Savary is unutterably gorgeous and I swim in a blue sea with pink star fish and mountains in the distance, dark under a blue blue sky. The beach is pale sand and the land is covered in deep green fir trees. Its still June so the water is cold but good.
Category: Blogs
Many of my blog posts are published on Shine A Light On Life, including the series in my Sampler. I also regularly blog on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter, mainly about events local to me.
Autumn: The Agricultural Show
We had the local agricultural show. There’s a showground on the edge of town, several big fields that are very nearly flat and we had nearly everything. There were the ancient tractors, a whole class in their own right. In fact, just yesterday I saw a notice for a tractor race of sorts hanging on a hedge in Somerset there was going to be a competition on a nice big flat field. It was all for charity and was this coming Sunday. All the old tractors can come out for that. In fact ,in some of the big agricultural shows they a have ploughing competitions and there are still chaps who hitch up a team of heavy horses to demonstrate how it’s done, with a team and very fine the horses look too and what a skill to be able to guide those horses and plough straight in a field. Wonderful to watch.
We also had brass bands and dancers and majorettes. There were the classes of prize bulls of the different breeds, wonderful animals, highland, small and sturdy, dark and with huge horns and the elegant white bull, a beautiful specimen. Then in the stalls outdoors waiting were the sheep, every kind of sheep you can imagine. Curly haired, smooth, black, highland, Dorset they go on and on, the breeds of sheep all specialists in their class.
Vancouver, cafes and restaurants
Then in the afternoon we went to a street in East Vancouver that had independent shops, organic food and little restaurants. We sat in a café and health food shop called something like ‘Ambrosia Cherub’ and I sat there looking at a showcase of desserts and am inspired to go home and make them myself. There was date square, oatmeal raisin cookies, mango dessert and a raw bar. My companion had a lovely mango lassi. I had golden turmeric tea. Everything was lovely.
Vancouver, to the mountains
The mountains are clouded right from the top down but they are still there watching and for a little while on the subway journey home I could see the feet peeping out from the whiteness of the low cloud.
Vancouver: Along the Seawall
We spend all afternoon just walking and looking at the mountains or the birds in the sea . I try the water by paddling and it is not as cold as the sea in the West. It is easy and full of bright green seaweed…
Vancouver: Gardens and Malls
Next morning the tips of the mountains were hidden by cloud, and I watched as the cloud very slowly descended down the mountainside until it had covered the mountain completely and then it felt smug. It was there but I couldn’t see it at all, it was if Vancouver was just this flat piece of land and there were no Rocky Mountains at all. And then we had a little rain, not much.
B.C., Vancouver, via Skytrain
There we were, I was going on the Skytrain because that way I could look at the mountains. It was busy but you could see the mountains from the commuter train that has no driver. It got busier. But we were through and finding the right station.
Orchard Diary Month 3
THE ORCHARD DIARY 3rd Month
May 9 25
Blog by Lynne Pearl
The trees are more awake in fact I think they are now just about fully awake. It’s quite exciting.
They have realised it’s time to wake up.
The Orchard Diary 2
Poetry on Spring from my ‘Devonheart’ A Collection: a tribute to my home:
DEVON MID AFTERNOON
Butterflies crowd,
Flying from the hedges,
Brown wings
Settled against green blackberry leaves
And mauve blossom.
A cow with a star on her forehead
Gazes with dreamy eyes
And the sheep munch,
Woolly faced,
Staring in unison
And the white cow on the hillside
Stands ready to climb.
Beside the lane
Lie cottages, door ajar
With armchair ready
And a sleeping gnome
Lays against the cottage wall.
A straw owl
Stares down at passers by
On new yellow thatch.
by Lynne Pearl
The Orchard Diary 1
This orchard though is part of what must surely have once been a grand farm. The trees are pollarded so that when the apples ripen they don’t have very far to fall and in fact standing under the branches one just reaches up and there you are, all the apples you could want. But does anyone eat these apples anymore?
So I am going to keep an account on these trees and their summer and winter. I’ve never had an orchard before, and although it isn’t strictly speaking mine I see it often, as I go by on the way to something else, a meeting, a piece of work a day of teaching. So this way I can keep track of growth and change over a year