on saturday tashi completed her dove pillow. the embroidery is hers, upon a transfer. she sewed the pillow's three & a half sides together at the sewing machine, stuffed it, and hand stitched the finish. is it not the most beautiful little pillow you have ever seen?
she then claimed, "must keep sewing," and so found a project in her felt book to complete. she named him wally. he is already beaded up with love.
my heart is so full.
and that is not all that saturday was.
it was a day that turned warm.
so we took a hike. on a segment of the rivanna trail, off of stribling, running along a few creeks and the rail line. i took about a million pictures that all disappeared when plugged into my mac to be uploaded. the camera battery died which [improper device removal] always ends in the disasterous loss of photos.
and so.
i. will. not. dwell.
on that.
i will however, dwell, on how much water i saw on this hike.
the creek was swelling with run off. it was high and deep. the tributary was full of magical pools, the song of water spilling over rock. it was just lovely to gaze down the misty riven hollow of a lively foothill stream. blessed be the water. may it continue.
from there we took a "spur" trail that circles the upper buildings of fontaine research park. it was strange mixture of woodlands, switchbacks, arboretum, cowfarm, wetlands, parking lot, highway view point, and creek side jaunt. we were thoroughly entertained. tashi collected samples for her microscope kit.
when we returned from our hike we had "bananas a la brigid," bananas fried in butter and brown sugar and then set aflaim with the aid of a brandy and a match. this is an imbolg recipe/ritual found in circle round. the bananas can be served on top of ice cream (our preference is vanilla bean, by ben & jerry). it is a delicious tribute to the light, to the coming of the warmth and the ebbing of the cold, to the playful nature of existence, to the sweet and the sharp and the fruity. we drank hot chocolate, dan's and mine spiked with a shot of brandy!
what kind of dinner could you have after that? while dan ran off to play a gig, tashi and i had breakfast before bed. omelette, bacon and toast. it couldn't have been a more perfect imbolg.
today arrived with a walk. i now begin my every sunday with a three mile walk to the grocery store. it's a fine way to begin a sunday. my kind of church. i walk up and down dale, cross waterway, pass clever houses and end up in a well lit shop that i'm actually developing a fondness for.
at home. laundry. eating. playing. laundry. the unveiling of tashi's pitch back net. laundry. successfully fulfilling a quest in the dreaded shopping mall. eating. super bowl rarrrrring. staring at the computer. and staring. and staring.
goodnight. sorry about the loss of photos. i would have loved to share all the shots i took of the water. but brigid decided that the holy well cannot be captured on screen.
5 comments:
One of my daughters is named Brigid. I loved the idea of giving her a name that was both a Celtic goddess of poetry and a Catholic saint. We always forget to celebrate St. Brigid's day, though.
Just to clarify, I'm Catholic, but like how so many Catholic feast days were originally pagan feast days. I like that connection.
I have a plate like the one in your last photo -- Blue Ridge Pottery. I used to collect them. Still would if I could ever find any.
I'm glad to see someone else local blogging about Imbolc! Our group had a really nice meeting about Brigid last night. One of our groups members has a husband who was born on Brigid's feast day, and who is a blacksmith. Since Brigid is the goddess of Smithcraft, healing and poetry, she writes her husband a poem on his birthday each year. She also led our meeting, which asked us to ponder the different aspects of Brigid, and then we shared poetry and other creative things.
My wife and I also walked the trail while it was nice, but we did the paved greenbelt section so we could take our baby Ariel on her first "hike".
with your writing, i could indeed see the stunning silvery watered images - photos as they whirled away, that wiley wordful brigid she! how it warms my heart to read these little splashes of bright love and light, this helps me so to use my selkie sight!
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