Songs my Mother taught me # 8

I shot this picture almost two years ago.Gunnar was about to shovel snow from the veranda, my mother meant she could manage that herself.
My mother had been severely ill several times after nursing my father for five year. She had a stroke, had a severe heart failure, broke an arm and a hip and she had anxiety attacks. Even so she loved staying at home, there was her place on earth. Nurses came four times a day, she didn't like it, but that was the price she had to pay to live among the things she had created. The nurses didn't always understand her, but my mother demanded the right to be herself. She spoke the dialect of her birthplace, she had her Christian belief and her Bible would always lie on the coffee table. " I am a simple farmer girl, I love to dig in the garden, to watch things grow, and I like a good laughter, " she would tell the doctor, when he advised her to take it easy.
I think she's having a great time in heaven, being allowed to help out in God's own garden.
Perhaps she's exchanged some words with old Shakespeare too.She sure lived the way he preached.

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!"


Photo  © 2012 by Magical Mystical Teacher

Songs my Mother taught me #2

My mother actually came to my birthplace, Sauda, to help out a friend. There she fell in love with my father, married and settled down. They loved each other dearly all of their days, but there was a but. My mother never really adjusted to the strange scenery of Sauda, situated at the end of a narrow fjord, surrounded by steep mountains. She would always long home to Jaeren, where sea and sky are meeting, where she could dream of The Land of Elves by sunset time.

 I want to go home and see a sundown at Jaeren
 
My mother loved the color blue, blue sky, blue sea, blue flowers, blue clothes.. and she had the most wonderful blue eyes.

Drink drinks of cold water

Once she decided that her gray brick walled washroom needed some color. She jumped on her cycle and bought a beautiful, expensive, blue mural painting. The work was finished before my father came home from work, and the result was rather dark and gloomy.
I guess we all laughed at her, but that didn't stop my mother.

Under the tap crane, Be prepared.
 With white paint and a old brush she painted songs, birds, flowers and funny verse and thus made her washroom both funny and so very personal. Gunnar saw the art in her work and shot lots of photos with his old camera.

 Innocent as doves
Gunnar made us stop laughing and see what a brave, creative soul my mother really was. we were used to her painting elaborate flowers and birds on fine china. I guess she took us by surprise, and she won.

 Up under the roof. "Seagull just tell what you see."

While decorating the room, she never spoke a word. We were busy outside in the bright summer garden.

 Jesus in the wash cellar  
Naivism at it's best. Honest and made in a hurry. I love it.

 Look at the birds, they do not harvest.

What did I learn? If you fail, don't give up, be brave and smile to the world and the world will be smiling back. 

In the mood

February came with snow and frost. Amidala is bored. She likes to be where the going gets rough. She also likes to play with Serina, but Serina is gone, Amidala knows, she's checking her room every day. I made her a place in the window, where she could look out in the garden. Her air tells; she's bored.

As we sat in the kitchen eating our dinner, we heard a crash and and bump. The crash was Amidala killing my nice glass bird up to the left, hanging in a yellow silk ribbon. (Gift from my dear friend Christa.) The bump was killer queen jumping down from the bookshelf without disturbing any of the other glass items on display.

Later that night she simply lay down on my key board, simply denying me to write another letter. Enough is enough. I did however not reward her terror attack, I sent her downstairs to Gunnar.
Sunday night she was her old peaceful self again. She kept me company till four in the morning watching Super Bowl.



Gattina from cats on Tuesday is hosting this meme. Visit her.

HOPE OF FALL

Fall blues is creeping into dark corners of my heart. When the birches outside my eastern library window are naked and brown and yellow leaves are dancing slow fox all over the garden in the autumn winds, then I know it's time to search comfort among my books and in the music.
I start reading from "A year in my Garden" by Karel Capek, and let the Moody Blues fill my ears with The Dream.
I quote my mother, who keeps assuring me, "We will get by this time too,---I think."

The Dream ( Graeme Edge )

When the white eagle of the North is flying overhead
The browns, reds and golds of autumn lie in the gutter, dead.
Remember then, that summer birds with wings of fire flaying
Came to witness springs new hope, born of leaves decaying.
Just as new life will come from death, love will come at leisure.
Love of love, love of life and giving without measure
Gives in return a wondrous yearn of a promise almost seen.
Live hand-in-hand and
together we'll stand on the threshold of a dream.

SEPIA CONFUSION

This sepia self-portrait in an old stained mirror, kind of interpret my mood right now. I reduced the sepia till about 20 and then did some fiddling I cannot quite explain. As little as I can explain this blues.
The poem; I fell for the first verse, the rest belong to Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Teach Mary is the host of Sepia Scenes