Waiting for Spring.....

                  "Joy is the mainspring in the whole of endless Nature's calm rotation" (Schiller)

"Give me beauty inthe inward soul, and may the outward and inward person be as one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry." ( Socrates)

MORE from the Hurricane March 12, 2012

 This is an incredible sight......trees bending over at Alder and Hilchey. Street was blocked off for hours. What a mess. Power lines down. Storm raging .....

 This is after the storm passed. The mess left on the beach near downtown Flannel City........

 Torrents of oceans, falling, rumbling, crashing...so loud.

 This is NOT the beach, can you believe it. This is the Island Hwy. Cleanup crews were amazing and were out immediately to get things tidied up. They were amazing.

 At Willow Point...Can see the waves coming in as the storm progresses....

Would not want to be on the  ocean. Amazing.

Hurricane Aftermath in Flannel City

 Massive trees downed today in hurricane type storm. Building lost siding, roof segments, chimneys toppled......

 Huge trees pulled up by their roots.........people stopping and taking pics  ( I am guilty of that one as well)

 Couldn't believe these old trees went over so easily. 

 Roots exposed. Pieces of tarps tangled.

 At the Catholic Church, cracked roots lie across the parking lot. Could have been worse. Could have gone across the road.

 Freezing wind. Everything blocked off.

 More trees. Big roots. Slammed into the ground.

 Kids find the time to climb on the trees.

 Snapped in half. Lots of downed power lines, just left dangling.

Roads closed. Tree leaning on power lines. Wow.

A Day in the life of a Cat.....

 How to spend the day.........Bo is a fashion consultant......

 Birdies ......................

 Pye likes to watch.

 Birdies sit in the little feeder in front of the window......

 Pye  makes uneventful smacking sounds at birdie on the windowpane.

 Always hopeful............................

"Please God, in one of my 9 lifetimes, let me catch a bird....indoors."

And Bo....smug as always, ignores the birds and continues her domination of the fabric industry.

White Cat in the Sunset

 Tonight the air was warm, yet cool, with the promise of chill at night. White Cat sat on the fence basking in the breeze. She lives behind us on the hill, but spends a great deal of her outdoor time, lounging about in my garden, sitting on the fence.I talk sweet talk to her, tousle her thick fur and she purrs and fluffs.

 Tonight the sunset was longer, the wind a little cool. The afternoon had been so nice I think White Cat was hoping it would last even longer.

 Come this weekend, she will get her wish.....clocks go ahead. Yay! It means White Cat  will be down here chasing birds  even more than usual.

Sunset at last. I leave White Cat to her designs....she has things to sniff, last minute birds to chase, and some sort of invisible music to listen to.

Eagles and Cats on a Cold day....

 Cold afternoon.......eagles flying into the sun, straight up above................

 White Cat sits on fence, contemplating some sort of exciting adventure .........

 White Cat sees the eagle.........................

 The eagle MUST see White Cat......but continues its swaying in the cold breeze. I think they coast on the wind for fun.........I don't think it's always to do with hunting. Unless they come across a fluffy white cat...........

                                      The coast moutains just slip away in to the snow belt.

From an autograph book dated 1930-1940

 I have this amazing autograph book, my mum kept during the 1930's, when she lived in Regina as a nanny. THough she would never tell y ou that she worked as a nanny. She married my dad in 1933 and moved to Victoria, glad to get away from the farm and the hard life of farm work. She loved poety, and would copy copious amounts of it. Some of these writings I found , in this little book, were incomplete.

 I have hardly anything from my dad. Except for a few entries in this book. At the time he worked at teh docks, in Victoria.

 The pages are quite stained, but none them are torn.....

 This is my grand father's ( Robert Shiels) writing.....the only example I found.

 This is from Kay, mum's best friend for years. She was killed a few years after this, in a bad car crash on the Malahat.  Kay pinned a lock of her hair into the book for safe keeping.

 Grandmother......Isabella Glen Shiels................apparently she was a bit of a tartar.

 Isabelle Cathie.....another one of mum's good friends. She painted cards for many years. I still have quite a number of those cards.

 My aunt, Isobel Schreder......she was 10 years younger.....not sure of the date, but about 1932, she would have been about 14

 My uncle, Stuart Shiels, second to youngest....Isobel being the youngest,he  went into the army as a Signaller about 10 years later.

                             My dad's sister, with an old diaper pin pinned into the pages.Can't believe I have a bit of each of them, and there are many more entries, with friends, relatives, poems, sayings, everything but recipes.......these people seem to just pop out of the pages once more........and live for just a moment longer.