More calligraphy

Just a couple more bits:  bookmarks for friends

Keith loves things medieval so inspired by the Lindisfarne Gospels, came up with this one.

And with a bit of guilding and practice of my copperplate, came up with this one for my good friend Vicky who came to stay for the weekend...I am starting to collect little extracts and these words by Julian of Norwich's words seemed just right.

Conservatory Plants and Spring Garden

The winter has been kind, and with increasing light levels and warmth, the plants are shedding off their winter sleep

The snowdrops are over, but there is more and more colour from early spring flowers, even the rhubarb 'Early Timperley' adds a colourful contribution to the garden.

Blackbirds singing in the early mornin

Its starting to get light early...I just love the longer days.  A blackbird's song had been seeping into my early morning reveries.....

But it is Saturday morning, hubby a little poorly, wants to spend a little longer in bed...

I go downstairs, make a drink, go into the study, to sift through my books, to see which to send to Oxfam, for I have run out of bookshelf space a few books ago!

My hand strays to a very slender tome of old fashioned poems.  I brought this back from my mother's house.  It is by a 'Victorian American':  Ella Wheeler Wilcox, just what would it hold for me?  That can go...but I started to poke around and found these very apt lines, they are taken out of context from the poem 'A Song'..but its fine to pick and choose, to home in on lines, and ignore others...

I told the thrush, and we laughed together,
Laughed till the woods were all a-ring:
And he said to me, as he plumed each feather,
"Well, people must croak, if they cannot sing."

Up he flew, but his song, remaining,
Rang like a bell in my heart all day.......

Two things:
First I would have loved to have chatted to my mother about this, asked her how she acquired the book of poems, and which she liked, and maybe have read some to her when her macro degeneration left her unable to read, but she still had excellent hearing..

We would have laughed about my singing...mine would be on the 'croak' end of human singing, but I still do it, in the comfort and privacy of my home, or hidden amongst the voices of the WI Jerusalem.

As I pulled back the curtains in the bedroom, I stood for several minutes watching a pair of blackbirds 'courting', finding worms, and nesting material, a bit of singing, a bit of displaying...their song rang like a bell in my heart all day.

Sometimes it is the very small things which are the important ones....