Flowers again

After all the heat waves this summer, suddenly we have switched to fall. I hope that we will have many gloriously sunny, but cool days before a snowfall, or rain or whatever. This year is so unpredictable that it could be anything in any order!

But with the thought of fall comes my need to again have flowers in the house: flowers on the entry table to welcome me as I return, or to make me smile as I leave.

I have purchased the first a few days ago.

 

Flowers are not essential…

In the cruel world of today’s lockdowns, flowers are not deemed essential. What???

For me they have always been very essential. Even in the deepest winter, I have always had fresh flowers on the entry table, or occasionally a flowering plant, for example, December’s poinsettia. But no flowers?!

Not possible.

My tulips were dropping and I had been intending to replace them for several days, but again what with the circumstances both I and the young adult who does my shopping neglected to put them on the list.

With the result that today when she went specifically just for flowers, the flower department was shut, deemed non-essential.

I was later able to get a bunch up at the service station whilst getting gas. Thank goodness that a local grower knows that, indeed, for many of us, FLOWERS ARE ESSENTIAL.

Getting through the days, weeks and potentially months of current world circumstances make small bits of color even more important.

It is interesting to note that our civilization in the Northern Hemisphere is facing much illness and death at a time when nature is exploding: a riot of color to help us keep our sanity. Again, for me, flowers are just as essential as the water I drink, the air I breathe and the food I eat.

No longer saveable - my two-week-old tulips

More expensive, but lovely - my service station boquet

The weird and ...

The wonderful

So this egg is the first time that I have seen such a weird pattern - not at all round and smooth. Does this mean that chickens can have difficult births? Or did they slip in a fertilized egg? In any case I chose not to crack it, not to boil it - too afraid of what I might see.

Continuing my series of weird medical issues... an allergy? An insect bite? Have done the hot salt water route; anbibiotic creams; starting to go down.

I never realized that these lovely green "balls" actually hid blossoms!

Ah the beauty of rain drops on my balcony awning as the sun went down...

Life supplies us with many weird and interesting sites - we have only to open our eyes.

Transformations

I love flowers and throughout the winter in particular usually have at least one if not more vases especially in the kitchen and living room. Not that I don’t also have the green plants living in the North corner of the living room in what was originally the plant “graveyard” until I discovered that with the mild light and warmth of the radiator they tended to flourish. Still call it the graveyard although it’s usually pretty lush looking.

As my kitchen is gray, black and white I use colored place mats, photos and some sort of decoration, usually floral, on the table as well.

Last week’s flowers although gorgeous when they were first put in the vase had all, but two, hung their heads and looked like they needed to be shipped out to the compost pile. That is until M got a hold of them. The transformation was stunning.

 

before

after

after

If by such a simple thing as cutting the stems, flowers can be transformed from ugly to beautiful, think of ways that we can also as humans change sad to happy, gray to light, problem to solution. I am sure that it’s not easy for all of us, but perhaps if we look at things, people and the world in general in another way or light, we can also achieve the just as stunning transformations.

Smile at someone today: not only will it change your face, it may just change their day.

Someone’s bag falls apart – offer them another.

A car cuts you off – wave them through (if nothing else they’ll wonder about your sanity).

Make that phone call that you have been putting off: someone may need the contact.

Just got a horrid letter – feel sorry for the person who wrote it – can’t touch me.

Raining? Just the sun watering the plants.

Heard some gossip: don’t pass it on, but if you know the person that it was about try perhaps gently (a key word here) to find out if they are hurting, what the truth might be, then return that to the gossiper.

Go on, I challenge you: take the ugly that you see and try and turn it into beauty.

Along the Highway

Today’s return from the mountains started out well enough – a great cup of coffee

and a roll in one of the chic tea-room-bakeries of Martigny: Michelod not to mention names.

Then I was on the road where things quickly disintegrated. Just past the road stop where I could have turned around and taken the state roads, all the traffic on the freeway came to a screeching halt.  There had been no warning and other than a very short blurb on “traffic info” a half hour later nothing: we were well stuck.

It turned out that they were working on the bridge in between two tunnels at St.Maurice: this was very easy to predict and signs could have been placed, but no, we should just waste our time.  In the end it took me an hour and a half to cover 17 kilometers!

But all was not lost as I was able to take the following pictures from the comfort of my driver’s seat with no danger to anyone in spite of the 100s of cars and trucks (dead standstill).

Not only, but I also always have reading material with me so finished an entire magazine and will be able to pass it along to a friend.

Life’s little frustrations do have their own silver linings with a ladybug for luck as well!

Of sliver moons and flowers

Walked into my bedroom last night just in time to see the sliver of a moon descending behind the Jura mountain chain. (And bet that most of you read silver instead of sliver, which it was).

 

This morning’s walk up to the village for coffee saw an explosion of beautiful spring showers.

It’s the first day of something…

Or, when one doesn’t feel like blogging.

Here we are at the beginning of a new month: January having disappeared before I even got around to writing (read finishing actually as I did make a start) the Christmas letter – it’s going to be one of those “Christmas Letter for Easter” years, I just know.

One feels that something should be accomplished, however due to the fact that

• It was Sunday
• It was trying to snow (had it been trying to be sunny, I might have felt differently?)
• Tomorrow is Monday
• This coming week has many bits and pieces, some fun, some not so
• I should have called/written or otherwise contacted too many people that it was un-motivating

I decided to practice the following

“A THOUGHT FOR TODAY

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. -Joseph Addison, writer (1672-1719)”

In my own way:

Something to do – cleaned the tops of the kitchen cupboards then wiped down all the kitchen cupboard faces as well (from the bath renovations the dust has filtered throughout the house and now that there is no more drilling, etc. figured that it was time to start and remove the first layers!)

Something to love – the cats: hey it didn’t say someone to love and although cats are actually living beings, I reckoned that “books” or “reading” probably wasn’t exactly what Mr. Addison meant.

Something to hope for – a new day, more tomorrows, more energy, more, simply more!

Meanwhile I did add happiness to this particular day with my flowers, showering in my new bath and lunch with my younger son.

They say...

that a picture is worth a thousand words.

here's my 1'000 for the day

The Indifferent, the Good and the Bad

Take two.

The Indifferent: although I posted yesterday that there was no indifferent, that was, and surely is, never exactly true. Most of our daily lives comprise an extraordinary amount of the “indifferent”: tasks, people, food that are neither good, nor bad, simply ordinary.

Those whom we perceive as having “exciting” lives still have to deal with problems, health issues and losses of all kinds. And those who think that their lives are exciting can really only claim that for themselves as most others will not necessarily agree. Your exciting can be my dull and vice versa (o.k. I think my life is exciting, so much the better for me, but yours is as well if you stop and consider it).

So indifferent at the moment: plenty!

The Good: ah, today is an excellent day

·       Sun still shining

·       My landlord gave me a pair of her sunglasses (as we all do, she has one pair that she always uses and 4 or 5 that are just taking up space in a drawer as not suitable for one reason or the other – we, ok at least me – are so wasteful. We hold on to things hoping that we will find someone else or some other use to offload our extras. Raised in a generation that considered wasting anything a sacrilege, it is hard now as adults to let go of that which we have accumulated.

·       A lovely surprise for said landlord: we had discussed going to lunch together, but I want to go into town and said no. I was on the point of telling her that I had changed my mind when I ran into her grandson biking up the hill – a surprise visit. She will be so pleased and we’ll have lunch another day.

The Bad: yeah – nothing today.

Still enjoying the flowers, the views and the sun.

 

Well travelled: I not it

Now you are thinking, what does she mean – she travels a lot so of course she’s well travelled, but as we should now know from fallacious headlines – things are not always as they seem.

This is more a story of my prowess as a finder of all things misplaced.

As is my want, I put on my walking shoes, gathered up reading glasses, camera and looked for my change purse to put in the backpack that I use to walk to the village for both coffee and mail most mornings: change purse had gone missing.

Check and re-check purse, check and re-check office, check and re-check bedroom, dump contents of purse onto desk, check and re-check car (on the thought that after our trip to the restaurant last night maybe it had fallen out of my purse). Nothing.

Upshot: had to take the car to the village as needed to then return to the restaurant and all this within the hour as I had loaned the car to my oldest son and he was leaving in an hour.

Breakfast with my usual band of friends (when it’s just the three and me we can have some highly entertaining discussions); off to the restaurant. Checked where I had parked, went to the restaurant and inquired, then checked where we had been sitting – nothing. Asked at the small grocers in case someone had found it on the parking and turned it in – nothing. 

All the while I am using a technic that I have pushed upon more than one person who has misplaced something: think back to the last time you saw it, had it, used it.

Ah ha, hadn’t actually taken it out at the restaurant so the last time that I was sure to have used it was yesterday afternoon up in the village when I went for my afternoon coffee. So back up to the village, where – miracle of miracles (but then I do tend to be lucky that way) – I had dropped it on the parking and someone had turned it in to our small grocers. (Had I thought faster, I would have checked there first and saved myself the 5 or 6 kilometre trip to-ing and fro-ing, but first thing in the morning, our brains are sometimes not yet in gear!)

Point: I still can find things (that I shouldn’t have dropped or misplaced in the first place, but let he who is without blame, cast the first stone); thinking produces results; there are still honest people in the world; I can travel great distances for not much.

By the way this is just a change purse, no ID, the only things of value (beyond the approx. Swiss francs 20.00 that will be there usually) were my Cumulus number (fidelity card to the local grocery store) and the chip for the village carton crusher (deposit had been Swiss francs 20.00): still worth recuperating.

Your reward for wading through this story that-all-of-us-experience more than once in any given week – the roses and flowers on the dock from my yesterday’s walk.

 

 

Back in the clouds or…

I’m an angel.

 

Well probably not, but it sure sounds better than simply talking about the real reason that I’m back in the clouds: i.e. the weather.

Which will soon become “THE WEATHER” in our conversations. I mean back when we had our hot spell and I was having to water the hedge for fear that it would die as my neighbour’s gardener had cut it more than half back, I laughing said: “well that’s summer so get ready for July and August to be topsy-turvy awful”. From my mouth to the directors of the climate it seems.

Since I was tired of home under the rain, I thought that I would try the mountains instead. Was glad that I knew the roads well so the fog didn’t faze me. Slept better than ever, but that may have also been the glass of red wine and not the weather.

However, after only 300 steps throughout the morning, thought that I had best brave the elements, regardless. Even in the wet, it is beautiful and the rain can’t totally hide the lovely flowers.

I will remember the cool when I complain about the heat.

Stopping to smell the roses, or

Stopping period. 

Anytime I want to take a look around or investigate a patch of clover (still looking for the natural four-leaf one), or anything else for that matter, due to my history of shuffling, stumbling, tripping, I would be well advised to come to a complete halt before proceeding to lift my eyes from the ground!

This morning’s hike, first through the woods, then up the mountain road to the meadow at the top of one rise and back down, passing mountain rivers along the way had me however thinking that “stopping to smell the roses” might be also:

Just an excuse to take pictures!

Didn’t actually smell any roses, but the presence of several colors of lilacs had me trying to see if they had a different smell according to color and the recent rains have enabled woods chips and downed logs to possess that most foresty (I know, I know – sometimes one just has to make up a word: “naturey” was a recent one by my housemate) of smells.

But mainly it was about the photos… below

Tenacity

rain drops

River in slow motion

new growth

beautiful!

Rhode in full bloom

small alpine village across the mountain

Really: a stone as a pillow. But looks soft enough.

Morning glories

My current morning walk provides a never-ending supply of changing foliage, flowers and shrubs.  This one was no exception so Stormy stopped often to sniff: I was patient. I stopped often to take a picture: she was patient.

There were no actual morning glory flowers, but the mountain does seem to be particularly good for Irises, of all shades, colors and forms.