Cozy Nights

cozyI love this illustration. It’s from the children’s book The Snatchabook, by Helen Docherty and Thomas Docherty, published in 2013.

It captures those magical possibilities that always delighted me as a child, when I’d imagine little homes in the woods where all the animals lived, snug and secure. In my mind’s eye there were tiny, warm beds covered in puffy patchwork quilts, and Mama animals of all sorts reading their babies bedtime stories in their cozy little rooms.

I’m ordering the book for my granddaughter, for when she’s older. Maybe her imagination will be sparked, too.

SnitzelAnother favorite – Mr. Snitzel’s Cookies by Jane Flory, for its magical elements of a never-ending supply of baking ingredients for cookies, cakes, and other delights, all earned from the simple act of being kind and offering a meal and a warm bed to a stranger in need.

November days like today – a little raw, gray, and rainy – bring out these nostalgic memories. I happen to enjoy this kind of day…much easier for me to get cozy in it, than in the blazing (though still beautiful) sun of summer. 🙂

How about you? Any favorite books from your childhood that sparked your imagination?

Rainy Day

image

Misty rain outside my window this morning

“The rain to the wind said,
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged–though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

                                                        ~Robert Frost

While poetry is not my usual choice of writing form (I tend to write too “long” to craft any good poems, LOL), I enjoy reading it…especially poems that evoke images, both sensory and emotional. Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets because he combines that with another of my great loves: Nature.

This poem seemed fitting to me today. I, too, know how the flowers felt, and yet there is something beautiful in that.

Without the more violent “pushing and pelting” in life, we would never fully appreciate our moments of sun-dappled peace.

Without the bitter we would never taste the sweet.