Good Saturday morning to you. The sun is up and there’s a pair of mourning doves nesting in the pine tree out front… their cooing is easing us into the sounds of the day which will soon become cars going by and yard equipment humming.
Spring is still undecided and our temps have gone from 18˚C on Wednesday to 9˚ yesterday (60s to 40s˚F). However, it’s dry enough to get a good start on Spring clean-up, and a few other things that made up our week.
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Three days ago, we had temps of 20˚C (68˚F) and today the high is expected to be 7˚C (44˚F)… so although Spring is officially several weeks away, we’ve gotten our lips whet and it feels wonderful. With so much still either on lockdown or impossible to do after a 6pm curfew, having warmer days and ever lengthening evenings has made things a bit more bearable.
Daffodils and crocus are up, the mimosa trees are in full, mustard-yellow bloom and even a few camelias are already brightening up yards with various shades of pink, salmon and white.
And… as you can see from today’s feature photo… the bees are busy gathering pollen, but that’s not all. Let me share the week in four pictures.
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You’ve seen this windmill before if you’re a regular reader. It’s located right on the outskirts of Les Trois-Moutiers, in France’s Vienne department. Today’s pic however was taken on my way home from Angers the other day as the fast-fading afternoon sun lit it up in almost an eerie, golden glow.
There’s no filter on this pic… the lighting is as it was that afternoon and if you look toward the bottom, you’ll also see that the grass along the roadway is slightly blurred. Taken together, it makes it a pretty good illustration of today’s post.
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It was New Year’s Eve.
I had driven Dominic to a friend’s house where he’d spend the night. Sophie had come along with me just to get out of the house and we were on our way back to Châtellerault.
We’d passed it numerous times, but this time, there were just two easily spontaneous people in the car who were in no particular rush. We stopped…
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This week I was shocked in my English classes.
There’s been a lot of talk on the news about the impact of the pandemic on the lives of students. Whether elementary, middle-school, high school or university, there’s no question that schooling looks very different, but I’m not sure I was prepared for some of the things my students had to say about it in their own words…
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It had been a long while since I’d gotten out to explore our own little town.
Isn’t that always the way? We travel the world in search of new, and big, and unfamiliar, and exotic, all while driving right by some lovely things in our day-to-day.
Covid19 has certainly honed that down quite a bit, but if I went exploring Châtellerault one early morning, two weeks ago, it wasn’t so much covid-related as it was car-related…
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On one hand, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to tell you this week. It seems like, between Covid-curfew and distance education, each week feels very much like the others… everything runs together to some extent.
Still, it seems like there are habits that are good to maintain even though we don’t necessarily feel great difference. Isn’t that what we emphasize in the church after all? Not every day, nor every service, are ‘blow-out’ days/services… but there is value in consistency: continuing to maintain the daily habits that nourish our faith in the good days, in preparation for the not-so-good days when we’ll need all that’s been put aside.
(hmmm… seems like I’m getting to the point of the sermon before even giving the illustration.) 🙂
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Yesterday was a strange, long & kind of surreal day.
It was a teaching day in Angers that was actually in Angers (first time since late October / early November). After only 3-hours sleep the night before, it started out not so pretty, but when I look back, at least #3GoodThings helped redeem the day (more really, but I’ll quickly highlight 3)…
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As I sit here to write you, this Saturday morning, Soph has already walked the dog, Dominic is finishing breakfast, Liz is having a quick cat-nap (after waking with a nasty headache) and Timo is working day 5 at the Optician (more on that later).
Since the dog is also lying peacefully, it means that the only sound I hear is the clickety-clack of the keyboard and the odd muffled noise from outside. It’s peaceful now, after the driving rain & hail earlier.
Care to spend a few minutes, while I finish up the morning hot chocolate?
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Are you familiar with ‘tatting’?
Tatted lace is made with one or two finger-held shuttles and very fine cotton, a bit thicker than sewing thread. I was visiting a friend in Quebec nearly 30 years ago and his (at the time) 92 year-old grandmother lived with he and his family. She saw me crocheting and asked if I was tatting. I’d never even heard of tatting before.
She showed me the basics and gave me a tatting shuttle. There’s a trick to it, which took me a couple of weeks to get, but I finally did, and the rest is history… I’ve been tatting off & on ever since.
The last couple of years it’s been more ‘off’ than ‘on’ but I picked it up again over the Christmas break and have been glad to get back into it when time allows. There’s a life lesson in there that I was reminded of, but first, let me bring you up to speed…
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