Just a reminder that anyone can post anything that has been a moving quote or poem! 🤍 I found this lovely one today... ❄️ We need to teach the children the old words, words like brabble and grubble, twitter-light and clinkerbell; words which dance and trip and slip and drip like honey off the tongue Teach them that a hazy halo of cloud around the moon is called a moonbroch and that swiftly moving clouds are named cairies; how a vixen’s wedding is a sunny shower of rain, and that a single sunbeam breaking through thick cloud is known as a messenger Teach them to know the seasons and scents of queen of the meadow and bride of the sun, how to tell Jupiter’s staff from fairy fingers and which roses bloom with the strawberry moon Teach them to spot pricklebacks in the tottlegrass, how to recognise a smeuse or a bishop-barnaby, when to watch the sky for flittermice and yaffles, and to pay attention to the dumbeldore and mousearnickle as she graces the lazy leahs of summer Teach them a few of the old Sussex words for mud, like gubber and slub and stodge and pug, so they know that the precious soil beneath their toes is anything but worthless dirt Teach them to be users and keepers and makers of the words which bring the land alive: a storybook, where everything has its rightful place, including us; where the wilds are fearful and filled with magic and people do noble things, and nothing is impossible In this world of harsh new words — words like planetary dysmorphia and solastalgia, extinction debt and grief mitigation, megadrought and megafire, anthropogenic, pyrocene, words which alarm and get stuck in our throats describing a world which our hearts cannot grasp — we need to teach the children the old words, so that if they should feel lost, the old words might colour for them a warm and breathing, living map, a light to guide them safely home. - Caroline Mellor

*snuggles* I am so sorry to hear this Boopsy. Thank you for telling us about her so that light lives on. 🤍

Hiya Rhea! Could I have an S please?

It's beautiful Boopsy! Thank you! What do you think? *twirls around in her new dress*

*Stares wide eyed at the poor pink elephant* Hmm.... perhaps I should just be sure to eat all the Marshmallow cake, just in case. We wouldn't want that happening again... 😉

I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime. ~Mary Oliver (Book: Blue Horses)

*said around a mouthful of chocolate covered marshmallows* Wait what happened the last time an Ashaman was fed sugar exactly? 🤨

Dear Narg, Our cat has begun laying stretched out full length between my partner and I on the couch, pushing me over to the cushion at the end of the couch. She's very scrawny and won't taste all that nice... What should we do? Del~ the Sparkliest Trolloc