An ice surprise for Our World Tuesday

Well, I, for one, was surprised. I heard a tinkling sound on Saturday. It sounded suspiciously like an ice cream truck, but at the end of September? The sound went on for a while, so I just had to look. And there it was...an ice cream truck pulled over in front of my neighbor's house! She was outside with her children, while more parents and children were coming from two other directions.

Photos by Kay Davies, September 28, 2013

 

Posted for
Our World Tuesday
hosted this week by Lady Fi in Sweden.
Thanks, Fi, and Lindy sends a friendly "woof" to Oscar.

Succinctly Yours at Grandma's, Week 132

It feels like I've been away for nearly half of the 132 weeks Grandma's Goulash has brought us Succinctly Yours, but I'm sure it can't be that long since I last popped in to offer my two cents' worth.
Participants are asked to tell a story about the prompt photo in either 140 words or 140 characters.
It's not that I'm not longwinded. I certainly am. However, I'm trying to learn not to overwrite, and a challenge such as this is a good exercise in enforced brevity, so when I'm here I like to use only 140 characters.
There is also a Word of the Week, the use of which is up to the writer. This week's word is myriad.

Photo provided as prompt

It's hard to believe this is a color photograph, with its myriad shades of grey, and only a hint of pinky-red.

 22 words, or 110 characters

Although there aren't any bonus points for using the word of the week, because Succinctly Yours doesn't offer points, only participant satisfaction, I'm willing to offer kudos to commenters who can tell me which of Grandma's rules I actually have broken here. (And yes, I know it's a black and white photo with a bit of retouching, but that would have used too many characters.)

Today we have bees in the Garden

Members of, and visitors to, the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, have been introduced this weekend to the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.

Susie Clevenger tells us about the book, then includes several quotations from it for our inspiration for the Sunday Mini-Challenge. I found it hard to choose one quotation, or so I thought for quite a while, until I realized I kept going back to this one.

Wikimedia photos

“You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair...”

Every morning before school
my mother would braid my hair
in two long braids, so tight
I couldn't close my eyes
or even blink.
Every day after school
my friend Gloria
across the street
would undo my braids
and put my hair
up in a ponytail.
Every day I went home
from Gloria's house
afraid my mother
would shoot me
for not keeping
my hair in braids.
But that was
sixty years ago,
and I'm still here,
so I guess she didn't.

By Kay Davies, September 29, 2013

dedicated to my friend Gloria

in memory of my mother, Pauline Davies,

and her mother, Jean Newton.

Unreal camera critters again

These romantic beauties were on my bed waiting for me at my hotel in Newport News, Virginia. I was tired after a day that included three plane flights, and the next day on a train (although I love trains) and looking forward to doing a bit of shopping in the morning. I was on my way to a Blog Fest with who-knew-how-many women, and I wanted to contribute a little something to the food.

I was so tired, I didn't even have enough energy to be lonely, to miss my intrepid photographer and our sometimes trepidatious Golden Retriever, Lindy.

I contented myself with photographing these lovers, then hustled them off the bed to make room for auntie. By the time I reached my destination the next day, I was so excited to be there that I didn't even get photos of the darlin' dog and the many cats who greeted me. Not at all a Kay way to be!

Photo by Kay Davies, September, 2013

Posted for
Camera Critters
hosted by Misty Dawn. Thanks, Misty.

Reflections abound in sunny summer

Once again, I'm featuring photos my husband took during our visit to the BC interior town of Nelson, which has been beautifully restored to its former glory.

Posted for
Weekend Reflections
hosted by James of California. Thanks, James!

About place, for The Imaginary Garden

Margaret has introduced us to the collection of 69 miniature rooms gifted to the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1940s by Mrs. James Ward Thorne.

The scale is 1 inch to 1 foot, so that the 19-foot length of a room is built in miniature, using materials identical to the originals, in 19 inches.  HERE is a link to all 69 rooms.

 
I have chosen a Georgian drawing room, and am using one photo taken by Margaret (looking toward the left of the room) and another from the above link, showing the fireplace and pianoforte again, but also the righthand wall with the bow window and window seat, and the curio shelf above the small table.

A Proper Sense of Place

Georgian rooms are sparse and spare

but elegant withal,

a tea set waits beside a chair

in case someone should call.

No Victorian fussiness here

nor Tudor suits of armor.

Ming vases, though, are very dear,

and the pianoforte’s a charmer.

Posted for
An Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Future Sailors: Izy's Out of Standard

Wikimedia Commons

sailors of the future

on boats with silver sails

will spend their time

tracing digital stowaways

by order of the Cyborg Sea-Dog

“Bring 'em back alive” said he

“so we can tweak their tails

teaching them to rhyme

with robot starfish...

gar fish, starfish, whatever-kind-you-are fish

stowaways are not allowed on board.”

“Not allowed?” inquired the nylon admiral,

“But, I say, they’re in everything we eat,

they’re in my nylon uniform, uniformly nylon,

and once they managed to pile on,

life’s never been the same.”

“It’s a problem,” opined a future sailor,

whereupon he was flung into the brig.

“But don’t you see? I’m much too big

to be a digital stowaway.

Will I now be a castaway,

for throwing the electronic mast away?”

Life will not be easy for future sailors, methinks.

*

I have created an original but completely tuneless, and therefore useless, sea chanty for Isadora’s Out of Standard challenge over at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Izy based her challenge “upon the most ridiculously awesome thing I know...The Mighty Boosh,” she said.

She also explained, for those of us over a certain age, that the Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding.

ABC Wednesday, K is for me

Kay, summer, 1947

with Auntie Phyllis,

Mom and Dad

Kay, Christmas, 1947

Kay with little brother Clint, 1949

 Kay, 1957

Kay, 1959,

with Clint and

cousin Mike

Kay, 1963

Kay, 1979

Kay, 1989

Posted for the letter K, on

ABC Wednesday

Kay with Dick

on the equator

2005

Kay at Miami Heat

game 2005

    Kay, right, with Judith and Michael Freer

Safeco Field, Seattle, Toronto Blue Jays vs Seattle Mariners

At brother Rob's
40th birthday party,
2008

at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China

Crescent Beach
near White Rock, BC, 2007

Sky Watch Friday in the state of Virginia

I must admit I wasn't looking for Skywatch photos while I toured the peninsula southeast of Richmond, Virginia, with blogging friends last weekend. But some of the clouds were just fascinating, and I couldn't resist them.

Posted for
Skywatch Friday

Sea and sand were my world for a while

I've just come home from a weekend with several wonderful women bloggers in Mathews County, Virginia, USA.
Mathews is located in the southeast of a peninsula it shares with Gloucester County. It is southeast of Richmond, VA, and east and northeast of Williamsburg, VA.
I drove to Mathews from Newport News, crossing the York River at historic Yorktown. I drove up the George Washington Memorial Highway, and then east on the John Clayton Memorial Highway.
To get to the point of driving to Mathews, I had to travel on three planes and a train, and came home the same way, in reverse, a few days later. It was worth it. I met many great people, some of whom I had "known" for several years via blogging, and some friends I only recently met online.
A good time, and a great deal of food, was had by all.


Posted for
Our
World
Tuesday

All photos by Kay Davies, September, 2013
except the ones of my feet which were taken by my friend Mary Ann,
showing me with my feet in the Atlantic Ocean,
and my toenails painted green to match my flip-flops. (It was that kind of party.)

Do the old gods laugh?

At the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Kerry asks us to think of the old gods and goddesses.

In his sonnet, ''The World is Too Much With Us", Kerry sees Wordsworth bemoaning the fact that we have lost our place in the natural environment, and no longer appreciate the gods in nature.

                  Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Kerry provided us with a link to the old Celtic deities, and I tried to feel something for some of them, but my poem brought me back, not to the land of my Celtic forefathers, but to the shores of my birth...British Columbia's Fraser River, and the Pacific Ocean.

My father, Gordon Davies, wrote books about the rivers of British Columbia, and he was known to mention river gods now and then, but this poem is my own.

Taku chief, Tlingit people,
1913

the water gods, we knew them well

we learned them at our father’s side

they kept harpies from the streams

held back the ice from oceans wide

  

the river gods the Haida knew,

the Salish and the Kwatna, too,

fished and fought in wood canoes

  

Celtic gods, First Nations gods,

all protected salmon streams:

Icaunis and Arausio, knew fish

Bill Reid's carving of the
Haida god Raven
releasing the first humans
from a seashell

were stuff of people’s dreams

  

the river gods my father knew

taught him the things

he taught us, too

Kay Davies, September 18, 2013

Photo source: Wikipedia

ABC Wednesday: J is for just...

Kay Davies and Richard Schear photos

Just happened to be looking through some of our early photos of Lindy this past week.
This one was taken when we first adopted her, and she wanted to be close to my husband whenever she could. She still does!

Just keeping my toy cow company while she naps.

Just thought you might want to plant a tree, Mom,
and thought I could help you.

Just looking, Dad. I'm not really digging.

Just splashing a little bit. I'm very thirsty
after all that...um, after all that looking!

Posted for

ABC Wednesday

the alphabetical meme started by Mrs. Nesbitt,

carried on by Roger,

and hosted today by Leslie...thanks, Leslie!

Our world on a misty prairie morning

When I saw these photos my husband had taken on an early morning walk with our dog Lindy, I asked if farmers were watering their crops that early. He said no, it was mist, which soon dissipated as the sun rose.
I must admit I've seen fog since I moved to the prairie, but I don't think I've ever seen mist.

Posted for
Our World Tuesday
hosted again this week by Lady Fi and her Scandinavian swimming dog, Oscar. (Yes, he really does look like a Golden Retriever, because that's his ancestry, but his inclination is swimming in cold northern waters.)

Sunday Challenge features mixed media art

Over at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, fellow Toad Grace has introduced members and contributors to the 3D textured acrylic art paintings and digital art prints of Kathryn Dyche Dechairo to use as inspiration for a new poem. Grace tells us Kathryn's work has been published in 'The Pulse of Mixed Media' by Seth Apter, and in  the Summer 2012 edition of Artful Blogging. She also mentioned that Kathryn is a poet as well.

Kathryn Dyche Dechairo, for use as prompt only

harvest moon hovers

o'er autumn-bared trees

while my heart cries with

hurt from your arrows.

how could you have been

so two-faced to me

how could you have said

that you

loved me?

Kathryn Dyche Dechairo

Kathryn Dyche Dechairo

I haven't always been that way

Lindy noticed that some of her white hair was showing in last week's Pet Pride photo. "Not much pride in that," she says, "what about when I was all reddish-gold and beautiful?"
So, here is a picture of Lindy before her hair started to turn white. She is just as pretty now, but you know how a girl is about her appearance. The feathery bits on the backs of her legs and on her chest always looked white and fluffy, but otherwise she was a lovely golden girl, and she's a lovely golden lady now.
Posted for Pet Pride
hosted by Lindy's friend Bozo and his family
at their Pets Forever blog in Mumbai, India.
Posted also for Shadow Shot Sunday

Deer during sunrise walk

Richard Schear, photos

Posted for
Camera Critters
hosted by Misty Dawn. Thanks, Misty!