix the main meal (prepared meals, not from scratch), clean, do laundry, run errands, etc. Sometimes, such as yesterday, it’s much more: a call at 3 am that Mom had slipped getting out of bed to go to the bathroom and was lying on the floor. Dad’s balance isn’t good enough to get her up, so I drove there, got back home in time to get another hour of sleep before getting up to leave at 7:30 am to take Dad to his eye doctor’s appointment, and then due to Mom having a really bad day, didn’t get home until 7 pm that night. They have no internet and obviously I didn’t feel much like doing anything but eating, relaxing a bit with my husband, and going to bed once I got home.
Not complaining, just explaining. On the several days a week when my husband goes over, I’m generally running errands, cleaning our house, and things of that nature as well as squeezing in some time for relaxation by reading while sipping tea. These days I’m hoping to get in some baking and finish and send my Christmas letter. So please don’t feel neglected. It’s what my priorities have to be right now.
Today’s offering for Jude’s December challenge of color, color, and more color comes from one of my walks earlier this year while visiting all our friends in Illinois. Along the back trails, I kept coming across bright drifts of flowers tucked among the tree. Soul food of the very best kind!
I like to walk down to this lake, walk around it, and reflect on this, that, and the other thing but the lake does its own reflecting as well. Pick up sticks, anyone?
It also provides a nice bit of bokeh.
Up close and personal with a butterfly? Alien? Somethings look different when you get this close, don’t they?
If you’re a mathaphobe, you’ll be sad to know that geometry is everywhere in nature. 🙂 But as the Scots might say, “Dinna fash”, there’ll be no test. Just enjoy.
Ah, water drops!
This is my sort of abandoned home.
This, that and the other thing 