wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Author Archives: wordsfromanneli


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When You Are Old

I‘ve always liked this poem by William Butler Yeats, but until today, I knew very little about the author. Having now read a summary of his life, it changed the meaning of the poem for me (not my positive feelings about it), and I’ve decided not to offer my opinion here until I hear what you, my readers, think about this poem.

When You Are Old

by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

 

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

 

And bending down beside the glowing bars

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


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Dwindling

Not so many years ago the Comox Glacier, on Vancouver Island, had ice and snow all year round, especially on the plateau part of the landscape. I think this photo might have been taken about five years ago. It may have been early spring or late fall, but it had a good layer of ice all year.

Every year, there was less snow, even in the winter. I took the blurry photo below from the side of the road just a few days ago, using my cell phone. I didn’t care so much that it wasn’t a sharp photo. My point was made when I saw the lack of snow and ice. This is the least ice I have ever seen on the Comox Glacier. Soon this icon of the Comox Valley could be completely gone. Since I took that picture, a tiny skiff of snow has dropped on the tops of the hills, but that won’t make any difference to the huge loss of the glacier.

Our climate is definitely changing.

 

Do you see any signs of our changing climate where you live?


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Bath Time

Sooty, the fox sparrow, is overjoyed to find a bathtub, even as the fall weather cools down.

“Feels so good to cool my heels.” 

“Maybe a little splash under the armpits will freshen me up.”

Then he spies something.

“A-a-a-a-k-k-k-k! What dirty birdy pooped in the pool?”

“Oh, deardeardear! I hope I didn’t get any on me!”

“Only one thing to do. Time for a vigorous showery birdbath and hope nothing sticks.”

“What are YOU looking at? Did you have a shower today? Don’t talk to me if you’re not clean.”


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Plum (or Apple) Crumble Squares

When I had an overabundance of plums this year, I had a lot of work to do to wash and pit them and freeze them in ziplocs.  But the time has come to start turning them into  plum desserts, a reward for my hard work. I cut the plums open so the two sides are like wings joined in the middle. Then I can open them up to put on the bottom crust of the dessert.

Be warned – this is an “about” recipe.  You’ll figure out what works for you.

This dessert is easy to make, especially if you have a food processor.

  • Put about a cup and a half of flour in the food processor with a quarter cup of white sugar and about 3/4 cup of butter. Pulse the mixture until it is crumbly as you would do if you were making a pie. BUT, we’re not going to add liquid to make a pie dough.
  • At this point I add about half a cup of rolled oats (optional) to the mixture and just stir it in so the food processor doesn’t turn the oats into flour.
  • Then pour about 3/4 of the crumbly mixture into the bottom of a baking dish. I like to use my rectangular one. Spread the crumbly mixture into the dish and press it down with your hand to make a tightly packed “crust.” No need to butter the pan because there is plenty of butter in the crumble mix.
  • Take the thawed (or fresh if you have them) plums and place them skin-side down on the crust, covering it completely with one layer of plums.  By putting the plums skin-side down, the plum juice doesn’t soak into the crust and make it mushy.
  • Once the plums are in place, sprinkle them with cinnamon and a light sprinkle of brown sugar. Then sprinkle the last quarter of the crumble on top of the plums. At this point I like to put some large sprouted oat flakes on top to give them a bit of crunch, but it works fine with regular oat flakes too.
  • I use my mini oven to bake the plum crumble, but it works very well in the big oven too. 350 degrees for about 35 to 40 minutes. You can tell it’s done when the topping is golden brown and the plum juice is bubbling around the edges.

Let it cool a bit and  then cut it into pieces of whatever size you like. If there is any left, you can freeze it and take out pieces any time you want, to thaw in the microwave.

 

The plum crumble is good with or without ice cream or whipping cream, but a cup of tea or coffee is perfect with it.

 

This crumble also works well with apple cut into slices. I suppose you could try it with all sorts of fruit. That would be interesting to experiment with. Pears would be good, maybe substituting powdered ginger for the cinnamon.

I hope you try it and enjoy it.


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Nimble Fingers

If I hadn’t been able to watch squirrels up close in our yard, I might never have learned how dexterous their hands are. They can spin a walnut around to get at all the parts. Their little fingers are more nimble than those of some humans.

Watch how easily Crispin spins the walnut shell around to get at all the parts.

Little fingers work so well,

Flipping ’round the walnut shell, 

Making sure to get the best

Walnut meat, and then digest.


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Foraging

Red-shafted flickers, part of the woodpecker family, have long beaks that are great for probing for insects and grubs. They will also eat fruit and seeds. Whatever is on the menu, their beaks come in handy.

Here is a mother flicker teaching junior all about poking holes in trees to find something to eat. As always, mother bird is looking out for danger every few seconds. You can’t let your guard down with hawks and owls around.

They are not picky about which restaurant they dine at. If they think there might be something good in the siding of that house, why not see if there’s an appetizer in there?

They don’t mind picking at seeds when the bugs are hard to find. This suet block was not in the shape of a duck when I first put it out there. We must have an artistic bunch of birds visiting here.

In this short video clip, you can see that flickers don’t mind checking out the ground  for bugs either. Here is where that beak comes in really handy. The dirt is just flying. And again, the flicker checks for danger at the slightest movement. Right near the end of the clip, do you see what got its attention as it flew by? I can’t tell if it’s a tiny bird or an insect, but the flicker was aware of it and on alert before going back to its excavating.

 

 

I dug, dug, dug,

For a bug, bug, bug,

Sometimes I’d find a seed.

 

I pick, pick, pick,

And flick, flick, flick,

The dirt more than I need.

 

But yum, yum, yum,

I hum, hum, hum,

 I followed up my hunch.

 

It’s fun, fun, fun,

Bugs run, run, run,

But thanks a bunch for lunch.


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Trees

Can you imagine how shocked I was to learn, after many decades of knowing about Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees,” that Joyce was a man? Yes, Alfred Joyce Kilmer. He was born in the USA in New Jersey, Dec. 6,  1886. He died from a sniper’s bullet in the Second Battle of the Marne on July 30, 1918. He was only 31 years old. 

Basically he was best known for his poem about trees, which follows here:

Trees

by Joyce Kilmer

 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

 

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

 

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

 

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who ultimately lives with rain.

 

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Then along came Frederic Ogden Nash, New York writer of many funny poems, with a parody of Kilmer’s poem “Trees.”

Song of the Open Road

by Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971)

 

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.

 

Please visit my inspiration to do this post about trees, “Autumn Ash Trees” by Lynette D’Arty-Cross https://lynettedartycross.com/2025/10/09/autumn-ash-trees/


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Like Watching Paint Dry

Might as well do my nails while I’m watching the walnuts dry.

In the lower level, by the woodstove, the walnuts are bagged and almost ready to be hung above the woodstove to finish drying. I think I’ll have to get another burlap bag or maybe two more, to hold all those nuts as they dry. All the messy work of scraping the black goo from the shells has been done. Now we wait. Most days, I sneak a few to bring out to the squirrels.

I wonder if there will be any walnuts left by Christmas.

 


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Another Great Poem

This is a copy of Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus, a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Icarus and his father Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete, were trying to escape imprisonment. King Minos thought Daedelus had given away the secret of how to escape the labyrinth thus allowing King Theseus of Athens to escape it.  So King Minos imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus.

In an attempt to escape by flying, they put feathers on their arms and stuck them together with wax, but apparently Icarus, in spite of his father’s warning, flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax, and without wings he tumbled back to Earth. You can see him falling into the water just below the ship.

 

So in the 1500s, Pieter Brueghel included this event in one of his paintings. About 400 years later, W.H. Auden was inspired by  this painting to write a poem about human indifference to suffering.  Watch for examples of this as you read his famous poem.

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden

December 1938

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
*****
Do you ever wonder what is going on in other parts of the world, while you’re doing something routine at home? Are there people being tortured or mistreated elsewhere in the world at that very moment? Or simply suffering while we are enjoying a good time? Or the other way around, perhaps? Someone having a good time while we suffer?