(this moment) - dalas (finished!)

{this moment - Inspired by Soulemama. A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment.} 

(at the workbench) - slow pokes and tall tales

I'm wondering why these young fellows have been so slow to show themselves here? Could it be that they're just a little bit shy? For such adventurous pigs, it makes me wonder!

Perhaps we'll find out more about what they've been up to in the weeks to come.... I'm sure they've been busy since they begin their travels....

 at least I have this lovely snapshot of them with their hairs brushed and their brand new clothes on. They certainly will have a lot to say, when hen next we meet up!  hoping you have a wonderful weekend, what ever you may be doing!

(around the table) - life as a giant

Besides the snake that has found a cool space to rest between the raised garden beds and the fence that acts as a shield against the garden marauders, all the growing things take small breaths between the changing weather lifting themselves up a little at a time ....

We are out with the return of the sun to see what has changed since the stormy weather has gone by.....and this is how we discover our life as giants ....

down below our feet, in the freshly shorn grass, the sun flashes tiny, bright and red ... catching our eyes...

below our feet, as we must sit down and lean our heads low to see,  we discover the smallest berries that ever grew...


we we make ourselves a  tiny feast ... stay very still and look carefully beyond the leaves that shelter the wild berry patch ...

we find something indescribably happy about these hidden treasures....

we gather berries mixed from the garden and the field: the ever bearers, the little alpines and the ever so little wild ones... inside we make a tiny feast of little pancakes topped with mixed strawberries that have been so quickly eaten ... no pictures were taken soon enough ...
..



























This is how our life as giants has gone on the first day. How would you feast on little hoard of found ruby-like treasures?

(this moment) - two years ago today

{this moment - Inspired by Soulemama. A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment.}

The original post can be found here.

at the workbench - At the Center of the Earth

Stories written long ago speak of ...  an ancient tree that grew at the center of the Earth ....And  the tree is very old ... but not as old as the Earth ...



And near that tree was a village.... At the center of the village was a well .... it is at this well that all the people came together early each morning ... to smile,  talk,  and learn the the latest news of their neighbors ... but not least of all was to draw fresh, cool water from deep within the Earth.








 At the workbench, I have been building a wooden village piece by piece and wondering where our "village well" is ? ...  What gathering place we have that refreshes us in this way?

Wishing you a wonderful day and a happy Earth Day every day!

(at the workbench) - the woodcutter's story

i love a good story... even as my daughter grows tall ... we love reading stack upon stack of old picture books and fairy tales...

hidden in these stories are truths so old and deep that their meanings continue to reveal themselves as we grow older. if you are not familiar with this lovely site- SurLaLune Fairy Tales-  take a look. you will find a beautiful collection of fairy tales, illustrations, annotations and similar stories found across cultures.

here are a couple of favorite stories about the brave, and honest woodcutter's journey:
~ the golden goose 
~ the honest woodcutter

 
and of course there are these old folk tales:
 ~ brave Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk"
~ little red riding hood



my sick little girl woke up early this past wednesday morning and from another room I heard:  "Wha-ching, watching, wha-ching". there in her hands was the happy discovery of the woodcutter's ax - a new tool I made late the night before while she slept. perhaps this may sound funny, but some how wooden toys feel honest; they are earthy and wonderful to touch and hold. Because wooden toys have this quality they become tools for the imagination.

this woodcutter's ax - as quickly as it was finished, made it's way to a little boy's hands for his fifth birthday. No sooner was his present unwrapped and there he was "ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink"!  It's always so wonderful to see a child at play!

well, I am back to the workbench to finish today's many projects - there will certainly be a couple more wooden axes in the works. one that will have to make it's way back to my daughter's hands!

PS. If you or a friend are a lover of fairy tales - I would love if you could share a comment about your favorite woodcutter's story. Thank you!

(from the bookshelf) - The Selfish Giant

It is that time of year ...
in the thick of winter ...still months to go till Spring ... we find ourselves waiting

but even in the heart of Winter ...
a memory of that far away world is still in bloom

a lovely book by Oscar Wilde... with giants visited by children, a Lady Snow and a Mr Frost playing in an enchanted garden that Spring has forgotten ...

... a modern fairy tale where Winter lives eternal











while a giant's heart is frozen cold.















Hoping you stay cozy through these long winter days warmed with thoughts of Springs return....

spring, fairytales and imagination

(NOTE: These pictures are from an ice storm of 2008 that placed our towns in a state of emergency for two weeks as we were held frozen in ice and time )

In some places SPRING has already arrived.
Here Spring remains a dream - a very far and distant memory. A time almost forgotten.

This Winter, just as Autumn was barely passing us by, a great ice storm arrived in the quietest hours of that early December night. Lying in bed, I could only imagine what was in that dark night as an enormous, thunderous noise filled all the space of night. The mighty, giant pines that circle the house, where splitting and falling nearby bedroom windows. I don't think a parent slept that night considering what to do next..




The next morning was to discover the world we knew frozen in ice. In that ice was frozen the power that gave warmth, ran the pump for our water- even time stopped frozen as clocks turned black. Outside piled high on hard, frozen grass were enormous broken limbs of trees. A once leggy lilac hedge was doubled over with the weight of the ice. Not a corner was not encased in a frozen world of that storm.

In our frozen land, we were to live for nearly two weeks in nothing less then the Snow Queen's realm (a wonderful Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tale.) There is imagination in taking up a life of days gone by in a strange, seemingly unending, wintry world. To even deepen the mysterious a frozen world, those weeks lay squarely in the year's darkest nights with the approaching of the Winter Solstice. Only days before Christmas eve and for some just Christmas day, that saw the electric lights rekindle their glow. And still more strange the furnace to warm the home and the slow return to modern life.

I sometimes find it hard to imagine Spring even in March, when Winter can only hold on another month or so. But somehow even in the everyday, there are fairytales to discover, imagined worlds to dream and stories to be lived.