sovay | Like waves on the sea, I was just where I should be

I had a quiet birthday with my parents and my husbands and autumn. Just before sunset,

spatch and I walked a meandering loop of the Great Meadows that took us past the low-tussocked marsh that was dry hollows in last summer's drought, a soft-winged owl taking flight after prey, and an office chair sitting empty in a stand of pines, exactly like an invitation to avoid.

Evening in the water. Everything smelled like cold earth, leaf-fall, ground-fall, moss. It smelled wild. The birds were calling through the twig-tangled trees in a way that Angela Carter would have recognized. There was lichen on the dry stone walls.

Me in the evening. Taken by Rob, with Rush standing behind him.

choco_frosh had gotten me Peter Davison's Is There Life Outside The Box?: An Actor Despairs (2016).

nineweaving sent the 25th anniversary edition of John Crowley's Little, Big (1981) exquisitely wrapped in the Great Wave off Kanagawa. The short stack of books also contained Eckart Frahm's Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire (2023), R.B. Lemberg's Everything Thaws (2023), and Sarah Monette's A Theory of Haunting (2023). My niece made a tele-appearance in her pneumatically eared unicorn hat. The cake was marmalade, decorated with whipped cream like the candle-whiskered face of a cat. I am not sure anyone got a picture of the smoldering rose of the sunset glimpsed between houses as we walked back for dinner, but it was spectacular. It felt like October.

Threaded | Flat

Happy birthday. I am glad to know you even through the medium of the internet.

You have a poem starting at 'I walked a meandering loop' in your first paragraph! :o)

Aw, I'm glad there were some nice things - I hope you enjoy the books!

What lovely images, both the camera-taken ones and the word-evoked ones.

I'm glad you could be with so many loved ones on your birthday, that they could give you thoughtful gifts, and that you could enjoy the autumnal Great Meadows with them. I love the pictures and the words. Happy birthday!