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Happy Happy Happy Happy Birthday, lidocafe!

Blessings on your head hands and feet on this Easter day. Long may you shine your clear light of humour, idealism, truth, honesty, love of people, and love of language (of all stripes).

Thanks for your friendship.

Enjoy your day immensely!

(PS - that's Mrs Dalloway's skywriter going by at the top)

Sunday Poem

for lidocafe

TIGER DRINKING AT FOREST POOL

Water, moonlight, danger, dream.
Bronze urn, angled on a tree root: one
Slash of light, then gone. A red moon
Seen through clouds, or almost seen.

Treasure found but lost, flirting between
The worlds of lost and found. An unjust law
Repealed, a wish come true, a lifelong
Sadness healed. Haven, in the mind,

To anyone hurt by littleness. A prayer
For the moment, saved; treachery forgiven.
Flame of the crackle-glaze tangle, amber
Reflected in grey milk-jade. An old song
Remembered, long debt paid.
A painting on silk, which may fade.

Ruth Padel

Rainy Sunday Afternoon

One learns to be flexible; many of my plans for this weekend have been thwarted or disrupted in one way or another. I thought I was meeting someone I'm beginning to know quite well from work last night for dinner and she thought we were meeting next Saturday, which resulted in one of those episodes that you hope won't happen of waiting at a restaurant for quite a long time until you realize that the other person isn't going to show up. I guessed what had happened, and she was very apologetic, and we're going to meet on Tuesday night instead. Then my friend kp, who was supposed to be coming for Easter dinner tonight, phoned to say she had a "pg" (paying guest - she runs a holiday rental place) arriving at an inopportune time and could we make it Monday instead. All this was somewhat compensated for by my cousin Marty phoning and our having a lovely long talk about family and photography and life, which was great (and which I would have missed if my dinner date had been as planned).

However, I had a nice lazy morning this morning with my papers and a luxurious breakfast of Italian bakery hot cross bun (the best in the world - soft, fragrant, spicy, just wonderful) and some berries and creme fraiche. Then I cleaned my house before lunch.

I had hoped to go on a hike in search of wildflowers to photograph this weekend but after Friday it's been grey and today actually raining. The d's and I went up to Playfair park this afternoon, where I did see wildflowers - there's a restored Gary Oak meadow there, and there were early cammas, shooting stars, erythroniums, satin flowers, and even a couple of chocolate lilies blooming. That park shows you how it is possible for a small multiple-use park to function, without all the hysteria about dogs trampling the flowers or biting children. Dogs are allowed there off leash, yet there is this quite large protected area where the wild-flowers grow, and on one long side of the park there is a spectacular cultivated herbacious border. Opposite that, there is a beautiful rhododendron planting, and in the center there is a children's playground. All coexist quite happily, as far as I can tell, in a really quite small area.

So now the boys are snoozing in their baskets as I write this. I'm thinking of scanning some of my old film photos, or maybe some more of my China slides and uploading them into Flickr. Then I have baked chicken breast and asparagus for dinner and an episode of Angel to watch this evening. I started reading Cormac McArthy's The Road last night and am desperate to get back to it - it's compulsive reading. This weekend has been so long and delightful!