Words for Wednesday - 20 January 2021

  This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Computer issues led her to bow out for a while.  The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

  Essentially the aim of this meme is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given some prompts. These prompts can be words, phrases, music or images.
  What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...
  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

  Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog. This fun meme includes cheering on the other participants.
  And the more the merrier goes here as well, so if you are posting on your own blog then please tell us in the comments, so that all other participants, can come along and applaud.

Demand
Surface
Cave
Labyrinth
Unheard
Wonder

And/or

Chest
Wishful
Swam
Swarm
Swan
Procession

And/or the saying: You can't have your cake and eat it!

Have fun.

Poetry Monday :: Winnie the Pooh

  Mimi of Messymimi's Meanderings and Diane of On the Border are taking turns supplying us with a topic for this weekly endeavour, sometimes with the help of others. They also write wonderful, funny, thought-provoking, ingenious or  honestly well written verse. Go and read.
  SpikesBestMate often publishes a nice verse in the comments, and helps out at topic supplying.
  Karen of Baking in a Tornado has joined us in this crazy pursuit, and promises us at least a poem a month - we hope for more.
  Jenny at Procrastinating Donkey is taking a break due to her husband's health issue and lately passing from this world. Let's continue to send warm thoughts, good energy, and lots of prayers her way.

  I have something more to ask of you: If you read this and the poetry of others, would you please leave a comment. Half - if not more - the fun of these challenges is receiving the responses of others.

 
This week Diane is asking us to honour "Winnie-the-Pooh Day" which is today. He is not a favourite of mine, I think I was too old when first I read the books. But I am a fan of the poems. Today this one is appropriate:

The more it snows, tiddely-pom,
The more it goes tiddely-pom
The more it goes tiddely-pom
On
Snowing.

And nobody knows, tiddely-pom,
How cold my toes tiddely-pom
How cold my toes tiddely-pom
Are
Growing.

And all this snow poetry reminds me of a poem by R.L. Stevenson: Snow Time. If you do not know it, go to Lisa at Are We There Yet? and read it. I know this poem has been translated into Danish. I am trying to find the translation, but as far as I have been able to find out it has only been published in the Pixi book Legeland (no. 117) from 1967. I can't get this book from the library because of you-know-what, and of course I can't buy it anywhere either.

Here's my Danish translation. I'm excited to see how it compares to the Pixi-book version, when I find it.

Vinterdag

Først sent står vintersolen op,
en gyldenhåret dovenkrop,
der skinner et par timer kun
for at forsætte så sit blund

Og førend stjernen går sin vej,
før morgengryet, vågner jeg
Og frysende, på bare tæer
klæder jeg mig på ved lampeskær

Jeg sidder tæt på ilden tit
tør mine frosne lemmer lidt.
Så i en rensdyrslæde går
det rundt i verden udenfor.

Før jeg går ud, blir jeg klædt på
får vanter jakke, hue på.
Og vinden svider snart min kind
snor sig som rim i næsen ind

Mod sneen hvid står sorte skridt
min ånde blæses hid og did.
Og træer, huse, hegn og mur
ser ud som kager med glasur.

Next Mondays topic: Our favourite car

The Greenhouse - Part 2

Here are the Words for Wednesday LINK.

And here's the first installment of The Greenhouse.

I found a little more time for writing and more words inside my brain. Now I only have Labour left over

Next day Susan returned to the greenhouse in the long lunch break. She found Tom eating his lunch in an artificially lighted cubicle adjoining the greenhouse.
   "Don't you ever eat in the Barn with the rest of us?" Susan asked without thinking. Tom only shook his head. Susan looked despondently to the floor.
  "Sorry. I did not mean to pry ... only ... well the Nisser are cooking for us, and it's so tasty. I would like you to have ... " She stopped and looked at the tiny table. "Oh, they bring some over to you! How very good," Her face lit up in a smile and Tom had to smile as well. He realised that Susan really was not nosy or rude, only impulsive and very young still.
   He pointed at a stool, and Susan sat down, patiently and without a word waiting for Tom to finish. She was really quiet, and thought to herself: 'The quiet here, together with Tom is a good quiet, a full quiet. Not like the awkward quiet in the school back home when no-one but me knows the answer, or even worse the impatient, waiting quiet in the mornings, when I wait for Dad to go to work. How come quiet can be so many things?' She would have liked to ask Tom, but she did not know which words to use, or how he would reach to such a question. And then the time for asking was past, Tom stacked the plates, shortly bowed his head as in thanks or prayer and stood. Susan also stood and followed him into the damp, musty smelling greenhouse.
   He walked ahead of her to the furthest corner, and stopped by a basin filled with water and stones.
   "Sea water," he said. "Look into it." Susan bent close to the surface and looked into the depths. It was as if the basin was deeper and larger than it could possibly be. The smell of brine was in her nostrils and the sound of rolling waves in her ears. She looked and looked, and suddenly she saw several of yesterdays flowers floating on the water. Thy were called sjóblóm (Sea flowers) she looked closer and saw small clusters of eggs clinging to the stems that were underwater.
   Now she realized that Täthi never really told much about the flowers yesterday. and she pulled out of the mild spell she was under without noticing.
   "Yesterday, I brought the sjóblóm to Täthi, she told us almost nothing about them, but used them in a potion against drowning. She even did not teach us how to make this potion. Are sjóblóm dangerous?"
   Tom looked at her, surprised, like a man awakened from a dream: "You are wise. Sjóblóm are dangerous. Did you feel it? The spell?"
   "You mean the smell of the sea, the sound of waves and the feeling like I was standing at the shore of a giant ocean. Yes, I felt it. Now the basin looks small and normal again. You would not have let me fall into it, would you?" Susan realised that she was all alone in a far off corner of the farthest building of the Farm, with a man several times older and stronger than herself. And nobody even knew where she was.
   "I take care of you. You will come to no harm. At least of my making!" Tom protested. He looked straight at her. "Trust me?" And Susan did. Together they bent over the basin, and again Susan smelled the sea, heard the waves and felt the ocean stretching in front of her. She felt the spray engulf her and she felt Tom's hand in her own. Together they dived in and swam towards the deep sea.

Words for Wednesday - 13 January 2021

  This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while, and later she left the blogosphere for good. But this meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. Our master and guru is Elephant's Child. If in doubt where to find the prompts, go there.

  The purpose of this meme is to encourage us to write.
  This is how it works:

• Each Wednesday (or often the day before) we are given some prompts. These prompts can be words, phrases, music or images.
• We read and ponder those prompts. Mulling and pulling at your hairs sometimes.
• You can use all the prompts, some of them or even none! It's entirely up to you. 
• You can write a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or whatever you like. 
• When you're done writing, you publish the result of your work, either here in the comments section or on our own blog
• If you are posting on your own blog, please say so in the comments, so that the rest of us will know you have posted and can come over and read and give our encouragement.

  This meme includes cheering on the other participants. And the more the merrier goes here as well, so please, if you read the result of our efforts, do write a comment, a single word of encouragement suffices 😉

This Wednesdays words:

Slowly
Sign
Metallic
Agreement
Reality
Flash

And/or

Tomorrow
Artificially
Protested
Sea
Stump
Labour


Have fun.

Words for Wednesday -13 January - Using the words

I gave the prompts for this Wednesday. They are:

Slowly, Sign, Metallic, Agreement, Reality, Flash,
    And/or
Tomorrow, Artificially, Protested, Sea, Stump, Labour

Some days ago, we played with LEGOS, and I built some parts of Unicorn Farm, just for fun. And I found out that they had a gardener at the Farm
Here's a little story about him. I hope to expand it in the coming days.


Slowly Susan opened the door to the greenhouse. Tähti had sent her down there to ask for some special flowers, the old gardener had promised to bring, but they had not arrived. She held tight to the handle, so as not to slam the door. Those loud, metallic sounds were not welcome when old Tom worked. She wound her way through the raised beds of small sproutlings and larger tables with plants in every imaginable colour and form, many in pots as tall as Susan and even more in tiny ones, some not larger than a thimble. All the plants had a sign telling their name in Latin and Icelandic put into the earth or stuck underneath the pots of the very tiny ones. A huge tree stump overgrown with ivy and honeysuckle and many other climbing and saprophytic plants stood in the very centre of the greenhouse. And then she saw Tom, he stooped over a small bed on a table, artificially lighted with purplish-red light.
"Oh yes, he said, turning down the magical glow of the lightening with a slight move of his hand.
"Flowers for Tähti?" Susan nodded.  "I forgot. Come here."
Tom was not his real name, But because he always spoke in very short sentences nobody, not even himself, could combine the very long name he was given long ago with the old man he had become. Susan could never stop wondering if he was born like this, slow, gentle and mild. His real name always made Susan think of the Ents something like Reynir-Röskvi Rósmundarson.
Susan was brought back to reality as Tom turned right and stopped.
"Here!" he said, picking some very fragrant vine flowers, that each gave off a flash of gently coloured light as he snapped the stems.
"They are best fresh." he added. The longest sentence Susan had ever heard him utter.
"Return tomorrow?" he asked Susan. "I'll show you?" Susan nodded agreement and thanked the old gardener. Then carefully holding on to the flowers, and remembering to close the door carefully on her way out, she retraced her steps to the alchemy room on the second floor.
 
Not yet used words: Artificially, Protested, Sea, Labour.