One Week

The Summer Sun

Mar 012013

I love winter. The intimacy of it – snuggling up, cosying down, huddling together.

I love scarves and tights and gloves.

I love Christmas, New Year, Valentines Day and my birthday.

And then comes spring…that first glimpse of sun, the lifting of the soul at the sepia glow of sunlight on trees….my spirits are lifted and I pack away the gloom. Another season of my life is ended and stored to memory. Here comes the summer sun…..

Nov 132012

This week I am once again linking up with Older Mum in a Muddle who is running her One Week project. Basically you must try to encapsulate the season in a series of photos/words. As we are coming to the close of my absolute favourite season I was more than pleased to participate and try to sum up what Autumn means to me. So I will share a little bit of Autumn with you, as I see fit.

Today I present the most obvious connection – the gorgeous colours that the season produces. And a very famous poem – a cliché perhaps, but magnificent all the same.

Ode to Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

One Week: Day 3 – Snoozles

One Week 4 Responses »

Sep 122012

I have a choccie lab called Delilah. Like many choccie labs, she is partial to whatever food she can snaffle and it barely touches the sides. Her supper is gone in roughly 5 seconds and then she sits and doggy drools over my kitchen floor staring at Fergus whilst he nibbles his, bit by bit, taking a good 10 minutes to finish the bowl. Poor Delilah is beside herself.

Something else she is very adept at is sleeping. And she is never happier than finding a spot of sunlight to doze in…be it by the patio doors, in the garden or, if she is very sneaky, on the sofa in the afternoon sun.

One Week: Day 2 – Days out with the Kids

Blogging for Sanity, One Week 3 Responses »

Sep 112012

This summer we have not gone on holiday, but opted to stay at home and enjoy a series of ‘Grand Days Out’. We have planned ahead to build up the anticipation, packed our picnic and set off. And it’s been a blast. The sun has shone (most of the time), the kids spent their time running, giggling and eating ice-cream. And we have simply enjoyed being a family and leaving the stresses and strains at home for the day.

One Week: Day 1 – Getting back to Nature

Blogging for Sanity, One Week 3 Responses »

Sep 102012

This week, Mon-Fri, I am linking up with One Week which is a linky/project conceived by the marvellous Older Mum in a Muddle. For each season, she requests that each day you sum up what the season means to you through words and photographs. So I present to you…..Summer!

Today I want to focus on nature; the beautiful colours, smells and sounds that the season invokes. That feeling of laying on the soft grass and smelling the earth, listening to soft buzzing or crickets chirping warmth of the sun enveloping you like a comforting blanket. Around you are bursts of colours as the flowers show off their glorious splendour. With all of this there comes a feeling of peace and connection and momentarily, everything is alright with the world.