Winter Wonderland
It's that time.
Special time.
Important moments with those we love.
Dreams of winter wonderlands.
Cozy in our houses.
Snow making magic.
We sit quietly by the fire.
Cutting out paper snowflakes.
Dreaming, of what will come.
Wishing.
Hoping.
Thanking.
Believing.
Merry Christmas to all.
♥
Witch Cottage
A real life witches cottage...
Imagine???
I want to go there.
You know...
I grew up with real witches in my family.
The tales are vast and fascinating.
They were my great great aunts.
On my maternal grandfather's side.
They put a nasty spell on my grandma because they were jealous of her.
She went blind for a while when she was young.
It's a long story, but they tricked her with eye drops, and it was poison instead.
Luckily she got her sight back, but suffers from eye stuff that no doctor can figure out.
The witches also would pay all the kids 25cents (lots of money at that time) to bring them horny toads and all sorts of creepy crawlers.
There is a witches cottage on my granny's property.
You can read that tale here.
It's part exciting, part spooky, part intriguing.
I would love to peek into that cottage above, you?
Gives me chills of excitement!
♥
Welcome Autumn...
Hello dearest Autumn, and October too.
What journeys and places shall you take us to?
You make so many folks happy.
Everyone is buzzing with glee.
Magical makings and leaves falling off trees.
You inspire and you delight.
A wave of coolness, and moons so bright.
Autumn.
Yumm.
Welcome.
♥
Ghost House.
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
Ghost House
Robert Frost 1915
Ghostly.
She never dreamed she would grow old.
She felt young even today.
And in her heart of hearts, she certainly was.
She sat pondering this in that great big old house, that once was a home to everyone in her family...
Now, she lived in it alone.
Well, actually...
Everyone in the small village thought she was alone.
But, she wasn't.
She still skipped about, as if she were a girl of 12 -
And would run through the open pasture out back, and into the woods to her secret hiding place...
Everything felt to her, as cozy as cozy could be.
As beautiful as beautiful could be.
At night, when it was time for bed, someone else led the way up the rickety staircase...
And never ever did she feel alone.
Not even for a day.
♥
In the Attic...
The house that she shared with grandmother had become a remnant of the past. The garden gate, unable to be opened...
Grandmother slept nearly all day, and awoke at midnight for tea. The girl thought she could hear grandmother speaking to someone...
No, it couldn't be.
She escaped from the dilapidated mansion, into the attic.
Where the most mysterious of adventures awaited her...
She promised herself that she would not open the trunk anymore, and peer into her reflection in that broken mirror.
Alas, she couldn't help herself.
For her reflection told a tale that sent chills all over her body...
And, beckoned her in deeper.
Until one day...
She disappeared into the shattered glass altogether.
Into the realms of her imagination.
As time went by grandmother passed on, leaving her home to her niece. No one seemed to even wonder or ask where the girl had gone?
But one thing that did happen was, from time to time -
People staying in the old mansion would say that they could hear a girl giggling, through a curious tune that traveled down the dark and rickety attic steps...
♥
The Whisper was Always, Miranda...
She awoke often from a dream - a cool wind enveloping her, whispering Miranda, Miranda, Miranda...
Only, her name was not Miranda.
The closest she had ever come to that name was in the form of an old key, which she had held tight to, for as long as she could remember. She kept it in her treasure box.
On the side of the key was one word engraved into the metal.
Miranda.
Who was this Miranda?
What was the place burned into her memory?
As she grew older, the vivid memories of this mysterious place grew stronger and stronger.
Miranda never left her thoughts for long.
Until one day, when she discovered that Miranda was not a person at all.
Instead...
Miranda was a place..
Miranda Castle.
But, why did she have a key to such a place?
A key to a castle?
And how, how did she get it?
Castle Miranda was built in 1866 by Milner, an English architect.
It had been commissioned by the Liedekerke-Beaufort family, who during the French Revolution had left their previous home, Vêves Castle.
She pondered this new information, as she inspected her key.
Still wondering why she had it.
She could hear the chatter of her family from outside of her bedroom door.
A family she never felt attached to.
A family she looked nothing like.
A family she could not wait to get away from.
She spent her days daydreaming.
And, with each daydream her memories of Castle Miranda became clear as water.
She remembered a grand kitchen, where she sat and nibbled on fresh bread, and ate soup poured in wooden bowl fulls by Cook.
It was during dreams of Cook's big bowls of delicious soup, and the sound of chalk on a chalkboard, that her memories came flooding back ten fold.
She could not have been more than 3 years old in those vast memories.
She was now 17.
But she remembered.
Somehow, she remembered...
During world war II, Miranda Castle had become an orphanage.
It operated as such until 1980.
Is that how she got the key?
Had she once lived there?
The castle was left to ruin.
But one day, she vowed to return to Miranda, to Belgium...
To the truth....
♥
Miranda Castle is a real place.
As for my tale...
Well, you be the judge ;)
For no reason at all...
A Party...
A decadent party.
For no reason really.
Rain on our shoulders - sweets on our lips...
Feeling so alive.
So free.
Dancing in the rain.
Finding yourself again.
You were always there really, at your proverbial party in the street.
No care to make you say, why am I doing this anyway?
No way.
The reason was clear.
Just because.
And that's enough reason, my dear.
So...
Perhaps you should throw another soiree - just a party for one, to say...
I am lovely, I am alive, I matter.
Cake, please...
May I taste the batter?
♥
photo found here.
Into the Journey...
Deeper into the journey we venture...
Another year, another day, another hour...
A gift of life, of days, of moments, of happenings.
Every moment, a chance to believe, to dream, to not give up.
Each day, challenging us to make the trek into the adventure of living.
A journey, into the adventure of life.
♥
