melancholia

When I say that I love what is melancholy, people usually look at me strange. Perhaps I'm not using the word in it's proper or more common context (sadness, depression), but to me, melancholy is so much more.

 It's a song tinged with sorrow
   a sparrow in the cold, grey snow
a gentle rain that remembers when the world was young,
  before the apple and the snake.

The thunder in a horse's feet
  a flower in the twilight
the sense of regret in a colorless photograph, the faces without names

Is it our own mortality that can make these things so tragically beautiful, or is it a glimpse of longing for a world we were made for but have never known?

inspired by Hannah's post, here

as requested...

this needed to go somewhere...

(See?? No promises = two posts in as many days! Crazy stuff...)

Here are your alarmingly pink and girlish cookies! And for those of you who ordered snow,  I feel I must inform you that it comes with -10*f  temps and a solid horse water tank. It's a package deal, no way 'round it. But don't let that dissuade you - I would happily trade for some Florida sun or even Irish rain!

call me a blackbird

"blackbird can't keep 'is word!" - raggedy yorkshire child

Why don't we just go ahead and agree that every time I say I'll have more time to write/ will write up some posts in advance, that I am suffering from one of those moments of optimistic illusion. I deeply regret not having a Christmas or New Years post, because I had already take many fabulous (in my mind) and artsy photos to correlate with words of seasonal hope and comfort. All for naught, it would seem.
 Well, maybe next Christmas post I can cheat and sneak in a few from last year and no one will be the wiser... Yes, good plan.

To the present!
 Because it's nearly the 14th (you may have to squint your eyes at the calendar) and it's been over a month since any decent festivities have gone down, this morning I made heart-shaped sugar cookies that I have every intention of frosting with garishly pink icing and Red Hot candies. I need this kind of joy in my life.
  This is by far and away the best sugar cookie recipe I've ever found. It's easy-peasy and the dough rolls out so smoothly you'll feel like you know what your doing in a kitchen for once. Once baked the cookies themselves are fluffy and soft like angel cheeks, and they stay soft.

We've just gotten over the January thaw and are again plunged into the spiteful claws of winter. Boo.
It happens every year: we get a week or two of temperatures above freezing and the first seed catalog arrives. You find it sitting in the mailbox like it's no big deal. Like your mind totally doesn't start pulling out concept files on building a new garden fence, new chicken house, what all to plant where this year, and maybe we should start looking at tillers, remember what it's like not to wear shoes? I bet we can start the ponies on jumps this Spring, and GOATS?? calculate cost of purchasing, housing, and keeping two dwarf goats...
 And just when you're about ready to break out the hammers and garden trowels BOOM -5* and snowing. Instant depression. You really start questioning why you live where you live. And you start checking flights to the equator (more depression).
 That's what seed catalogs do to me.

I realize that this photography is rather uninspired, but I tell ya. When your sick to death of that white stuff, making it look interesting and fresh is difficult, to say the least.
I don't want to say I'll write again soon for fear that you won't hear from me till July, but I really hope I've found a time I can carve out for blogging each week. In the mean time, you can find me occasionally on Pinterest!
 Hold on to those Spring dreams, kids.
 ~hazel marie