Monday, 6th January, was the celebration of Epiphany for those people, churches, cultures, countries that follow the Gregorian calendar for feast days.
The sky was heavenly blue
and, nearer to me, the flowers were blue-hued too.
- Blue abounds in earth and sky
- Blue by the path
- Blue in my garden
- Blue Hortensia
- Blue by the water
And, every which way I turned, I saw more manifestations of blue,
until I felt as though I were swathed in the most precious of precious-blue fabrics, in much the same way as Mary, the Madonna, is often depicted, cloaked in a mantle of Mary-blue,

Federico Barocci, The Madonna and Child with Saint Joseph and the Infant Baptist (‘La Madonna del Gatto’), probably about 1575 © The National Gallery, London
or ultramarine , as it is more properly called.
And it felt good; it felt blissful to be luxuriating in an aura of ‘divine’ blue-ness, as I went about my small tasks and errands, dressed, in reality, not like an artistically rendered Madonna but like this…
in very ordinary, cotton garments that are showing their age, and mine. Yet, oddly, they are garments that might be considered, by some, as slightly more glamorous than what Mary was actually wearing in Bethlehem, and thereafter 🙂 . I wonder about that. I wonder what Mary thought about her clothes; or if she thought about them at all. I wonder, if on the day the Magi came with their gifts, Mary felt as if she were wearing the plainest robes, or as if she were wrapped in the ‘richest’ cloth her world had to offer? And I wonder if she would be surprised at how we have dressed her through the centuries; would she say, ‘But you are dreaming..”, or would she say, ” Yes, it was so; exactly so. I was beautiful.”
To be continued….possibly
© silkannthreades
Beautiful blues! I’ve always loved the blue of Mary’s robes in the old paintings.
Am catching up after being off-line while away on holiday.
Yes, it’s a beautiful and very precious blue. Perhaps it should be called jewel blue 😉
Loved all your blue flowers. All of them grow easily here in San Dieg.
I imagine they would do very well in San Diego.
Beautifully blue – my favorite color. Although I tend towards the periwinkle shade !!!
I love periwinkle too 🙂
Hello gorgeous Gallivanta, I love your blueness. I have had such a week of intense craziness and have felt this longing to be under the big blue sky with just the air inside my bones. On Saturday I climbed up to my favourite hill and just sat and breathed the sky and its blueness in. Your post has just recloaked me in in Mary Blue Sky Space Hug Nurture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!!! xxx
Ah, isn’t that wonderful? So glad you are recloaked and revived. I am feeling all that fresh hill top air blowing in across your comment 🙂
AH; beautiful blue post my friend! she would probably wonder, ‘all of this attention about me? i don’t feel worthy, and yes, blue does seem to be my color, doesn’t it?’
z
I think I would have been very bemused but one of my favourite lines from the Bible which seems to indicate Mary’s calm is this from King James Bible (Luke 2:19)
‘But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’ I am not an especially religious person but I adore that line.
Perhaps Mary felt as special when she wore blue as we feel when we put on jewellery. I like to put on jewellery when I leave the house: it feels like dressing up even when my clothes are ordinary. But my special indulgence is not so much jewellery as perfume – I love to have at least two or three choices so that I can stand at my dressing-table when I’m getting ready for work and think ‘what do I feel like today?’
Glorious! I love the idea of choosing perfume……I have been working harder on the fragrance side of my life but have only managed to get as far as one perfume which I usually forget to use!
Pingback: Gorgeousness, plain and simple or Epiphanies, real and imagined, continued. | silkannthreades
Gorgeous blue hues…. I bought an Agapanthus just like that in Portugal last summer for our garden, as I love them – can’t wait to see how it takes care of itself (fingers crossed).
It will be beautiful and probably prolific once it is established. The council here ,in Christchurch, plants agapanthus on street corners and road islands and they look beautiful en masse.
I bet they do. We planted it in a small bed so it may be contained for now. Not sure if they spread by seed or from the ground (sorry can’t think of the exact word, early morning you know). If it is by seed there could well be a few around the garden as a nice surprise! They also plant them on the Algarve in public areas, that’s what sparked my interest, but I could never find them in the garden centres… until last year!
I think they spread by seed because I believe that one controls their proliferation by cutting the flowers before they go to seed. Hopefully you will have a lovely photo to post of your agapanthus when you go home.
Gosh I hope so. Yes the seeds are quite large aren’t they? If they start to take over I shall simply throw the seeds over our wall into the unused fields beyond (my hubby is a closet guerrilla gardener and has already started planting on waste land)! We threw Nigella seeds over years ago and now we have a thriving goldfinch population. It doesn’t take much does it? 🙂
Lovely to have goldfinches to go with the Nigella. Nasturtium is another plant that loves to self sow. I am smiling at the idea of your husband being a closet guerrilla gardener.
He’s doing it in Singapore too, but has to be more careful here!
Oh my!
Happy New Year!! I see everything is really good on the other side of the world 🙂 This article made me smile because I spent the 6th of January in Spain, which celebrates the Epiphany in a very meaningful way, have a look http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/06/three-kings-day-celebration-history-and-traditions-behind-el-dia-de-los-reyes_n_2412379.html#slide=1947152 I ate the cake and even got some presents from the three Kings!
Pleased to hear that you had a good celebration of Epiphany. Did you have fireworks on the Eve of Epiphany? It is not a big occasion here which I think is a shame.
We did! And we hag a huge parade with the Kings on the camels. We had so much fun (us and all the kids around), I think in Spain the Epiphany is more popular than Christmas!
That’s wonderful. I think it’s a shame the way we (in NZ) compress all of our Christmas into one day…..much nicer to spread things out and make each celebration count.
What a beautiful post of blues and your sky looks so different than ours. Ours has been a soft gray for weeks…last Saturday if you looked closely the sun peeked out for about an half hour. But perhaps the cold weather that has been promised for the weekend may also bring out the sun as well and the brilliant blue behind the clouds.
Wishing you brilliant blue skies and sparkly snow (Not too much snow, but just enough for fun with your children)
I am very happy to see that your outfit was accessorised by a full set of jewellery! Ultramarine was originally a pigment made by grinding Lapis Lazuli into a powder – I think I prefer to leave my Lapis Lazuli left whole 😉 (Are the other blue flowers Agapanthus?)
Oh yes, the other flower is agapanthus, which I love, but which can be a bit of a weed, if it decides it likes a particular patch of ground.
I love lapis lazuli in bead form too! And no matter what I am wearing, garden gear, raggedy T shirts, scruffy jeans, best trews, I always have a full set of jewellery. I love jewels more than garments 🙂
I feel positively naked if I am not wearing a full set of jewellery – even when I am just kicking about at home. Jewellery can transform the plainest of outfits, and therein lies its power over me 🙂
LOL…..just looking at some of the photos of Josephine Baker …she would have been naked without her pearls, at times 🙂
Yes! She didn’t believe in covering up too much did she!!
Not in her early career, she didn’t.
Your clothes have aged well. They look very stylish to me. 🙂
Thank you. I tend to keep clothes until they are ready for the ragbag, and ,I suppose, if one keeps things long enough they come in to style again :).
oh!
*happy_sighs*
we ADORE b l u e.
how nice to see it is similarly revered and respected at the other end of the equator-ness.
*wavingfromlosangeles*
Ah, yes, happy sighs….I love all the ‘blues’ in your posts.
Wonderful to see pictures of summer, beautiful flowers! Even here in Florida we have the winter season. It’s been exceptionally cool, right out chilly, the last few days. The thought about how we have dressed Mary is intriguing! I hope for more…
BBC told me that the cold has extended to Florida; brrrr. More on dressing and Mary is on the way, although I am getting side -tracked by many another thought and issue as is my way!
It’s late-ish here and it has been raining for most of the evening so it’s good to see a picture of a glorious clear blue sky. 😉
I hope it was soothing and put you in the mood for a calming sleep 🙂
It was and it did. Thanks 😉
Yay! *teamgloria* has a glorious blue sky at the beginning of her latest post too. We must have both been doing some blue sky thinking …..ha!
You do pick the most interesting angles on life!
Some of them are quite out of the blue, aren’t they? LOL!
Interesting threads here..I am pondering …..;)
Me too! I am full of pondering. Does that make me ponderous 😉 , I ponder ?
lol. Whatever it is I do it too! 😉
😀
Wonderfully blue with you! those skies and those flowers are in my favourite hues of blue too. I think Mary did not think much of what she was wearing just then…but I think she was calm and happy…We will never know, just keep on wondering…But that is part of the mystery and joy.
Blue to cheer you 🙂 I hope Mary was calm and happy and content with her appearance. It occurs to me, just now, that there is another real and imagined theme in this post; there is the imagined and beautifully portrayed birth of Jesus, the ideal birth, and the actuality of the dreadful conditions that women have had to endure and still endure in childbirth. Check out Liya Kebede http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMzsIfXthhU
Lovely . . . and yes old clothes showing their age. Blessings, Ellen
But whenclothes age, they are soft and welcoming like old friends and hopefully they reflect a softening in our personalities, as well.
I also think that blue is a heavenly color and I also wonder what women of long ago thought about their clothing but then again I think women have always had a special eye for color and threads and fabrics, Annie
Annie, I expect you are right because women have usually been the weavers and the creators of whatever is worn. It is lovely and very pleasing to think we, women, have had such an incredibly long association and relationship with threads and fabric.
Yes, I remember the beautiful handmade lace made by my grandmother and then I wonder what was made by her grandmother? Your posts are always so thoughtful to me.
Do you still have any of that lace? I have a few pieces of very fine crochet done by great aunts; they are gorgeous.
Yes, I have a few pieces 🙂
Wonderful!
My favorite flowers and colors again…:) 🙂
Hooray and thanks Mrs P, of the gorgeous blue avatar 🙂
What beautiful blues! I love that you saw the blues in manmade objects but also in nature itself. Do you also have the tradition of eating a galette/tarte with a little statue inside? That’s what we do in France. Then the person who has the statue in their slice is king or queen and gets to wear the paper crown provided. A sweet (in both senses of the word) tradition.
Sadly, we don’t have that sweet tradition. In fact, because of the commercial emphasis on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, very little attention is given to Epiphany outside of the church.
Ahhh. blue. I know what you mean when a certain theme constantly comes at you. But I think we take blue a little too for granted. But having said that lapiz is stiill very expensive considering. Living in London I cherish a blue sky in a way a Californian would ignore. But I tend to be moody about blue – lately I have been going for dark royal blues – I wonder what psychoanalysis can be drawn from that?
With the ready availability of blue in fabric and blue in paint, we do indeed take blue for granted; it is commonplace and no longer a colour to be used sparingly to signify the great and grand. Which, in many ways, is just as well, because I would be lost without all the blue in my house and my wardrobe 🙂 Mmmm; dark royal blue…..like the blue in the night sky?
https://silkannthreades.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/320px-adam_elsheimer_0021.jpg
Gosh I have made a real mess of the reply to you. I will try again in the morning.
Such a bright, cheerful blue at that!!
It was glorious. So much so that I didn’t even mind the few puffball clouds that were about.
I think staring at blue sky is tranquil or perhaps therapeutic. I still remember looking at the blue sky just the recent week and felt the calmness while I was looking at it. Those blue flowers are so lovely.
I also think your not go about daily dress is much much more comfortable than Mary’s. 🙂
Blue sky is very therapeutic, I agree. And blue flowers are too. And my daily dress is comfortable; you are quite right about that. I like comfort 🙂
Blue is my favourite colour, and I love your outfit too. I think every woman cares what she looks like and Mary surely did too. For those days I guess she was happy as she also was a grateful and simple woman with no desires but happy with what she had. The way we should be….well I like to be!
Thank you for loving my outfit 🙂 I am thinking of all the women I have met in my travels and remembering how each one loved to dress as beautifully as they could afford. You are right Ute..women do care. Why they care is interesting though. I am happy that I am now at a time in my life where I want to dress to please myself.
You are absolutely right, me too, I want to make myself pretty and feel good for myself. I think this always comes later in life. For me that was like htat too basically when I started to love myself as I am. Sometimes I put nail varnish on for no reason , but it makes me feel really good. I can hear men say …women’s logic, but what do they know 🙂
And sometimes I wear my best jewellery when I am wearing my old pyjamas just because I can and it’s fun. 🙂 Aren’t we lovely ? 😉
Yay, crazy but fun 🙂
😀
You weave a story within a story with grace and elegance. It is seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. I hope the story continues…
I hope so, but it requires a little courage……
Yes, it does!!! By the way, my word for 2014 is courage!
An excellent choice. I haven’t really decided on mine. I must be too garrulous 😉
🙂 🙂 🙂
Ah, so beautiful photos and post dear Gallivanta!
Today here is gray sky, raining and cold but those photos made my day❤️thank you ❤️
So glad I could send you some blue sky to brighten your day .
Am I blue? Yes true blue, just like you!
I wonder how blues became associated with the blues?
It is such a peaceful, soothing color.
Hope this is continued. It relaxed me.
Yes, we are true blue! I have just been admiring your photo of the Blue Sky at the Red Canyon. Blue is a majestic, precious colour with a wonderful history in the art world……and never a sad colour for me.