WINTER is COMING...

                                             "LISTEN...

...with faint dry sound like steps of passing ghosts,

                                 ...the leaves, frost-crisped, break from the trees

        ...and fall." -Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914)

"Beyond the murky hill, the great sky darkens overhead...

                  ...and the great woods are shrill.

...the breeze from the embalmed land blows sudden towards the shore....

                             ...the night at Your command comes. 

...I will eat and sleep and will not question more."

-Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1994)

"From shadows shaken on the snow, I saw Orion in the east burn steadily as long ago.

                                           ...from windows in my father's house, 

...dreaming my dreams on  winter nights.

Years go, dreams go, the world's heart breaks beneath its wars

                                                                    ...All things are changed...

          ...save in the east...


                                                     

...the faithful beauty of the stars." -Sara Teasdale(1884-1933) 

("WINTER STARS",excerpts, written in 1920 after WW1)

Photographs 2025 Campbell River, B.C.

LUCI'S 10,385 KMS BUTTER COOKIES...

          "Our roots will always be tangled..." -Ally Condie

Melt in your mouth butter cookies. Reminds me of whipped shortbread, only different. Can make the dough ahead and freeze in rolls till ready to use.

Recipe from my friend, Luci, 10, 3185 kms in the Phillipines. Her dad’s favourite treat.  Thanks, Luci, for sharing it with me. My NEW favourite Christmas cookie.  When I make them, it seems like she’s right here beside me, both of us munching away…

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cookie sheets with Silpat liners or parchment paper

2 cups flour, 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened, ½ cup sugar

2 egg yolks at room temperature, 2 tsp good vanilla extract

1/3 cup sugar for rolling dough

     "There is magic in long distance friendships..." -Diana Cortes

Lay out all of your ingredients ready to use. Soften butter by leaving out till pliable, or nuke in microwave 10 seconds here and there a little bit.

"Friendship is not something you seek, but something that finds you..."-M.  Mokhonoana

(Room temperature ingredients will blend better together, and be more stable. The baked cookies will have a lovely texture, because trapped air expands during baking, making them more tender with good flavour.)

      "No friendship is an accident..." -O. Henry ( Heart of the West)

Cream butter and sugar till fluffy and light.

Add egg yolks and extract and mix till combined.

Add flour till just mixed, then combine easily into a roll. This is beautiful dough.

Roll in plastic wrap and chill. Can also freeze for a later time.

I left the chilled roll of dough out for about half hour till I could easily scoop the dough. You don't have to roll in sugar, but when baked it gives them this  wonderful , crystallized crunch.

Next time I would do larger scoops, because the dough behaves so well when baking and doesn’t bleed all over.

I baked them about 10 minutes and had to add a couple more minutes till light golden. 

One batch makes  just two cookie sheets of butter cookies. Turn off oven at end and leave the door open a tad and let them dry out about 10 minutes. It makes them crisper.

Then pile onto a plate and gobble them up with a friend. Or just gobble them up on your own! These would be nice with additions like peel, or candied cherries, ginger, dried apricots, etc. 

"True friends are never apart. Maybe in distance, but never in heart..." -Helen Keller

Photographs 2025

WILD NOVEMBER...

"Now in November, nearer comes the sun down, the abandoned heaven..." -D.H. Lawrence

"I have always been fascinated by the ocean...touching eternity, that it goes on forever, till it begins here again..." -Lauren DeStefano

"There is October in every November, and there is November in every December. All seasons melted into each other's life..." -Mehmet Murat Idan

"The wild November comes at last beneath a veil of rain..." -R.H. Stoddard

"Mist to mist, drops to drops, for water thou art, and unto water shalt thou return..." -Kamand Kajouri

"The world is tired, the year is old, the fading leaves are glad to die..." 

-Sara Teasdale

"November wind has a different sound than any other..."-Gladys Taber

"It was the best kind of November day....cold and crisp, but not quite freezing, not icy..." -R. Rowell

"It was November, the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep hymns of the sea, passionate wind songs of the pines..."

-L. M. Montgomery

"The sea is a desert of waves, a wilderness of water..." -Langston Hughes
 

"Be thankful for what you have. Your life is someone else's fairy tale..." -Wale Ayeni

"November at its best, with a delightful sort of menace in the air..." -Anne Bosworth Greene

"Peering from some high window, at the gold of November sunset, and feeling that if day has to become night, this is a beautiful way..." -e.e. cummings

Photographs 2025