Sometimes I sits and thinks . . .

     . . . sometimes I just sits. Here is a blogger, Pranabk in Pune, India, who has been plugging away at this for nearly four years. He is a reader as well.

     And for poetry there's Trinath .

Nothing like a long drive

Salt River Canyon this morning

To Tucson. Why? Why not. To take the recorder to The Folk Shop for repair. I stopped to take pictures on the way mostly of the wildflowers. Some weren't so wild as near Dripping Springs, between Globe and Winkelman on route 77, Arizona Department Of Transportation (ADOT) had seeded the roadside as well as widening the road in places. It's been at least two years since I last drove that road.

Saguaro, cholla and eschscholzia californica

And cottonwood trees by the Gila river in Winkelman were 'snowing' their seed.

Salt River Canyon this evening

Lazy (quarter) day

Chloe is growing . . . fast.

Whiled away the morning browsing Facebook and this great bellringing app. I can brush up on the blue line of methods I once knew and learn a few more useful ones.  The muscle memory for handling a bell is like bicycle riding, once learned never forgotten though it may not be quite as smooth and the listening skills will need brushing up.

I am become . . .

a signpost in the forest called Weblog . . .

A Change of Life. Be sure to read the blog-within-a-blog Papillon's story linked from the sidebar. 

From the bookshelves 76

I shall console myself . . .

with a mug of Earl Grey. This is Frederick the Literate by Charles Wysocki. The humour is in the book titles, and authors.

O, woe . . .

      I have been lusting after a new treble recorder recently and now I have reason to search in earnest. Playing my ebony alto/treble recorder/blockflute at church today I noticed a crack near the wind-way. Oh, I have not been caring for it as well as I should. Has the block swelled too much? Did I knock it in a moment of inattention? Or am I just unlucky? I shall have to consult a recorder expert for a prognosis. Or perhaps a kind reader can offer an opinion from this picture?

Click on the picture for a scary enlargement. The crack ends adjacent to the top of the window (at the moment)

Words

     I finished reading Michael Frayn's novel Headlong which will be discussed at the next Round Valley Book Group  meeting in April and took the time to find out a little more about these words:

soteriology;  
irenic (I've already mentioned eirenic here);
tipstaff, self explanatory really;
lapsarian, the OED quotes a heading from the Dictionary of Christian Theology edited (?) by my theologian name-sake.

     And another painting term to keep chiaoscuro company: grisaille.

The Book of Changes

     The drift of time .  .  . I have been thinking about a period of my childhood after searching a name on the web.

     I was last at The Orangery in Kelvedon to see the Kelvedon Players production of Lystistrata in, I'm guessing, 1965. Dad was in it of course and Cy and Mary Bartlett. I'm assuming it was directed by Kate Collingwood, one of the founders of the group.

     The Orangery, in the grounds of Felix Hall Park, was converted to a house as were the stables and carriage house, now the Clock House. The ground floor rooms were tall; I was always amazed by the height of the staircase to the regular sized bedrooms upstairs. My sister was employed there as live-in help for a year or so in the late 1950's and I would walk up from the village to play with the children she helped care for. I remember the geese, the oval swimming pool, great shady cedar trees, the spinney, the fruit cage; I remember a Christmas party with tea and magic show and a huge tree with candles. I remember Thomasina the ginger cat catching a  mouse which my sister disected to entertain us children one summer day. I remember playing croquet. I remember the long walk from the village . . .

     The name I Googled was:

Nigel Richmond

Silence

Meet Chloë

     Kathy decided I need another husky . . . oh the joys to come. It has taken us two days to decide on a name. Too much like Zoë? Eh,eh. She's about seven months old . . .

Dydd Dewi Sant

Patron saint of Wales. I like to remember . . . because later this month everyone in this country will think they're Irish for a day. And St Patrick was from south Wales or possibly the north of what is now England . . .