pause

You could say this is a day of pause for me. Catching up, cleaning, the yard work -- all of this filled my morning hours. But even so, I would not describe it as a day of great productivity. In fact, most of the afternoon hours I spent on the frustrating task of trying to fashion a holiday card for 2016. Funny, no?

I don't send out very many holiday cards, but I take the task of creating one seriously. It's not an easy job. Ed isn't a holiday guy and if you had to attach us to any tradition, you would have to remember that Ed's family is Jewish and mine -- well, it's a bit of a blank slate and so here I am thinking of how to write a card that is authentic, even as it has to have some elements of  beauty and a conveyance of good feeling -- with photos that support as much. I mean, the whole process is fraught with twists and turns and perhaps because I make too much of it, I am never happy with the end-product. But engaging in this project and working hard to convey love on what is ultimately a commercial piece of sillliness -- well, it's oddly rewarding and hugely important to me. And so I do it.

Go figure.


But first, I have a few hours of trying to be sympathetic to a sniffling Ed. (I did remind him many a time that I spent the whole week being sick and tending to Snowdrop and suffering through elections and cooking dinners, but then I decided I sounded a bit loopy so I calmed down and let him rest as if  he really was down and out, even though I don't think, just judging by the number of tissues he used as compared to me, that he was either fully down or out.)


After I cleaned the bathroom and tidied the kitchen, I asked Ed if he would like breakfast, permitting the possibility that he would not be able to slide downstairs for it. He said "yes, but just fruit."






That was just fine. Certainly not the first time that he turned down food early in the day. But I was amused that, as I rinsed breakfast dishes afterwards, he reached for stale baguette and bits of cheese to tide him over for the remainder of the morning.

After, I worked in the garden, fine-tuning it for the coming of winter. (Would you believe this little gem of a day lily?! Remarkable!)


 



I'll include a front view of our farmhouse. I rarely photograph it -- I focus on what's central to our life here and that would be the courtyard rather than this, but in late fall I give it a huge nod of appreciation, because it really looks pretty in the gold of the leaves that surround it (rather that rundown... which it is, but hey, we'll get to it one of these years!).






I'll end with a photo taken from my kitchen window. There are three birds in the pic -- two on the ground and one in the tree and it just seems so real, so representative of life around us.






Sleep well Scotch, Java. Sleep well old robin in the tree. Dream big, work hard, sleep soundly. It's life as we know it.