I’m sitting outside working.
First I hear the rain approaching from a distance, falling on nearby trees, rattling them like tracing paper,
Getting closer…
Passing overhead…
Moved on now…
Leaving just the sound of the water trickling down the downpipes.
The air cleared…awaiting the next burst.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Our next door neighbours have a field of probably two acres that is very overgrown. As an example of how overgrown it is, the field is also home to a cow and two sheep. There are times when it is not possible to see them. In fact unless they are walking by the hedge bordering our house, we don’t see them. Initially there were two white sheep and a cow. The sheep stuck together and the cow became a bit of a loner.
🎶 Christmas Time is Here 🎶
🫰 Things change. After a few days of beautiful, still weather, Maui winter weather at its best, we now have wind and horizontal rain.
Monday, December 9, 2024
Last year around this time, following Hemispheric Views’s podcast, Dual of the Defaults, many people shared their own default apps. Rob Knight curated them.
I was not one of those people, but with this year approaching its end and with some revisiting the status of their defaults from last year, I thought that I would right that wrong. So here are my App Defaults.
I said to myself that it would not happen again, that I am happy withwhere I have laid my hat, but here I am doing my periodic tryout of Mastodon apps. I’m checking out web based clients as well.
The Mastodon iOS app has improved a lot since I last used it.
Finished reading: More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa 📚
Saturday, December 7, 2024
We have been going through a very dry spell on Maui. Being winter, the weather has been lovely to experience. Cool mornings, warm days, clear skies, no wind. There’s a little nip to a breeze and a reminder of the season when I step into the shade. Last night it broke. I woke up in the early hours and through the open windows heard a sound outside that sounded vaguely familiar.
This morning’s partial rainbow 🌈
All I want for Christmas is the use of a remote cabin, half way up a mountain.
Give me the key, show me the way, and I’ll see you in the New Year.
Dying peony flowers.
Early morning sounds - birds singing, a machine tool running…silence. The sun rises on a new day.
Many years ago I remember reading an interview with a Western Buddhist monk. The monk was asked what he had got out of his years of meditation practice. I like the monk’s answer,
I know that I get angry.
Today I know that I was angry.
This evening was beautiful, crystal clear with hardly a breath of wind. A couple of friends dropped by to say “hello.” At sunset the conversation turned to what to do for dinner?
So while I lit a fire, everyone else got busy in the kitchen and concocted a meal from leftovers. Our dishes full, we sat round the fire eating, chatting and catching up. And there we stayed for long after our plates were empty, under a dark sky thickly dotted with stars.
A lovely, unplanned evening.
Setting the scene, from the garden.
A big “Thank you” to Andy Carolan for creating my seasonal owl avatar to take me through the holiday period…and maybe through the winter?
This is my third owl avatar. Two by Andy and one by heyheymomo.
Why owls? I lived in South Wales for just shy of two decades. While there I could hear owls calling out during the stillness of the night. Occasionally during the day I would catch a glimpse of a tawny owl sitting in a tree, or quietly in flight. On one lucky occasion I caught a tawny owl feeding its young in the hollow of an old apple tree.
Here on Maui I have seen Pueo, the short-eared owl that lives here in Hawaii.
Owls have felt like a silent presence in my life.
Wednesday, November 27, 2024 →
Well that figures, the Inbox of my Drafts app is currently sitting at 666 😈 and the app is playing difficult to get, alongside my phone stalking and jumping around. Hopefully this addition to the Inbox will resolve that issue…that or simply turning my phone off and back on! 🤨
Wednesday, November 27, 2024 →
🔪 Sharpening knives ready for tomorrow…and it was an overdue job anyway.
Monday, November 25, 2024
Hanging pictures is not my forte. They usually end up too low, too high or lopsided. That along with the copious, probably visible marks on the wall as I try and measure where to place the picture and too many holes as I make up for afore mentioned mistakes, usually sees my wife going in search of someone else if something needs hanging on a wall in our house. All of this left us in a quandary over a picture that had been lying around our Alcácer house for good while.
I keep playing Between Two Points from David Gilmour’s new album Luck & Strange. While it ends with a signature guitar solo from Gilmour, it is the beat of the song alongside the hauntingly beautiful voice of his daughter Romany Gilmore who sings, that draws me back.
Between Two Points was originally recorded by The Montgolfier Brothers, who I had never heard of. David Gilmour has kept with the spirit of the original, though it is his version that pulls me back again and again.