Through my Window

The past two weeks have been extremely cold here on the farm with temperatures as low as -39C while actually feeling more like -44C.  Amazingly we have also had a couple of days that have restored our spirits when the temperature has risen to +2C.  Looking through our east window at the morning sunrise is always a highlight of the day.  The skies are often sunny and beautiful at that time of day.  I am linking today to Maggie's  Mosaic Monday

Yesterday's sunrise was filled with colour and a surprise later in the day happened when I checked Google assistant to find a photo that had been automatically enhanced by Google photo.  

I am linking up with Maggie for Mosaic Monday after a long absence from blogging and am looking forward to visiting familiar blogs and discovering new ones.  Our January world is white and I need a little colour in my life.  

Sunshine Always! Sheila

Hello Again

it's 2018 and I haven't been around for awhile.  I just wanted to say hello to you.  I remember reading delightful stories and seeing glimpses of your lives that were so interesting.  I loved the beautiful photos you took and enjoyed your tales of travel.  Each of the bloggers I followed had a wonderful way with words and through those words shared the things in life that were most important to them.  I have strayed away due to technical issues.  I loved sharing my photos and collages with you and when I was no longer able to do that I gave up blogging.  I hope now to be able to figure out how to start blogging again.

I enjoyed reading all of Lorrie's "Fabric Paper Thread" Christmas posts this morning.  Hello Lorrie! 

It was wonderful to see those lovely smiling grandchildren in your collage.

 I have always enjoyed your blog posts.  They take me home again. 

My view has not changed.  We still live on our farm though our fields have been leased to another grain farmer for the past five years.  Best wishes to my blogging friends for 2018! I hope to be able to visit and reconnect, to catch up and stay on touch. See you soon I hope! 

Sunshine always, Sheila

Under the Tuscan Sun

You may have seen the movie, "Under the Tuscan Sun".  If so you can imagine what Cortona is like. My daughter and I spent two weeks there in 2011 and it hasn't changed much since then.  Because our family was in Italy together last September, we rented a beautiful apartment in Cortona with lots of space to relax in. We spent ten days exploring the fascinating sights there and in other small towns in Tuscany. No matter where we went we were climbing steep streets or descending with care. We have so many memories...here are just a few...

We heard church bells ring many times a day

-enjoying the magnificent view

 -tall buildings surround the main piazza

-the park is a lovely sanctuary on a hot day

-a quiet September walk

-a beautiful villa

-Trattoria Toscana

-the view from our dining room

-looking towards Bramasole, the home of Frances Mayes, author of "Under the Tuscan Sun"

Just a few photos shared ... more next time!  Have a wonderful week!

Our Trip to Italy

Hello again!  Although I have been "away" from blogging for a number of months, I often find myself wondering how the friends I have made through blogging are doing so I have decided to try again to participate.  I have been reluctant to face several computer issues.  One involves the way my pictures are stored on Picasa and the other involves a lack of storage on my laptop.  It's time to sort out these issues but in the meantime I will just look back to September when our family took a trip to Italy together.  I will use pictures to tell the story and there may be several posts showing the highlights of our trip.  KLM took us via Amsterdam to Rome.  Booking as soon as there was non stop service from northern Alberta resulted in amazing return fares!  It was almost two for one and since our son and daughter were both able to take holidays in September we decided to take a family vacation.  We had a great flight over, fabulous weather, great experiences and lots of fun.

After arriving in Rome at 5 pm we had a wonderful reunion with our Canadian friends at their lovely home and early the next morning we were touring the Colosseum.  We had no time for jet lag and all of us did really well. We had a guide who made history come alive in a 3 hour tour of the Colosseum and the areas nearby.  

 Our friend has a degree in Archeology and used to be a tour guide at Ostia Antica so on the second day she guided us through the ancient seaport of Rome which was where as many as 100,000 people once lived. The ruins are well preserved and date back to the 3rd century BC.

The site is massive and just about a third of the ruins have been dug up. The cost of maintaining the site as it is now is has limited the government from further excavations and they are being left for future generations to discover and maintain. Next stop... Tuscany. See you before too long.  

Sunshine Always, Sheila

I am linking to Judith's Mosaic Monday at http://www.lavendercottagegardening.com/

Italy in the Fall

A week from today our family will be landing in Rome! It will be a special trip because we will be staying with good friends in Rome when we arrive and before we travel home. We will be travelling to our favourite hill town in Tuscany and using that as a base to travel to other places.  Then we will be catching the train again to Cinque Terre.  The weather promises to be lovely and warm.  I will share some photos of our last trip to Italy tonight and promise to share some new photos next time.

I will joining Judith at

http://www.lavendercottagegardening.com/

Ciao Ciao!

Hope that your September is filled with all that makes Autumn such a lovely season !

A Reunion !

Hello to all my blogging friends!  I must apologize for not visiting your blogs this summer. How can the days be so long and yet they speed by so quickly. It's the time of the year when there seems to be so much happening and that seems strange when the rest of the year is often so quiet.
The farmer has retired and so the possibility of travel during the summer resulted in a road trip to my hometown.  It was wonderful to spend time with our friends and family and oh so nice to spend some time with my old school friends ...amazing to think that half a century ago the second chapter of our lives was just beginning.
You can just imagine the smiles, hugs, and stories that were exchanged that afternoon.  Seeing each other made me think that although some of us hadn't seen each other since the last day of high school or perhaps sometime in university, we all seemed to be the same as we were back then.  We chose different paths in life, experienced different things and now have families but everyone loved being together once again.   Our school is much different than when we walked through the hallways but the central section is almost as it was and it was wonderful to see once more.

This photo of St Ann's Academy was taken in winter.  I should have taken one at the reunion but there just wasn't time.  We had too much catching up to do! 

Hope you are having a wonderful summer.  

These days our family is getting ready for a trip to Italy.  We are going to Rome and Tuscany.  

I'll tell you more about it next time we meet at

http://www.lavendercottagegardening.com/

for Mosaic Monday.

Spring

Spring has sprung...dandelions are decorating the lawn, the trees have green leaves now, our garden was in the ground early and my perennials are green and bushy.  A few iris have bloomed but they were dwarfs this year due to the extremely dry conditions. Our lilacs have yet to bloom and may not because of a heavy frost we had two weeks ago and there is not enough moisture to coax the garden seeds out of the ground.  Some farmers have already ploughed up the spring seeded crops and replanted in the hopes of harvesting them this fall. We need rain!  

Twenty years ago we planted spruce seedlings that were just 6 inches above the soil and I asked the farmer and our son ( both well over 6 feet tall) to pose in  front of them to show how much the trees have grown. My petunias were a Mother's day gift from my son and the lupins will be blooming before too long.  Otherwise all the perennials are waiting for rain.

My daughter was recently in Palm Springs and loves vintage shops so bought a vintage hand rolled scarf for my Mother's day gift.  It appears to be brand new and I imagine it may have rested for many years in a scarf drawer.  She also gave me a lovely new necklace from Astoria, Washington. I snapped a picture of it resting on a beautiful dresser scarf she brought back for me from Bangalore, India.  I really treasure the special things she has given me over the years.

A few weeks ago there was an evacuation of people who lived about an hour north of here because  a forest fire threatened their homes and community.  I belong to a group that makes and donates quilts to people in need and though we don't meet through the summer we had stockpiled about 60 quilts to be given away through the summer. I went with the president of our group to get these quilts and she donated 64 quilts to one of the evacuation centers.  Luckily the fire was contained and no one lost their homes. We decided to have a 4 day quilting blitz last week and we were pleased to look at the stacks of quilts we had created at the end of the blitz.  Co-operation, fun, and friendship are in evidence every day as we quilt and one day we were surprised by one quilter's brother and sister in law who arrived to make us delicious soup and biscuits for lunch. Our group will be celebrating 10 years of quilt making in the fall.  We think it's time to invite our community to our quilting party.  

Hope that the sun is shining in your part of the world and that gentle rains fall to coax your growing things in this season if new growth. Sunshine Always, Sheila

Memories on Mother's Day

Yesterday my memories were circling back in time.  Motherhood has been such a wonderful gift to me.  Our children are grown but so much a part of our lives.  We are lucky to live close by.

I opened up two photo albums and have captured just a few memories to share with you here. I was remembering my mother. She pursued her dream of becoming a registered nurse and then stayed home to raise four children.  I think of the days when she became a homemaker, perhaps wishing that it was possible to return to nursing.  She did this once my sister got to junior high school.  Twenty five years after graduating she went to her 25th nursing reunion.

I was also thinking back to 50 years ago when I graduated from high school.  

It hardly seems possible that so many years have passed by. 

I graduated from a girl's school and tradition was that we rented a dance club and hired a live band for our graduation dance.  Our parents were invited.  Did my mother take the picture of Dad and I dancing?  I think she wore a blue lace dress but wish that I had that picture.

  Many of us made our own dresses, if shoes didn't match they could be dyed to match. 

Some of us attended the Royal Military College Balls so our dresses, long gloves and necklaces borrowed from our mothers could be worn again.  

On Sunday our graduation took place in The Royal Theatre. My little sister was chosen to be one of the flower girls and she held a pillow which held the grad pins that were presented to us. Our teachers presented us each with a bouquet of yellow roses.  

I'm looking forward to seeing many of my high school friends when we "girls" gather on the grounds of St Ann's this summer to remember the time when we were young and carefree, 50 years ago. 

Hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day ! I'm linking to Judith's Lavender Cottage here.

Looking Back to Green

Just a couple of months ago we were on holidays in Arizona and we witnessed a springtime beauty like we've never experienced before.  The desert was all dressed up for spring in gorgeous shades of green.  I'd like to share some of my photos from our trip.

We visited the Grand Canyon and the two days we spent there were wonderfully warm, a sharp contrast to our last year's experience of an afternoon spent in awe of the majesty of such natural splendour.  The winds were strong and we experienced snow and sleet, freezing as we walked to the view points.  This year the weather was wonderfully warm and we spent hours looking at natures paintings.   We enjoyed the experience of being able to drive our rental vehicle along the canyon and being able to stop and explore at the viewpoints. 

We have wonderful memories of exploring Nevada and Arizona in February. 

I will share some of the other highlights of our winter getaway next time.  

Have a wonderful week wherever you are ! 

I'm linking this to Judith's Lavender Cottage Mosaic Monday