Well, one anyway…
and there’s another one on the way.
A lot smaller than I thought they’d be, but I don’t mind – I’ve been waiting a long time for these to flower!
❤
Sunflowers!
Carry On…
Tonight the last episode of the TV series Supernatural will be airing – 15 seasons of monsters and mayhem and the Family Business…
I resisted watching for a long time (better things to do than catch up on all those seasons!) but eventually I had a look. I already watched Doctor Who and Sherlock, and there was this thing called “SuperWhoLock“, so I though it wouldn’t hurt to just check out what it was all about.
And here we are, last episode ever.
Through Supernatural I found GISH, which you will have read about if you’ve been reading my blog for a while – I’ve done a few of the GISH hunts over the last couple of years. Through GISH I found the Gishwhes Choir, which has just released a Supernatural send off, of which I am part 😀
This is a compilation of songs used during the show, interspersed with various GISH Hunt contributions and some clips from the show. I am glad to have been a part of it.
Enjoy!
Sky Confetti
The other day we were driving somewhere, and suddenly there were hundreds of butterflies drifting across the sky, like confetti… not all at once, but they just kept on coming.
Of course, once I stopped to film it, there weren’t so many. You can still see some fluttering past. Otherwise, enjoy the music – it’s one of the free background clips YouTube provide for use in your uploads. It’s called “Wandering Soul”, which seemed appropriate!
It’s spring, although today feels a bit more like summer. Everything’s greening up, and I’ve been adding to the succulents in my pots and gardens. Things are springing from the soil that I’d forgotten about, or didn’t even know were there.
The earth always renews, whatever the preceding blessing or disaster…
I tend to forget that.
When things go wrong, I sometimes forget that there’s capacity for renewal. I see the barrenness, and feel like that’s all there is or will be…
When my plants die (because I’m not a natural gardener!) I think there’s no point trying again. When I feel ill, and everything drags on, I feel like I’ll never be well again.
There is room for renewal – even if not for perfection.
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.”
– Lamentations 3:22-23
Even when lamenting there is room for hope!
I have great hope that my new plants will survive. I’ve kept some of them alive for a while now, and they seem quite hardy. Here’s my new garden…
…and my new pots are now filled.
😀
Communing In An Age Of Corona
We went to our church service on Sunday – the second time we’ve been since in-person meetings started up again. On other weekends either I’ve not been well, or we’ve missed out on tickets (there’s a number limit because of distancing). That’s OK – we enjoy the online service, and I’m happy to go less if it means somebody else gets to go instead.
I did want to be there this weekend, though, because it was Communion Sunday. Previously, we’ve participated at home with our bread and juice (or piece of muesli bar and apple juice with a bit of beetroot juice, on the week we forgot what day it was…). This time I just felt like actually being with other people.
I must confess, I hadn’t really thought how it would work in a time when too much handling is discouraged. Corona restrictions have caused problems, with activities we take for granted no longer being available. It’s also brought about innovation!
As we entered the sanctuary we all took our “bread and wine” in one package.
Sorry it’s blurry – it was a bit dark! That’s a sealed cup with grape juice, with a separate sealed wafer on top.
I’m not crazy about all the packaging re:wastage – hopefully it’s recyclable – but I’m impressed that someone saw the need and created a solution 🙂
I’m glad we went. We’ll probably stay home for a week or two and leave room for someone else. I know that some people have been having difficulties with not being able to meet in person for church services. It is a strange year, and everybody has different circumstances and needs in their lives. I do know that we are one body in Christ, wherever we are – important to each other and to the whole, whether we think we are or not! Having Zoom and Messenger Chat capability has been wonderful this year, but even if that has been difficult, you are included, and you are essential 🙂
I’ve always had a mental image of the global church as a series of lights, connecting across the world, shining out for the world to see…
If you’re feeling drab and light-less, look around and see where someone else is shining. If you’re shining at the moment, see who needs a bit of light!
We’re meant to go through the seasons together…
❤
As Time Goes By
I’ve said it before, but it still holds true… I’m at that age when actors from my childhood and youth are getting older and dying. It’s not unexpected, but still brings a bout of nostalgia, a touch of sadness, and a faint shadow of mortality.
Yesterday Geoffrey Palmer died.
We mostly know him from “As Time Goes By“, with Judi Dench. It’s about an older couple who lost touch when they were younger, and unexpectedly reconnect in later years. Quiet, understated, slow moving, no car chases and gun fights…and hugely funny! We’ve watched it many times, and still laugh every time. The whole family has been watching it with dinner tonight as a tribute 🙂
Geoffrey’s character, Lionel, is grumpy, reticent, and sweet. The love story that unfolds over the years is gentle and romantic, and I enjoy (and understand) it more as I get older ❤
I’ll attach a clip from the show, but you have to watch it all in context to get the full effect.
We’ll watch some more episodes, and raise a custard tart in salute.
Thank you, Mr Palmer, for making us laugh for all these years!
Thinking In Black And White
I’ve been reading again…
Our library is closing down soon, in order to open at a new location in early December. I’m stocking up on books to tide me over, and putting some on reserve for when they come in. Usually I read cozy mysteries, but I’m trying to intersperse those with books that are a bit weightier, along a range of topics. These ones were on reserve for a long time (lots of people before me in line!).
Cozies are undemanding, but I need to be learning as well.
Here’s the first book, reserved when the Black Lives Matters protests were starting up in earnest.
It’s a book about how living in a racist society affects what we think and do, even when we don’t realise it, and about the defensive reactions white people can display when unintentionally racist actions or words are pointed out to them. This is written by a white person (who provides racial sensitivity training for organisations in the U.S.) for white people, and as such has had criticisms of presumption and problematic assumptions. It is U.S.-centric, and probably simplifies or glosses over important points…nevertheless, I wanted to read it…because here’s the thing.
I am racist.
No, I’m not about to don a white hood and burn crosses. I don’t use racial slurs or discriminate on the basis of race, that I know of. But that’s the issue – what don’t I know of? I’m not going to get into breast-beating or false guilt here. Just acknowledging that I grew up in a time when there were a lot of unquestioned racial stereotypes, education about indigenous history was practically non-existent (and one-sided), and prejudice was minimised or ignored. There’s no way I could have not been affected. It’s up to me to be aware of what I’m really thinking and saying, and be able to take criticism on board when I come across it. As a beginning I generally find that if something has made me immediately defensive, it’s probably a signal to search deeper to find where that’s coming from…
The other book? That’s got a lot to do with the lack of indigenous history in my school years.
European settlement of Australia was justified by using the argument of “terra nullius“, or saying that the land belonged to no-one, so they were justified in taking it. This point of view has been challenged over the years with varying levels of success, but I would think that the general view of Aboriginal Australia tends to still be along the lines of hunter-gatherers who didn’t settle in one particular place. This book tries to redress the balance, and show that Aboriginal Australia was a place of settlements and various forms of agriculture. There are contemporary settlers’ accounts of settlements of hundreds to over a thousand people in permanent dwellings, with water management systems and storage areas. There are accounts of riding through miles of crop fields. Fish were farmed in rivers, and in some places killer whales worked in tandem with the fishermen to herd fish towards the shore. Some of the areas that are now desert were fertile areas.
All of these things, and more, are noted in colonial diaries and letters, but ingrained prejudice seems to have made them blind to what they were seeing – when confronted with an impressive structure, it seems to have been more likely to have been attributed to some random European passing by sometime in the past than to a flourishing Aboriginal community.
Reading this book was fascinating, but also sad – how much has been lost, and how much can we still save? It seems to me to be worthwhile trying to understand Aboriginal land management and engineering so we can preserve what’s left and even renew what’s almost lost…
Is it ever too late to change?
Reading…
Lots of fun!
…but can also be dangerous to ignorance.
🙂
A song to finish with.
Because it’s never really too late…
GISHoween!
Another GISH hunt 😀
There’s generally just the one week long hunt mid-year, but with lockdowns and quarantine around the world there have been a few mini-hunts this year. I’m not big on Halloween, but I do enjoy working out how to interpret the items in the hunt.
This one was just over the weekend.
Here are my submissions…
10. Embrace your fears. Literally.
A home made spider, and I only had white materials… a ghost spider?
26. Change a word, horror-ify a film. Change one word of a non-horror movie title to turn it into a horror story, then show the result.
I chose “Emma” (the new version), using both the taglines and a quote that’s on the DVD copy I was using as reference.
38. Make a Sand-witch – A portrait or sculpture of Ruthie Connell, on a sandwich or made of sand. You get to choose.
Ruth Connell plays Rowena on Supernatural.
It’s surprising hard to create natural looking hair with carrot peel.
And that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say…
64. Rainbow Fright.
I was pleased with this one…and then I tried to upload it and found it was supposed to be a video…
I was going to leave it, but I decided to try and make it into a video. 🙂
Time was getting on, so I only managed one more –
74. Linus always waits for the Great Pumpkin. Meanwhile, the Totally Adequate Pumpkin is RIGHT THERE being overlooked. Show us Linus checking out The Great Pumpkin jack-o-lantern while an annoyed Totally Adequate Pumpkin jack-o-lantern looks on, meme-style. (YOU know the meme.) You may use Photoshop or draw this item if you choose, or take photos.
A quick scribble, really, but I was happy to get one more in.
Time to go and read a book now…
Maybe there’ll soon be…GISHmas? 😀
Growing Out Of Sight…
My lovely garden is doing fine right now – the rains we’ve had have been just right to keep it alive and flourishing. Even the plants I thought would die (they didn’t seem to have a proper root system) are standing up happily.
The frangipanis by the pool are finally flowering…
…and my zinnias have suddenly burst out with a profusion of flowers.
I kept a close eye on them for a while and nothing much happened, but when I took my eye off them, everything seemed to open at once!
It feels like the same is going on with my boys – sudden leaps in maturity, just as I’m looking in the other direction for a second. 😀
Sweet Bean has been doing external exams this week – only three days, as he’s doing two Year 12 subjects. He went to the huge school up the road from us, where he had to navigate classrooms and large numbers of strangers on his own. It’s the first time he’s had anything to do with mainstream school, and it was hardly a stress-free situation… I am so proud of the way he’s managed so well ❤ He’s very glad to have finished those ones. Next week he’ll be doing his Year 11 exams – still important, but lower pressure.
Biggest Boy is studying at uni at the moment. It’s been a while since he’s done formal schooling, as well! He’s been very conscientious about homework and assignments, and has learned to deal with the issues that crop up with group projects – working with different personalities and levels of commitment. I’ve watched him mature and grow in ability just in these last few months ❤
They’re both so gorgeous! 😀
I love to see my garden flower and thrive, but I love even more seeing my boys launch out into the adult world, forging their own individual paths…
