Fishtrap Creek

Mountains' majesty

We had some beautiful weather in February, and one Saturday morning it was so spectacular I drove out into the county and took some pictures. I remember thinking about the fact that some of these mountains are in Canada and, as I was taking the pictures, people were there for the Olympics.

Plaintive cries

I work in Bellingham, which technically is a port city.

I work in a lawyer's office, nothing to do with the port, and most of the time I'm hardly aware that the water is near, but when I come out of work at the end of the day and walk to my car, I see the water.

Any time that I come outside, I am likely to hear the seagulls' cry. This video captures the melancholy sound as the sky darkens at the close of day.



I tried to think of a poem that would somehow reflect this mood, but I couldn't come up with one.

The Swan Fairy Tale

As I said in my comment section below, I remembered a fairy tale about a girl whose brothers were turned into swans. I thought it was seven brothers, but it was six. I guess it was the girl who was the seventh child. I did remember that she had to make them shirts in order to change them back and that at some moment of danger she was done, except for one last sleeve, so she threw the shirts over them and they were transformed back, except that the youngest brother still had a swan's wing instead of one arm, because his shirt didn't have a sleeve. Here's the Grimm version: The Six Swans.

Seven children is a fairy tale theme. In Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley is the seventh child, a daughter with six older brothers. J.K. Rowling was very aware of fairy tale motifs and traditions, and I recall reading an interview or possibly a post on her website about this aspect of Ginny.

Now I just found another one, Hans Christian Andersen's version, and in his it's eleven brothers and a sister. Interesting how details change in the basic story. You wonder why. And then some other elements are unchangeable. It's brothers and a sister. The brothers become swans. And the sister must make shirts and not talk until she has done so. And her refusal to talk somehow gets her into trouble. She's so loyal to her brothers that she almost dies to save them; however, at the last moment they also save her.

Swans

This morning when I was out walking my dog, a flock of swans flew overhead. By the time I pulled my camera out of my pocket, turned it on, and pushed the relevant button to take a video, they were almost gone, but you can see them in the lower right hand corner of the sky and you can hear them honking.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for spring

A beautiful, sunny morning today, but with a cold east wind blowing. The sun was most welcome and gives me that anticipation for spring.

My pansy has more blooms.

I love pansies--violets--heart's ease.

Here are a few leaves of peppermint. Every winter the peppermint dies back, but it's so hardy that when spring comes, all I'll have to do is give it food, water, and sunshine and soon it will fill and overflow the pot again.

Just a reminder that peppermint is so hardy as to be invasive, and I would never plant it in the ground, as I understand it would take over a flower bed and start going beyond the bounds even of that.

Here's the sunny side of the deck:

And here's what I usually call the shady side of the deck, but the time of day and year made it sunny, too, for a short time:

Sweet singing in the choir

This evening in choir practice I hit a high note I haven't reached in years--not just the F at the top of the treble clef, but the G on top of it. Usually the E just under the top is as high as I can get.

I wasn't straining at all tonight for notes at the top of my range (and that's almost over the top for me). Either the months of singing every Wednesday night are paying off, or it helps to eat a salad that's heavy on the onions before going to rehearsal.

If it's the onions, I'd gladly eat them every week, but that might be too high a price for those who sing near me in choir.

Sour notes or sour breath? Which is worse?

The stuff that dreams are made of

Last night, I kept dreaming about something I needed to do at work today. Then I woke up and went to work and did it. Note to unconscious: Once is enough. Reality will do just fine for workday tasks. I have no need to re-live, or pre-live, them in my dreams.

Spring in January?

We've had an exceptionally warm January. My honeysuckle thinks it's spring.

It's sending out leaves.

And this pansy is spreading and getting new blooms.

If we get some mild freezes before real spring, I'm not too worried about the pansies. They were hardy enough to survive this winter. Plus pansies are often plentiful and cheap not only in nurseries but outside the local grocery stores. I spent a bit more on the honeysuckle; I forget how much, but over $10 I think, and last summer was the first summer I planted it, so I don't know how it takes severe weather. I bought it to try to attract hummingbirds. My fear is it will bloom, then the weather will freeze and all the blooms will get killed. Nothing I can do about it, though. It'll either happen or it won't, no matter what I do. So I might as well get a good night's sleep.

I'll wake up tomorrow and it will be a month closer to spring.

January is drawing to a close

Tomorrow is the last day of January. I don't think I'll be sorry to see it go, although I will be sorry to see the weekend end. January and February are my 11th and 12th favorite months. I don't know which is in 11th and which is in 12th; maybe it's a tie. January has one happy holiday, and that's New Year's Day. That's still a day you spend relaxing with your family.

However, within a week or two, you can hardly remember what it felt like to have that warm, gezellig experience.

You're in the gray, drab workaday world.

And January is long.

What February has going for it is (1) it's short and (2) it's closer to spring than January is. So I guess January is my 12th favorite month and February is my 11th favorite. Just as winter is my 4th favorite season.

In March, I start thinking about going to local nurseries and buying baby plants, but I try not to. Local lore, as passed on to me by my dad, is that you're not safe from a freeze at night until after Mother's Day, which is in May. You don't want to spend a lot on plants that get killed within a few weeks by frost, although, well, that has happened to me. Maybe not that I spent a lot, but that I bought plants when it was too early to put them out. I hunger for them, in some kind of spiritual and aesthetic way.

Sometime in April, Lynden Christian School has a pancake breakfast fundraiser, and then some student group -- FFA? -- sells baby plants that day too. Last year the lady selling to me kept warning me that the plants I was buying were still "tender" and had to stay under cover. I kept them under the roof of the upper deck until it was safe to put them out further.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.

(Song of Solomon 2:11-13a)

We're not there yet, but we're on our way.

Where have all the proofreaders gone?

This evening, I read an online article that used "discrete" when it meant "discreet," and another that used "disbursed" when it meant "dispersed."

Just because spellcheck doesn't highlight a word doesn't make it right.

Splish splash

Birds cavorting in the bird bath this sunny morning.



You have to look right at the bird bath and see the water fly.

You can tell it's still winter because I'm filming through my window between the deck chairs that are piled up there. How many more weeks until I can start planting flowers again? And how long until I can sit out there enjoying it all?

Winter sunshine

We had a lot of rain yesterday, then a heavy dewfall last night. This morning when the sun came up, the water evaporated into the air.

At first it was foggy, then it became more of a misty sunshine.

What a mood-lifter.

A winter pansy.

Pansies are such a beautiful flower. How lovely to get a bloom in January.

Late in the afternoon, it clouded over again and became rather chilly. Well, it is January. A mild, sunny morning is a gift. It would be ungrateful to complain that it didn't last.

Last winter was so relentlessly cold. This winter, it is cold sometimes, but it does relent. This morning was one of the softer, kinder weather moments.

Shadows on the walls

The sun was out for a while this morning and created these beautiful shadows.

A tongue-twister for the Twenty-First Century

I back-blogged my blog backlog.

As with ceaseless voice they cry

Speaking of religious mystery, yesterday during communion at my church, our choir director sang "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence," one of my favorite Christmas hymns, as it does infuse one with the sense of awe and mystery at the coming of Christ in the Incarnation and in communion.

My denomination's hymnal has this version:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
set your minds on things eternal,
fow with blessing in his hand
Christ our Lord to earth descended,
came our homage to command.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
once upon the earth he stood;
Lord of lords we now perceive him
in the body and the blood.
He has given to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
stream before him on the way,
as the Light of Light, descending
from the realms of endless day,
comes, the powers of hell to vanquish,
clears the gloom of hell away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph,
cherubim with sleepless eye
veil their faces to his presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry:
"Alleluia, alleluia!
Alleluia, Lord Most High!"

The editors of our latest hymnal (the "gray" Psalter Hymnal) tended to want to clear away archaic words such as "vesture," archaic inflections such as "descendeth," and also words they thought might be just too difficult for their conception of the inquirer who wanders into the church with no religious background, who apparently is not highly educated and must be spared terms such as "vanguard."

Fortunately, during worship yesterday I was not disturbed by such thoughts, and indeed I don't know what version the singer sang. In my mind, I heard the one I prefer, as follows:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

Mist-ery

Mist creates a sense of mystery, in the religious sense, like clouds of incense in a church.







When I took Asian art history, my professor talked about how the Western, or Greek, mind tends to prefer clarity and brightness in a view. We consider it a perfect view of a mountain if not a cloud is in the sky and the sun is making it gleam. And that is indeed a great view (see "Holy, holy" below).

But the Chinese landscape almost always shows a misty mountain and the mist was there for spiritual reasons. I remember reading a remark by a Chinese artist to the effect that one did not paint the physical likeness of a mountain, but its spirit or its holiness.

On the other hand, when I've seen photos of Chinese mountains, they often are misty in the same manner as the paintings, so maybe they paint them that way because that's just how they are.

Or do they take pictures on misty days because that's how they like to see the mountains, just as I might photograph Baker on a particularly clear day? Photographs are also interpretive, not just representational.

Land of mist and rain

Happily for me, the snow melted after a couple days, and we returned to our more usual winter fare of mist and rain.



The midwinter is not quite so bleak.

Holiday fun

I couldn't resist.

He's thinking, "For this, you woke me up?" Such a longsuffering pooch.

In the beautiful midwinter

The pond was frozen, with leaves frozen into it, and then a dusting of snow.



The water can is full of snow.

The sundial is a snow dial. Doesn't tell time, but does tell you it's cold.

Bleak midwinter.

But beautiful.