Lyra’s Neighborhood

The grass is high, and the roses are full of thorns, so it's easier to walk down here by the water. The sound of the waves is really nice too.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
There's really nobody out here today. We'll go up the beach.





There is a little harbour with loads and loads of ships in it. It looks like a natural harbour... like a little cove with a few islands in it where the moorings are on the inside... but I suspect the sea-side is old manmade dikes.


There are loads of flowers in the tall grass we're walking through on the inside of the harbour.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The sun is low, the grass catches the last rays.
Hey, look at all those birds out in the harbour


Those are eiders... just one boy in black and white with a green mullet and loads and loads of girls... They should nest where polar bears roam.. but a few nest as far south as Denmark. There's a grebe and a tern in the background too. Oh yeah, and there's a somewhat largish  buoy.. with some birdshit on it...  That's the orange thingy.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
We're coming closer.
Have you seen it yet, what I found?
It's not the herefords although they're cute too. They are in the other field.



It's a Shaggy Coo!
Isn't it adorable... I didn't get any really good pictures because the light was failing me... but I'm so happy to know there are shaggy coos in the neighborhood.



It's getting dark now, we best be getting home before the mosquitoes come out... Did you bring repellant??  Oh, never mind they hardly ever bite.


   
 

Come visit my garden!

It's not a particularly interesting garden as SUCH, but I love it....

For several reasons.

The view over the sea first... but I'm having a hard time catching the view... it kinda gets too small in the pictures. So I'm still working on a good representation of the view.

 Zooming all the way out to the little sailboats gives a totally different picture.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

The garden has loads of birds. Nothing fancy or rare or anything, but lovely little guys who go about their daily business right in front of me...





.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

This little blackbird dude had just left the nest and hadn't quite realized that it's dangerous to sit around and scream for your parents in the middle of the lawn..
.
.
.

The guys below here are tits... and I have no idea how they earned that name in English... but they're awfully cute and they like cleaning out aphids from the trees.

But every once in a while the view from my garden is just magic....
It could be a rainbow... or a flying fishing boat..

Even strong fears can be overcome... for love - or the fear of being left upstairs... But there are limits, going down must be enough... there's NO WAY he'll ever go UP stairs...

There's also absolutely nothing wrong with a big strong cat having a very 'fine' voice... it just happens to be Urracá's natural miao is a few octaves higher than most other cats. Nothing wrong with that... but MOM please come down and get me.

Stairs are just too scary... He'd rather scale the wall if I didn't come down and carry his big self up the stairs...
- and there's NOTHING wrong with that

There's also nothing wrong with falling in love with the contents of a cardboard box! NO-no, absolutely nothing wrong with that.
and there's ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with ALWAYS having to move one's water dish before drinking from it.


It's just one of those cat-things humans don't understand

I never noticed the fine texture of kitty-noses before I zoomed all the way in with the camera

Isn't it amazing? both the bits with hairs and the bits without.

For nomdays, we recommend starting with something light like a delicious bit of succulent green grass:

This particular book has more stories than the one written on it's pages though.

When the second world war ended, my mother was 4 years old and had two younger sisters.
Denmark came through the war fairly unscathed. There was little resistance when we were occupied and the Germans tried to work with a reasonably intact Danish administration the first few years. The last year went less peaceful and there was a lot of sabotage, but the country was not carpet bombed like half of the rest of Europe. We had food to spare.

My mother's parents, a doctor and a nurse, signed up to get a concentration camp survivor and fatten him up before he returned to his own devastated region. 
They received a very young French resistance guy - barely more than a boy, skin and bones and so filthy that my Granny stripped him and scrubbed him before she let him loose in the house. (She was the strict kind of nurse.)

He stayed - I don't know how long - but several months with the family until he was fit to go home. My mum remembers him as a bit odd, but very sweet. He came back to visit later and brought her (and her sisters I guess) this copy of the book about the little bear Mitchi as a present. She kept it, and my father read it to me when I was little.

The Frenchman wasn't heard from in many years, and my family sometimes wondered what kind of life he had. Until one day - after my grandfather was dead and my grandmother was old and blind, she received a letter from him.
She didn't answer it - as far as I know, so all she found out is that he was still alive and wanted to thank the family that fattened him up once more.



The book about the little bear was published in 47 or 48 (it doesn't say).
I can't help thinking about how children in 48 would read it. Many of them probably had a much more realistic and personal angst of having their parents dragged away at night and never seeing them again...  Did it help them heal or did it give them more nightmares than they already had?

The thing I always consoled myself with, is that at the very beginning of the book the author says he's working on the next book where the little bear finds his mother again. I never saw the next book, but at least I know there IS a happy ending.

I took pictures of all the pages - so if you want to see the rest of the book just go through it in my photo gallery. If you click a few times on each page it gets big enough to read the text - which is in French of course... so that's only going to be of use to some of you.

(I probably told something wrong... but this is how I remember the story - my mum will correct my mistakes no doubt.)