new adventures

10.20.17 ~ Katherine loves reading her books

Katherine and her parents have moved to Cork, Ireland!!! For a year or two. It’s been an exciting summer and autumn as Dima & Larisa have been preparing for this grand adventure. Happily all of Katherine’s living ancestors, four grandparents and two great-grandmothers were on hand in North Carolina to celebrate her 3rd birthday in September. Grandpa Tim has discovered that flights from New England to Ireland are cheaper than flights to North Carolina so we surely will be visiting them soon. 🙂

more fairy villages

More favorites from this year’s Wee Faerie Village at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

“Tilly’s Tea Room” by Cheryl Poirier, Lisa Reneson & Tammi Flynn
10.12.17 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
“The Sugar Crumb Faerie Bakery” by Jessica Zydeek
“Faerieville Sweet Shoppe & Dandy Candy Emporium”
by Billie Tannen & Robert Nielsen

Of course there were many more places in this fairy village but unfortunately I cannot include them all. It was difficult to even limit my favorites to two posts. 🙂 To view my pictures from past Wee Faerie Villages click on “Florence Griswold” in the categories below.

fairy villages

“Underwater Academy for Seafaeries”
by Students from the Deep River Elementary School
Led by Art Teacher Diana DeWolf-Carfi
10.12.17 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

The theme of this year’s Wee Faerie Village at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme is Faerieville, U.S.A. I think we spent the most time mesmerized at the Underwater Academy for Seafaeries!

Sadly, autumn seems to be very late in arriving this year. But Janet and I stopped for lunch at the museum’s Café Flo, and since it was chilly and we weren’t sitting in the sun this time around, we had two cups each of mulled warm apple cider.

“Faerieville Wind Farm” by Tom & Kristin Vernon

Can you feel the wind blow? Even the wee smallest of towns requires more power than the resident fireflies can provide, so these fairies, in keeping with changing economic times, retrofitted one of their ancient grain-grinding windmills to be a power plant that turns wind into energy. The other two windmills continue to work in their traditional function; one for grinding grain for faerie bread and the other to pump the water from the river to all the homes and businesses in Faerieville. Our motto: When the wind blows, we all win.

Lieutenant River
“Faerieville Depot” by Linda Turner & Gary Urbanik
One never knows when a fairy might appear!
Decorating with nature
“’A Little Birdie Told Me’ Bird Shop” by Madeline Kwasniewski & Tom Donnelly
Artichoke blossom
“Dragonfly Daycare” by Nancy MacBride
Monarch butterfly on zinnia blossom

…more to follow

a language which is not made of words

gray wolf by Gary Kramer

How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
(A Little Princess)

apple pickers

camillepissarro-the-apple-pickers
“The Apple Pickers” by Camille Pissarro

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel –

Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Drying grass,
New books and blackboards
Chalk in class.

The bee, his hive
Well-honey, hums
While Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.

Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

~ John Updike
(September)

~ autumn equinox ~