Poem for Friday and Evergreen Arboretum

The Garden Year 

By Sara Coleridge 

January brings the snow,

Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,

Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes, loud and shrill,

To stir the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,

Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs

Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,

Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,

Apricots, and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,

Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit;

Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant;

Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast;

Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,

Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

-------- 

I slept more of Friday than I was awake -- absolutely no energy, though I coughed less during the day than all the previous night. My throat hurts less but aches more from the coughing, if that makes any sense; my chest hurts but I think that's from coughing. WebMD says this has gone on too long to be a cold but probably not long enough to be RSV, and if it's not significantly better by tomorrow night, I'll see if I can get a test to find out (I took one more covid test, still negative). 

We had college football on all day, but except for the woeful Notre Dame-Indiana game, I couldn't tell you what happened in them. I had noodle soup and peanut butter toast for dinner because that's about all I can handle, and we watched this week's episodes of Silo and The Agency, which hopefully I'll remember next week because my brain is definitely not firing on all thrusters. Oh, and we watched the Christmas Ghosts. Some of the holiday lights at Evergreen Gardens' Wintertide:

Poem for Thursday and Christmas Railroad

Model-Train Display at Christmas in a Shopping Mall Food Court 

By James Arthur 

These kids watching so intently

on every side of the display

must love the feeling of being gigantic:

of having a giant’s power

over this little world of snow, where buttons

lift and lower

the railway’s crossing gate, or switch the track,

or make the bent wire topped with a toy helicopter

turn and turn

like a sped-up sunflower. A steam engine

draws coal tender, passenger cars, and a gleaming caboose

out from the mountain tunnel,

through a forest of spruce and pine, over the trestle bridge,

to come down near the old silver mine.

Maybe all Christmases

are haunted by Christmases long gone:

old songs, old customs, people who loved you

and who’ve died. Within a family

sometimes even the smallest disagreements

can turn, and grow unkind.

The train’s imaginary passengers,

looking outward from inside,

are steaming toward the one town they could be going to:

the town they have just left,

where everything is local

and nothing is to scale. One church, one skating rink,

one place to buy a saw.

A single hook-and-ladder truck

and one officer of the law. Maybe in another valley

it’s early spring

and the thick air is redolent of chimney smoke and rain,

but here the diner’s always open

so you can always get a meal. Or go down to the drive-in

looking for a fight. Or stay up

all night, so tormented by desire, you can hardly think.

Beyond the edges of the model-train display, the food court

is abuzz. Gingerbread and candy canes

surround a blow mold Virgin Mary, illuminated from within;

a grapevine reindeer

has been hung with sticks of cinnamon. One by one, kids

get pulled away

from the model trains: Christmas Eve is bearing down,

and many chores remain undone.

But for every child who leaves, another child appears.

The great pagan pine

catches and throws back wave on wave of light,

like a king-size chandelier, announcing

that the jingle hop has begun,

and the drummer boy

still has nothing to offer the son of God

but the sound of one small drum.

-------- 

I'm feeling worse rather than better, which makes me wonder whether I should get an RSV test before the weekend starts, though I'm not sure how knowing even if it is RSV will change anything since it doesn't respond to antibiotics. I had another quiet day -- slept late since I didn't sleep well, had Walgreens deliver Dayquil and cough drops, walked to the park because I didn't see how getting no exercise would make me feel better. 

My Thursday chat group met in the evening for a lively discussion of fandom and politics, and then we watched Conclave, which is still on as I type this and it's hard to evaluate the storytelling without the ending though the acting is excellent. (I feel like Jude Law or Ewan McGregor might end up being the best choice.) From the Volunteer Park Conservatory, the holiday trains, the station, Santa, elves, and lots of poinsettias:

Poem for Wednesday and High Crosses

Dark Night of the Soul 

By St John of the Cross 

Once in the dark of night,

Inflamed with love and wanting, I arose

(O coming of delight!)

And went, as no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose

All in the dark went right,

Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes,

(O coming of delight!)

In dark when no one knows,

When all my house lay long in deep repose.

And in the luck of night

In secret places where no other spied

I went without my sight

Without a light to guide

Except the heart that lit me from inside.

It guided me and shone

Surer than noonday sunlight over me,

And lead me to the one

Whom only I could see

Deep in a place where only we could be.

O guiding dark of night!

O dark of night more darling than the dawn!

O night that can unite

A lover and loved one,

A lover and loved one moved in unison.

And on my flowering breast

Which I had kept for him and him alone

He slept as I caressed

And loved him for my own,

Breathing an air from redolent cedars blown.

And from the castle wall

The wind came down to winnow through his hair

Bidding his fingers fall,

Searing my throat with air

And all my senses were suspended there.

I stayed there to forget.

There on my lover, face to face, I lay.

All ended, and I let

My cares all fall away

Forgotten in the lilies on that day.

-------- 

I'm still sick and still cranky so I'll keep this short. Of my high school friends, only Kay could chat, but it was nice to talk to her when my throat and her internet permitted; afterward, we had lunch and I watched the second half of Marvel's Frost Fight and The Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special with Kristen. Then took a walk to the park, since it finally stopped raining. 

We saw bits of bowl games before the season finale of The Masked Singer, which ended as I had hoped pretty much all season -- right final two, in fact -- and spent the rest of the evening catching up on Doctor Odyssey, which is either epic crack masquerading as The Love Boat or has something else entirely going on. Back to Ireland because I found these lovely high cross details from Monasterboice:

Poem for Tuesday and USBG Cacti

The Thanksgiving Cactus 

By Nathan Spoon 

Here in a chair 

in a cozy corner of this room, 

under the glow of a lamp, 

with the sun replaced by 

the moon     hanging 

boldly in the sky, I pause 

to consider the small pink buds 

of a toothed cactus, 

and I pause to consider 

the moon as well,     although 

it is too far away to touch, 

and in my pausing I feel 

as if I am a wave on the ocean 

or a seed     pulsing 

in a warmer season, now 

that the leaves have gone 

from most of the trees, now 

that frost dusts the brittle grass 

most mornings, now 

that weather keeps us more 

indoors,     so that we are more 

able to be together, even more 

together, even during moments 

in lamplight     like this one.

-------- 

My throat is still horribly sore, but my covid test is still negative, so I just took it very easy on Tuesday -- slept late, did some reading, considered going for a walk but it was raining really hard. So I did some cleaning, then my Voyager group watched "Author, Author" (not one of my favorites, but admittedly I hate the way pretty much every character is written by this point of the seventh season). 

Cheryl and I watched Skeleton Crew together before dinner (pace a little slow this week, but it's fun not knowing what Jude Law is up to and the droid, as is so often the case, steals scenes), and now we're giving Doctor Odyssey another try after reading fun internet theories, trying to figure out whether he's in a coma or purgatory or what. Cacti and desert plants at the US Botanical Garden:

Poem for Monday and USBG Little Landmarks

They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips 

By Mark Wagenaar 

I’d have to hear it spoken in mind somehow,

my father said, of the Frisian word for hunger,

but I’d settle for memory, or grief, under

the category things that undo me. It’s a funny

thing to think. Who would be the speaker

if not him? His mother, maybe,

holding hands in the hospital with his father

after 76 years. Married the day after the war,

when the stores had no windows—the Nazis

took the glass. The mourning doves

might have the right vowels, or the red belly

in the leafless dogwood, now winging

through the sunlight peplummed through

the pines, blue tarp peeled back

on the cotton bales in the field beyond,

Merry Christmas spraypainted in blue

upon the white. Snowless, starless,

a man goes on trial in France for helping

refugees. Could’ve been your grandparents,

my father says, your Pake hid in barns, woke

once to mouse feet scrambling across his face,

but in France it was a 2 year old in a ditch,

dying of dehydration, & when I look down

I’ve pulled the petals from the bouquet,

& as I’ve neither French nor Frisian nor

courage, all I can do is sweep the body

of petals into my palms, & pour them into

the cathedral of water in front of me.

-------- 

I woke up with an excruciating sore throat -- the worst one I've ever had except when I had covid (yes, I tested; no, it was negative, but of course it was negative for several days when I got covid from Adam in 2022 before I got a positive one). So I did not have an exciting day, though we did walk to the park since it was nice out. 

We started watching Carry-On, but the script was so terrible (less believable than Red One) that we have turned it off to watch the series finale of What We Do in the Shadows; it's definitely time, they're definitely running out of ideas, but I will miss it. Annual display of DC landmarks made from plant parts at the US Botanical Garden:

Greetings from Everett and Edmonds

Very quickly -- we're watching the penultimate episode of Dune: Prophecy after a lovely afternoon and evening in Snohomish County. We started in Everett at the Funko HQ store, which has lots of holiday fannish decorations and mini LOTR figures, then at the Evergreen Arboretum's Wintertide Lights, a free display of trees, bushes, paths, and "water" covered in fairy lights among the statues always in the garden and gnomes placed for the season. 

Then we drove to Edmonds, whose main shopping area is also beautifully decorated for the season, where we met Daniel, Cahaya, Sally, and Bill for dinner at the excellent Fire & The Feast -- I had pear and gorgonzola pizza with hot cider, and we all shared bourbon chocolate mousse for dessert. We caught bits of the day's football games (KC beating Cleveland, Baltimore blowing out the Giants, Seattle losing and losing its quartersback).

Greetings from Volunteer Park

Another quick post because we're watching the fairly ridiculous Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story (too little Chiefs, too much forced love story between characters without a lot of chemistry), after the surprisingly fun Red One (moves fast, leans into cheesy Christmas movie tropes, and the Rock and Chris Evans are delightful together). 

We had a holiday-themed day, starting in Volunteer Park, where the conservatory had Xue Mei Jiang playing on the Chinese harp at one end of the building and Christmas trains surrounding Santa Claus at the other end. There were also Pokemon Go raids for Necrozma Fusion Raid Day, during which we saw a rainbow over the Seattle Asian Art Museum. 

Then we went to the Bellevue Festival of the Nativity at the Seattle LDS Temple, which like the DC festival has hundreds of creches from all over the world, live carols by local musicians, and dozens of lit and decorated trees in the visitor center. We stopped at Safeway on the way home. I have lots of photos of the day but these are mostly us: