Year out, year in; begin again?

Have you ever tried to sum up your blogging year

in a photo?

Like this ~

2017 ~ Flowers and Friends, Wabi Sabi, and slightly out of focus!

Or in  a poem?

Like this ~where I play upon the titles from this year’s blog posts, plus the title from my first blog post in 2012.

 

T.i.c.k. t.o.c.k.

at my desk ~  on the road,

delving
into past and present:
Gandhi Jayanti;
chelonian tales with a difference;
t.i.c.k. t.o.c.k.

floral interlude

t.o.c.k.t.i.c.k.t.i.c.k.t.o.c.k.

from my desk
the great debate,
year out, year in,
begin again?

gallivanting and roses,

on the road, at my desk,

t.i.c.k.t.o.c.k.t.o.c.k.t.i.c.k

t.o.c.k….

 

Do any of the titles stand out for you? Or prompt you to remember a post of mine which you particularly enjoyed?

And, without researching, can you guess which title/words belong to 2012?

Would you like to have a go at a blog title poem?  Feel free to add it in the comments. I would love to read it.

As this year ends, and as I prepare for the next, I want to thank you for your wonderful  readership, support, and comments (and emails and visit ) in 2017.   As usual, and as is the case for most of us, this year has had its share of the good and not so good times; you’ve been with me every step of the way, and I love you for it.  Blessings and bon courage for whatever 2018 holds for you.

Aroha nui

Amanda Anne aka Gallivanta.

#loveyourshell

© silkannthreades

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Ring out the old, ring in the new

This time last week I was in tropical Far North Queensland with my parents and my siblings. We were gathering round the Manger, at my sister’s home,

Old Manger, New Setting

preparing to celebrate Christmas as of old. There was warmth in the air, in our hearts, and in the prolific poinciana glowing near the front door.

The Christmas spirit in a tree

This week I am home again, in cooler Christchurch. My house seems too large and too empty, but the quiet stillness gives me time to prepare for the New Year. I fill the vases with the flowers that have bloomed in my absence.

There are flowers for the kitchen window sill,

Cornflowers, lavender and nasturtium for the kitchen

 

flowers for the bedroom,

Roses, nasturtium and geranium to ring in the New Year

and some for the table, too.

My faithful old posy ring with geraniums and parsley

Kitaichi glass and geraniums

Old favourites in a new vase.

 

Around the silence of the blooms, there travels bird song without, and words within…..

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind….

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land….

 

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850 ).

And with bells ringing, there comes music swelling into the emptiness of the rooms.

 

Let the old go, let the new come. Welcome the year with unburdened, open arms. Greet it with love and warmth and the expectation that it will be good  (but not necessarily easy). Know that with kindness and hugs you will have the fortitude to do your best. As it always has been and always will be.

All hugs welcome here.

If you would like a gentle blessing to ease out the night, I would suggest  listening with me to Benedictus by Karl Jenkins.

 

© silkannthreades

 

 

Mortals who ring bells…….

From our daily newspaper, The Press, 1st January 2014, Thought for Today

Time has no divisions to mark its passage,  there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. ~  Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

Being mortal as I am, I spent this morning replacing my old calendars with the lovely new ones I have received. And because our former minister always said it is good to have occasions to look forward to from the beginning of each year, I have started to mark all the birthdays and special days that will come in 2014. (There’s a surprising large number of them 🙂 ) Knowing, and seeing, that there will be good times ahead helps us to handle the not so good times whenever they appear.

So it was ‘goodbye’ 2013

Out with the old

We had good times together

and ‘hello 2014’:

first of all from a calendar made by  The Rudolf Steiner School, in Sydney, where my brother teaches;

A wonderful day for the chooks  et al

Glenaeon 2014

Connecting me to the Seasons

A wonderful day for chooks and me

The fun and un-fun times

Complete the picture

next from a calendar of  New Zealand,  beautifully photographed by friend, David Dobbs ( with apologies for my poor rendition of his superb portrayal of Moeraki Boulders ) ;

Beautiful New Zealand by David Dobbs

and, lastly, a ‘ hello 2014’ from  Sethsnap in Ohio, with his special blogger-chosen calendar, which will remind me of the seasons and holidays  of the US,  where most of my viewers live.

Elsewhere in 2014

In other times….

Do  you see my first calendar entries for 2014? Yes, there they are…One birthday and one reminder;  my  nephew’s birthday… and a ‘don’t forget’ to take your Vitamin D.

And thus the counting down of 2014 has begun, with the marvellous and the mundane… and without pistols  🙂

© silkannthreades

Matariki and my mother’s birthday

Today is a special day. It is my mother’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Mum! My mother and my father live in my sister’s home in warm, tropical Queensland.  But my mother’s birthplace is just few kilometres east of my present home in Christchurch.  It was raining ( I think) on the day she was born, and it is raining on this day, too. It seems that  some things, weather wise, have not changed  in 91 years 🙂

Something else that has changed little in all my mother’s  decades, and for decades before her time, and which will change little in decades to come, is Matariki, or the star cluster Pleiades.  In New Zealand, in traditional Maori culture, when Matariki appears before dawn in late May or early June, it is a signal that heralds the New Year, in accordance with the Maori lunar calendar. This year, Matariki was on 10 June.  When my mother was born, Matariki  apparently disappeared from the night sky around  19th -21st May and reappeared in the first new month ( Pipiri ) of the year, about 17th -19th June.  So, by this reckoning, I can say that she is a New Year baby,  born under the ‘little eyes’ or ‘the eyes of god’  ; two of the interpretations of the meaning of Matariki.

Despite all the clear instructions on how to find Matariki in our New Zealand skies,  I have completely failed to do so. When I look at the night sky, I am immediately lost.  However, there is one bit of star-gazing that I can do, and have done, for as long as I can remember, and that is to notice the first star of the evening.  And with that noticing comes a little verse that has been sung over the centuries by many a child and, undoubtedly, many a mother too.

“Star light, star bright, The first star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might, Have the wish I wish tonight.”

I have wished many a wish on that first star of the evening sky, though what those wishes were I no longer remember. Perhaps they came true, perhaps they did not.

One wish that my mother had, a very long time ago was to have her travel diary published. She kept a comprehensive diary ,and many letters, of her early married life in Fiji but publishers were not interested then, and most likely still wouldn’t be.

However, with the POWER of WordPress at my finger tips, I am going to make my mother’s wish come true, on her birthday, and  publish a small extract from  her first rough copy manuscript !!!!

“It was our first winter at home (Christchurch)  after almost two years in a warmer climate, and we were feeling the cold dreadfully. Dealing with gas and electricity rationing and a fuel shortage did nothing to relieve our feelings, or the cold! On one particularly cold, wet, bleak afternoon I sat shivering before a small fire, nursing aching chilblains, and thinking gloomily of better days. Beside me on a desk lay a bundle of letters, written to the home folks, while we were away, and on an impulse I picked one up and began to read. Gradually the gloom dispersed and I was back again in the warm, happy islands of Fiji. Thoughts flitted through my head as bright as the hibiscus flowers and the myriad gay little birds of that tropical land where we had been so happy.”  September 1951

Mother and Child

Child

Mother and Child (me) in our beloved Fiji

A Happy Birthday and  a Happy Matariki to my mother for all seasons, and for all time. Have a lovely day in warm sunshine. Is it fun to have your work published? 🙂

For the star gazers; a link to the heavens 🙂  (http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/matariki-maori-new-year) ( http://www.astronomynz.org.nz/maori-astronomy/taatai-arorangi-maori-astronomy-2.html)

The first image is apparently one from NASA and seems to be used by many of the websites I have looked at whilst researching Matariki.

© silkannthreades

Will 2013 be this muddled? Absolutely!

For me, part of the fun of being a WordPress blogger is learning, learning and more learning. Another part is just having a go, for fun. A day ago, thanks to fellow blogger,kiwiskan,I found out about Wordle. And, a few days before that, another blogger Playamart – Zeebra Designs    introduced me to Irfanview. So, for the beginning of 2013, I put my two new learnings together, in the spirit of “having a go”,  and came up with this New Year wordle. It’s far from perfect but that is appropriate to life, where sometimes everything gets muddled and messy yet usually turns out well enough, albeit with  plenty of room for improvement.

© silkannthreades