STAINED BEAUTY

What beauty can be found in little french village churches.................

From outside......

to inside !

Magnificent in their colours!

ALEX'S TRIBUTE TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

My Grandmother Louise.

I remember her hands,

work-worn and scaly

against my feathers.

Daily scrubbed in service

when she was a young girl and

never idle a moment.

Working fingers. Lean, like her voice,

always correct and

always correcting me, sharply,

best as she knew how.

Hands that bathed me.

Hands that chastised me.

Hands that fed me, filled my own

with the strength a child needs.

Hands that loved me like her own.

Hands that knew pain; that felt,

through the hardy skin,

her love, only one, lifelessly

slip through her fingers

(to rest her hands from his weight)

Hands that touched winter

and denied the cold,

half-way to heaven as the knuckles

told her life in knotches.

These were the hands that shone stone

for a living, a lifetime;

the hands I remember

ground to the bone.

By Alex

my beloved husband who passed away 27th March 2001.

SUNSET IN FRANCE

I was inspired to post these pictures, after visiting cori's blog , as it is true that some photographs never look quite as good when they are posted up, particularly if your blog will not support a larger size? I remembered that I had taken these in November last year, one evening when the sky was really blood red. By the time I had fetched the camera the colour had dissipated a bit, but I was quite pleased with the pink hue it gave everything!

Nature is wonderful isn't it?

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

TO ALL MUMS OUT THERE .........

IT'S RAINING BOWS !

What fun I had tracking the rainbows! But I didn't find the crock of gold though :(

A TWITCH OF SEVERAL NERVES

A TWITCH OF SEVERAL NERVES.

Bird,

wings, wind arriving.

Clock,

fell sun, face diving.

Darker as bones cramp,

a skivvy for Time.

Discreet sky: a line,

late, perhaps the bird

at flight, or a word

was unwound straight,

merry on its hook.

The stained fingers

that wrote it, long mute,

wearing an ashtray

for their grave of talk.

Twitch,

the silk bird grieving.

Cold,

listen, wind leaving.

By Alex,

copyright delphine

AN ANNOUNCEMENT !

Wonderful news which I would like to share ....

The day before yesterday my sixth great grandchild was born! A beautiful little girl.... mother and baby doing fine, she weighed in at 6lb 12 oz and her name is Natasha!

and here she is less than 24 hours old.......

My family now consists - 4 children ( all girls), 11 grandchildren ( 5 girls and 6 boys) and 6 great grandchildren ( 5 girls and 1 boy) -- isn't that wonderful!

To me that is what life is all about---families .

THE BEAUTY OF FORSYTHIA

Forsythia is a beautiful flowering plant , native to China and was discovered by Robert Fortune a great eighteenth century plant hunter. It was named after William Forsyth who was Director of the Chelsea Physic Gardens in 1770, and one of the founders of the Royal Horticultural Society.



I love the way it blooms before the leaves push through, because you can pick and display the budding branches and watch the pretty lemon flowers open day by day until it is in full bloom.




and this is what I picked two days ago, nearly in full bloom, heralding he Spring!

MEET CHARLIE MY ADORABLE RAM

A while back in England , Alex and I ran a holiday Caravan Park set in a beautifuL rolling Valley in North Devon, near Barnstaple. There were 12 luscious acres of parkland, and , at that time we had no animals , except a Pekingnese - a lot different from the Dobermans we were to have later- and a cat! Feeling broody one day with all our daughters growing up and moving away ( college, marriage ) I approached the local farmer with a view to adopting a baby lamb! He was very sweet and presented me with two, who I immediately called Charlie and Shambles.


Shambles is the lamb lying down, bless the poor little one, he had damage to his back legs and couldn't stand, but the farmer had said there might be a chance for him if we massaged his legs and tried to encourage him to stand and walk. This we did every day to no avail. He fed well each day from his bottle of milk, as did Charlie , but his legs didn't get any better and not long after , the vet informed me that he had brain damage from the birth which was his main problem. I took him back to the farmer, and cried all the way home.


Charlie, however, went from strngth to strength and grew into a beautiful ram.....

All the holidaymakers thought he was adorable, he would frolic around the chalets and caravans and they would feed him scraps--- then he became too cheeky, I remember hearing a rumpus one day, and went running to see what the fuss was. Charlie whizzed past me with someones' large chocolate cake in his smiling mouth, hotly persued by campers shaking their fists!! After that Alex insisted we had to fence him off an area of his own.

When it was our turn for us to go on holiday , Charlie went off to stay at the farm, and one year he fell in love with Lucie.....

I was unable to persuade te farmer to part with Lucie, so he made fleeting visits from time to time. AAH!

This was a long time ago and Charlie is now that big fluffy cloud which you see so often in the sky that looks just like him!! I shall always remember him.

DUCK DIAGNOSIS

The white Duck which featured in my post a few days ago, is still with us! She ( I think she must be a she) now has a name-- Phoebe. Phoebe just hasn't flown at all she has taken up residence in the little house on the little island.....







I have looked her up on Google and am convinced she is a Muscovy Duck. Although it is difficult to see from this picture she has the unique lumpy crest around the eyes and above the beak which is a feature of the Muscovy. They are said to have the nicest character of all the breeds of duck, with a pronounced sense of humour, being intelligent and the females are very loving mothers . More Muscovy information with pictures .

IN A BAR SOMEWHERE

WHAT LOOKS LIKE A MAN.

A bar somewhere.

Crowds of cigarettes shouting and laughing,

and booze burning brdges, building some others

or just licking the lips of an empty shoreline.

He, an uncanny Messiah, solitary,

sits in a glass on the edge of life;

listening to the sweet stench of voices

and the record that slips on the turntable

and the loud money waving goodbye

and the world playing for time

and the silence of his mind,

and the silence, where it crawls, in between the noise.

So he relaxes, deeper, protected

by the glass walls in his hand,

watching the sound of the evening

in its delirium pass by.

Through the glass, through the smoke,

through the talking air on its nightly rounds,

there, close to the fire, stands a man

smiling: The father, dead from yesterday,

grey teeth reflecting the flames' murmurs, appearing to speak.

The son hears nothing from behind his walls,

only sees the smiling man walk away

in the passage of flames - the moment fades.

A river takes to the roads where an age of ice

marked out the channels he knows too well:

at other times they are dry reaches

that his face calls maturity, creating

what looks like a man.

written by my late husband Alex circa 1978

THE WHITE DUCK

First thing this morning I looked out of the bedroom window and the white duck was still there preening herself by the little lake.....



Err... if you have a magnifying glass you might just see her!!


So I quickly got dressed and armed with a sheer determination to impress the blogging world with my duck photos I rushed out and started snapping with my little old digi camera and this is the result!!!





and that's about it I'm afraid! She would not let me get any closer, ah well. Some days you win- some you lose. I hope she stays, I think she is quite old and lonely!

Back with unwanted baggage!

Well-- it was actually a great break! But we returned with an unexpected present, ah the picture says it all.

The common cold!

However , it was worth it. We caught up with family and friends in Swizterland then mosied on down in our motorhome to the Var, in the south of France. We didn't go out of France this time but did manage to find the sunshine.

I Have posted some photos on my other blog http://mylifefromacaravantoachateau.blogspot.com and it also includes a link to an interesting article about the old adage " feed a cold and starve a fever" which I always took to be a fact and now find that it really is. So lots of hot dinners and hot drinks for the rest of this week for me.

We arrived home to find a lovely white , but tired looking , duck in our front garden. She ( I'm sure it's a she) is very tame and we had great trouble trying to persuade her to go into the rear gardens as we were about to collect the dogs from the kennels. As they would regard her as a good dinner it was imperative that she leave their area. Eventually she flew to a high wall in the grounds and there she remained all night. Today she is down by our little lake, so tomorrow I will take the camera out for a few shots. I hope she stays, we do have other ducks who come and go, and have even had batches of babies-- but she is unlike any other duck I have seen, she is large ,pure white except for some red around her beak. Also she seems to be quite old. Perhaps I will look her up.