Winter days & an Energy Bar recipe

It's winter here down under in Western Australia. We had a slow start to winter this year. It was only a couple of months ago in June that I was rejoicing that the rain, and winter, had finally arrived and I celebrated by bringing you a soup recipe - you can see it here if you missed it - Winter Warmers

Since then we have had a very wet July and the start of August has been much the same. We had a rain front cross the coast on Friday night, and another one is due on Sunday.  In winter many of us hibernate, so it feels good to get out when we have some sunshine, or to meet up with a friend in a cafe.  

Too cold to sit here on the waterfront.....

Allowing time to sit in my winter garden

One of my favourite poems as a teenager in high school was this one by TS Eliot. The words easily conjure up the pictures in my mind. See if you can see the pictures too.

Prelude

The winter evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots;
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

I can't bring you images of gusty showers, chimney-pots, and lonely cab-horses, but I can bring you withered leaves and a few images from my winter garden. 

The rain has come!

Finally after 72 days without rain - and drought conditions in our south west corner of Western Australia  - during last night we heard rain on the roof! What a sweet sound it was. Throughout the day we had showers, interspersed with sunny skys. It has been a long hot dry summer and the rain has freshened everything. I ran outside with my camera this morning before work and took a few photos of the raindrops on my roses.

and leaves......

and in my lunch-hour I drove to the beach and sat in the car and watched the rain......

 

I picked up a little book of quotes, called "Enjoy the Journey", in a cafe in town today - here is one of them. We are going through a difficult time at the moment and this quote was a gentle reminder to cherish every moment - as it is all part of the "tissue" of life.

"Savor"

Life, we learn too late,

is in the living,

the tissue of every day and hour.

 by Stephen B Leacooke