Tag: THe Florist’s Daughter

Ice is Nice but Snow Glows

marianbeaman30 Comments

Do you have winter fun – sledding, tobogganing, ice skating, even skiing? Maybe now it’s a vicarious experience with kids or grandkids. I wrote about it last year in another post. Since then, I’ve paged through albums to find photos of our Floridian family having fun in the ice and snow.

For author Patricia Hampl, The Florist’s Daughter, winter fun was ice skating:

In winter, skating was even better, the whole body thrown into orbit. Ice-skating was my sport, the only athletic passion of my piano-playing, book-reading, indoor girlhood: A northern pleasure, a cold-weather art form   (129).

 

 

SKATING 

2000-_1200_Ian skating w Grandpa

Grandson Ian wobbly at first on cold ice on a warm day in St. Augustine, Florida. Outside temperature was almost 70 degrees, the ice got slushy, maybe a good thing for beginners.

 

SKIING  Gliding, sliding down a hill, that’s what skiing is under the best possible circumstances.

Before they left the nest, Joel and Crista with parents in Snowshoe, WV
Before they left the nest, Joel and Crista with parents in Snowshoe, WV

1999_0100_Marian_Cliff_Snowshoe skiing

Hilarous fun: Helen and Charles Blankenship warming up with us after a cold day on the slopes at Lake Tahoe, Utah
What’s so hiliarous?: Helen and Charles Blankenship warming up with us after a cold day on the slopes at Lake Tahoe, California

 

SNOWFLAKES

Do you remember cutting out paper snowflakes like this?

SnowflakeFoldSnowflakeHalf

SnowflakeOpen

For detailed instructions with a video, click here.

 

Snowflakes make Emily Dickinson want to dance a jig, so she says!

Snow Flakes

I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town,
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down.
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig,
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!

Your turn:  What is your winter fun? Sledding, tobogganing, ice skating, even skiing? Maybe now it’s a vicarious experience with kids or grandkids. We’re dying to find out.
Coming next: Teaser of Cuppa Coffee?
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The Beach at Sunset: Crossing the Bar

marianbeaman28 Comments

Sunsets, especially sunsets on the beach are # 1 on the list of clichés to avoid in photography. Yet beach sunsets persist on Instagram and Facebook because they are breath-taking, evocative.

Photo credit: Jackie Gassett
Photo credit: Jackie Gassett

 

. . . the gauzy hinge between sea and sky, the limitless horizon dividing the elements, the disappearing point where we were headed.”

                   Patricia Hampl  The Florist’s Daughter

My mother had a placid and accepting attitude toward life and death. At her funeral the hymns sung by the congregation were full of hope, “I Stand Amazed” and “The Love of God” among them. Another song in the Mennonite Church Hymnal entitled “Sunset and Evening Star” (which was not sung) pulls out the first four words of Tennyson’s poem “Crossing the Bar” written in 1889 just three years before he died.

Crossing the Bar

Tennyson, also appearing to accept death as part of life, uses the metaphor of the sandbar on the beach to paint a picture of the tide of life pushing out to the “boundless deep” to which we return. The poet hopes that though he may be carried beyond the limits of time and space as we know them “he will look upon the face of his ‘Pilot’ when he has crossed the sand bar.”

This past July Mother crossed the bar into eternal glory and there she has beheld the face of her Pilot. Oh, how we miss her.

But now I must cross the bar of challenge and opportunity ever looking for new horizons. How about you?

What bar of challenge and opportunity confronts you now?