~ :: The Vagaries of Mortality ::~

My Valentine took a sort of shot-gun approach, a scattering of personal symbols. In the center of the red plate, there was a lovely bit of pastry. I didn’t think of the camera till we’d pretty much eaten it.

A heart shaped box, but with extras – a couple of mints, a same box from another chocolatier.

And flowers, of course. Lovely ones.

I had told him how my father used to give me – every year – a very fancy, lacy (paper lace) Valentine’s card, something dripping with special. So MY Valentine drew me one. I took out the mushy message in the middle, but left the design so you could see. Actually, maybe I should get him a long-arm quilting machine. He’s got the concept.  Wasn’t this cool?

Some days later, I finally finished painting poor Scooter’s Christmas stool.

And he finally got a pony, all of his own, made to order.

Here is the story of the next bit: in our little town, we had a gorgeous pioneer-aged church building we called The Tabernacle. It was used for – wow, one hundred and fifty years or so for large, multi-congregational meetings and community concerts. Beautiful, built by teams of engineers and craftsmen from all over the world. Every window had stained glass in it, and the woodwork inside was beautiful. A couple of years ago now, as I was on the treadmill one morning, G came in and told me that the Tabernacle had burned. There had been a concert the night before, and something in the wiring, after everyone had left, had sparked. When he told me, I stopped dead and burst into tears. It was like a friend had died.

We didn’t know what the church would do now.  The building had been old, not earthquake safe. But it was not razed. Instead, it was to be repurposed – the walls preserved (many of the windows had made it through and were being rebuilt by friends or ours), the basic structure retrofitted.  They decided to put a basement underneath it, and bought up properties on either side for parking places and grounds. When I saw a picture of what they were doing with this Old Man of a building, my eyes ’bout fell out.  So I’m showing you – the miracles skilled people can pull off when they have to.

The place is fenced off, of course – rubber-necking idiots like me could fall right into that hole. So a lot of these shots were just me holding the camera high and hoping for the best.  The building is at ground level.  LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO HOLD IT UP as they dug away the earth.

A million stilts. HOW would you DO this? Bracing and cross bracing.  But that used to be solid earth, compressed for a hundred years by the weight of that building.

See that step at the base of the door? That used to be just above the grass.

I just think this is wild.  So not only do we get to keep an ancient landmark, we get to watch all this happen.

And THEN –

SPRING CAME.  See the bee in the crocus?

And the fuzzy pussy buds on the aspens?  We were delighted.  That was two weekends ago.  This was the sixteenth:

We woke up to a gray morning. Then a little snow started. This was about ten minutes after it had started.

I thought it’d last maybe twenty minutes. But the flakes got bigger.  Then huge-r.  Wonderfully fluffy. If it had been November, I’d have been delighted.  As it was, I still couldn’t help being charmed.

The wolves like it.

For a few minutes. Now we’re maybe twenty minutes into the storm, lining up to go inside.

A really nice shot of Toby. He’s actually holding still.

Since we kept mistaking the dogs for sheep, we did not let them in.  They started a very strange, almost ritual-like behavior. They put their noses down to the wood of the deck and started pushing their noses along, eating the snow as they walked, leaving strange groove-like trails in the snow, building little snowballs over their noses.

Like they were moles, digging.

Half an hour after we woke up, and still falling.

Irony.

Kind of a set-back. But this time of year, it won’t last long.  All several inches that fell that day were gone in a few hours, the second the front had passed.  So that was last Saturday. This Saturday? I shot the header.  And I had more to put up. So I’ll do – ANOTHER POST.