Library cat;

Water colour “Library Cat” by Craig Roffler

Books I liked;

 Book of Fires by Jane Borodale

1752 Agnes Trussel, 17, has run away from her rural  home, burdened by two guilty secrets. she arrives in London, shocked by its squalor and poverty. She finds work  as an assistant to a fire work maker. She learns to make rockets, stars and other fiery fireworks; She meets a young seller of gunpowder and hatches a plan to get hr out of her predicament...and so the story goes, well written and interesting plot.

The Glass Painter's Daughter by Rachel Hore.

In a tiny stained-glass shop hidden in the backstreets of Westminster lies the cracked, sparkling image of an angel. The owners of Minster Glass have also been broken: Fran Morrison's mother died when she was a baby; a painful event never mentioned by her difficult, secretive father Edward. Fran left home to pursue a career in foreign cities, as a classical musician.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists.

Interesting, well written and a happy ending.

China Rose; Old Blush flowering in my garden.

Enjoy

Ode to a tree...

 you see a tree,

 its awesomeness takes your breath away;

you may feel,

the most beautiful in the world is a tree in full flower,

 holding on to its place with an intrinsic stubbornness, displaying innocence and fragrance

 in an abundance of beauty 

 colour, layer upon layer,

 humming and trembling with life.

Grevillia robusta/ Silky Oak;

25 years ago this tree was a tiny seedling I gave to my neighbour. He planted it in his garden. 

In the past 25 years t the garden has changed hands many times, Yet, the tree is still here, has matured and  become part of this  garden. 

©Photo/text Ts.

A dream...

Last night I had a funny dream, a bit nightmarish. I gave a dinner party.  The seating arrangements were different, all the guests were sitting in groups of four around small tables  I was sitting with a friend, had an animated conversation, so he did not have a face I knew. He looked a bit like Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind.

 The two other people, a gentleman and a lady I didn't know either. It turned out it was the Italian Ambassador and his wife. The gods know, I do not know any Italian Ambassadors nor their spouses. Anyway, I thought they were Spanish as the lady wore a Mantua and a Mantilla, I was wondering if I had forgotten that  it was a fancy dress party. Anyway, we were sitting and eating, talking, my friend “Rhett Butler” and I a little flirting, a sip of wine, suddenly my eyes swept over the other tables,  over to the Ambassador and his good wife, no one but "Rhett Butler" and I  had any wineglasses. Flustered I  said excuse me, got up from the table and wanted to go and get some wineglasses from the cupboard. The cabinet  was staring at me with empty shelves, all the glasses were gone. Frantically I tried  to remember where I  put them.  I ran around in the house and could not find the wineglasses, not one set. I looked in all the cupboards…nothing…then I woke up.

 The Moral of this story do not clean and rearrange your  cupboards before you go to sleep.

©Photo/text Ts

Tuesday...when a bell rings...

Brugmansia/ Angel's Trumpet;

Did you hear a bell ring today? It means an Angel just got his or her wings...

©Photo my garden Ts.

Wondrous;

Sunrise;

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. ~Michelangelo

©Photo Ts

When...If...

Rose Perle D'or flowering in the garden.

Unless you can love, as the angels may'

With the breath of heavens betwixt you....

Oh, never call it loving!

Elisabeth Barrett Browning; A Woman's Shortcomings

Photo Ts

Trees...

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” 

William Blake 

The host tree; small ferns have attached to the bark;

“Look: the trees exist; the houses

we dwell in stand there stalwartly. 

 Only we

pass by it all, like a rush of air.

And everything conspires to keep quiet

 about us,

half out of shame perhaps, half out of

 some secret hope.” 

 Rainer Maria Rilke,

 Beautiful curtain of  the  Casuarina;

“Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver, thro' the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.”

 Alfred Tennyson,

We are so small and we cut you down without a thought how you might feel; the chainsaw blasts and roars, crunches through your innerst  cores...Ts.

“We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.” 

Marcel Proust

“Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929” 

 John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed 

“Within its gates I heard the sound

Of winds in cypress caverns caught

Of huddling trees that moaned, and sought

To whisper what their roots had found.

“A Dream of Fear” 

George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror 

©Photos, some Text; Ts