Snow yesterday, snow today. And blimey, if it don't look like snow again tomorrow. And an appearance by the abominable Snow Whateley

 

The snow started Tuesday night and looks like it will continue for awhile. Still it is fairly light and not to cold. And Whateley is a fan.

Here,

I’m here—

The snow falling

Issa

Whateley and the snow cone

 "The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths."



from First Snow in Alsace
Richard Wilbur

Dogs, April 2017, Good Times

"These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story's done they ask many questions:

What is Man?' they'll ask.

Or perhaps: 'What is a city?'

Or: 'What is a war?'"

from City by Clifford Simak

http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-rialto-bridge-unpeopled-thursday.html

Not at home to callers

"Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence"

Utterance by W.S. Merwin

The gang self isolates. 

Actually this is pretty much what we do anyway

Whateley and Piggy, action shot.

A Visit from St. Nicholas BY CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse"

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”"

Dowg gone, thats a lot of snow.

"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea."

from Northwest Passage
as performed by the great Stan Rogers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVY8LoM47xI

Or we could go in.

I mentioned we went to the park with the dogs last week.

Shaun, Nina, and Whateley not only saw the ducks but

they made a new friend.

"If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, 

it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, 

and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. "

George Eliot

"These Castles, tilting the sky over their towers

Championing the river of hills below,

Have silent halls and courtyards locked with snow,"

ftom The Strongholds

by Robert Finch

in The Strength of the Hills

Indian File: 2

A bit of snow yesterday so Whateley and I took some

 photos in the back yard. Blue sky today.

"his mind, that sea, caught at green

thoughts shadowing a green infinity."

from Marvell's Garden

by Phyllis Webb

in Even Your Right Eye

Indian File: 8

Thanks Margy

"Then morning showed

Infinity's proportions, 

The proper height of the sky.

Becoming small

We were grown again."

from Growing up

Dorothy Livesay, Selected Poems [1926-1956] 

Helen began taking one of the dogs on a longer walk once she retied. 

Now that I am also home we can all go out at once taking long daytime

walks thru the neighborhood enjoying the small parks and the lovely 

mid-60's houses. Monday was a day of bugs and blossoms.

  

  

Tuesday was a horse of a different colour. When I let the dogs 

out I quickly joined them with a camera, initially not 

even bothering with a shirt. It was a unexpected treat with

snowflakes on the tongue and heads poking thru the snow.

I did eventually get dressed and leave the yard but it was the 

first glimpses that proved the most enchanting. When I came

into the house I knew I would turn to my slender volumes 

of the works of Canadian poets to look for quotes. although

 when I did I was attracted not to the poems about snow. 

But the poems about youth and magic.

"When the day bends over backwards

to bring forth the light

I must know by whose permission

I inhabit this place

in the holy congregation of animals

 and mortal stones."

from Magic Animals, 1972-1974

by Gwendolyn MacEwen 

"It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes

 when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim 

rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in 

a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws 

thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright 

beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing 

and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder 

ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and 

forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the 

old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow 

and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed 

down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time."

We had a nice long break at Christmas, Helen's mother was 

here for the week. We had friends over Christmas Day for 

turkey and a viewing of Alastair Sim in a Christmas Carol but

I wanted to celebrate the season a bit more. This blog is of

course named with a quote from the Wind in the Willows so two

more quotes seemed appropriate. and this cast of characters

has been lovingly assembled over the years to help us

remember to honour Christmas in out hearts, hopefully all

year long.

        

        

  

"He saw clearly how plain and simple — how narrow, 

even — it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant 

to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in 

one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the 

new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun 

and air and all they offered him and creep home and 

stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to 

him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to 

the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to 

come back to, this place which was all his own, these things 

which were so glad to see him again and could always be 

counted upon for the same simple welcome."

both quotes  from the Wind in the Willows

                                                                by Kenneth Graham