Beatrix Potter's World via a Wonderful Book

I bought this book years ago. I have never stopped enjoying it. Like Tasha Tudor, who admired Beatrix Potter immensely, I too am inspired by this great soul. I hope you will enjoy some of the tidbits I've scanned to share with you on this beautiful day in January.

Her little doll house is so sweet. I wonder if Tasha's doll house wasn't inspired because of Beatrix's doll house. My scanner could not get the entire picture.

What a lovely staircase landing. I enjoy how she incorporated it into her stories.

There it is with the Mother cat standing regally in this lovely spot.

And again, with that old mouse striving to get the rolling pin to his destination.

The three little kittens and mother cat are certainly enjoying this lovely garden.

This is a picture of the actual garden depicted in the above scene.

Moss and Ivy

I just took these pictures from my balcony that is off of my "art room". It's the moss that intrigues me. Living in a rain forested area certainly is richly green all winter, unless we get a sprinkling of snow, of which we have had precious little this year. I've seen one small spray of snowflakes that didn't even stick.

I feed birds and squirrels in my basalt based yard. There is one little squirrel in a feeder right now. Normally there are at least a half dozen of them out and about.

The hummingbirds get fed close to the kitchen window. There is a family with a baby wherein I saw the mother coaxing it along as it cried. Have you ever heard a hummer cry? So cute! It makes a popping sound rather like when you do that thing with your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and then the little darling hummingbird winces a sad little cry. The mother was hovering about 10 feet into the sky. Baby is so happy in this yard, and it has its own feeder, because it alone uses the one in the middle.

The ivy takes over the yard, and now in the state of Oregon we're being implored to remove it as it is dangerous to our forests, but as my yard is not part of the forest, I allow for some of it to remain.

Incidentally, all of those bird houses were made long ago by the wonderful Ludmil Marcov of Willow Nest Farm.

A Poem About The Law of Attraction

I hold it true that thoughts are things;

They’re endowed with bodies and breath and wings;

And that we send them forth to fill

The world with good results or ill.

That which we call our secret thought

Speeds forth to earth’s remotest spot,

Leaving its blessings or its woes,

Like tracks behind it as it goes.

We build our future, thought by thought,

For good or ill, yet know it not,

Yet so the universe was wrought..

Thought is another name for fate;

Choose, then, the destiny and wait,

For love brings love and hate brings hate.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1850-1919

Imagination is Key

The following is something I just read in my copy of Law of Success by Napolean Hill, the 21^st century edition, revised and updated.

“The most inspiring poem in all literature was written by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859 while he was a poverty-stricken inmate in an English prison, where he had been unjustly confined because of his advanced views on politics. This poem is entitled “Abou Ben Adhem,“ and it is here reprinted as a reminder that one of the great things each of us may do, in our own imaginations, is to forgive those who have dealt unjustly with us:”

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace

And saw within the moonlight of his room,

Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold,

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said:

“What writest thou?” –the vision raised its head,

And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again, with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed.

And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!

"Civilization itself owes its existence to such poets as Leigh Hunt, in whose fertile Imaginations have been pictured the higher and nobler standards of human relationship. “Abou Ben Adhem” is a poem that will never die, thanks to this poet who pictured in his Imagination the hope of an ideal that is constructive.”

I quite agree with Mr. Hill.

Had to share.

Christine