10 December 2023
December in sepia tones
I took these photos on December 10, 2007. Sixteen years ago... I was out in the vineyard behind our house on a walk with our dog of the time, Callie the border collie. My camera back then was a Panasonic Lumix TZ3. This is typical December weather called la grisaille here in Saint-Aignan. Compare today's pictures to the photos I posted yesterday, also taken on a December 10, but a few years earlier and with other cameras.
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Oooh, grey photos for a grey day. I hope some sun is heading your way :)
ReplyDeleteKen, I enambored your photography. You have a knack with a camera that I envy. I swear that my grandmother took better pictures with her old Ansco box camera back in the 1930', 40' and 50' than I ever have with an expensive modern digital. I love black and white photos. I have made an appointmen with a photography studio to have an "official" photograph portrait of myself for posterity.
ReplyDeleteI have loved your home since the first time I saw it when browsing blogs years ago. I think I comment this more than several times over the years. I was looking at a previous blog and there was a picture of your garden path and the hedge. That old hedge has certainly held up over the years. I had an expensive to maintain hornbeam hedge that I took great pride in maintaining. I was obsessed with it and one extremely hot summer took it's toll on the hedge and it died over a matter of about ten months. The neighbors old privet made up of volunteers from a single shrub they had purchased at a discount store just kept on growing. Your hedge is mighty hardy. The garden path has held up well since you had it graded and gravel gone over. It looks fantastic.
I suffer with SAD. It has been a gray autumn here in Oxford, Ohio and not many bright sunshiney days. I feel what you feel and express here in your blogs. I found that there isn't anything you can do about getting old especially when you have been as active as you and I have been all our lives. I tell my physcologist that I am in morning for my youth and midlife and I just can't bear to accept OLD AGE. I will be 71 on December 29th but still think I am maybe 50 at most. Even though I live in a university town with 20 plus thousand students that surround me in this two mile square community I am missing being with people. My health does not allow me to get out amongst the populace and my dclining health no longer allows me to garden. My main problem after my declining health is isolation. It takes a better person than me to overcome being isolated. I love people and being out and doing things on a regular basis. That has all been taken away from me. My gerontologist advised me to visit our local senior center a few times a month or to sign up and teach a course in the local university's Learning in Retirement program. That is easily suggested by the young whipper-snapper gerontologist but it isn't easy. You all love to cook and so do I. I find that I have to prep for the meal a day in advance and prepare and cook the meal the next. What is so frustrating is that I may not be able to eat a portion of the meal until the next day because I am exhausted by all the effort I have put forth. The silver lining is of course that I have three or four portions that I freeze for later in the month. So we have to adapt and don't give in. We just have to accept an abreviated lifestyle that we fit into and can work with. I am not a fast food type of guy. Nor am I a lie around the house all day sort of person either. I am learning to accept my fate as an elder person but I haven't much patience for others like me. I do however enjoy your blog and Walt's and the comments of those who follow you. Your subject matter causes me to go and investigate online some of the things you talk about. Give purpose to my day.
Sorry for the rambling on and hope it didn't bore you too much. I enjoyed it if no one else did. LOL. I would like everyone to be safe, to be very, very careful, and to be HAPPY! So sayeth Woody in Ohio
Thanks for your observations on SAD and aging, Woody. I'm feeling much of what you are at 78 although I'm not as isolated. The energy depletion is such an aggravation, but at least we have more time now. I wish I was in a situation to cook good food like you, Ken and Walt do. I visit some elderly women every month and find a lot of strength and wisdom in their stories. I would advice a connection with a few savvy Seniors if you can find them (they are cloaked in the disguise of old age but they are true blessings for people like us who are beginning to wonder where our paths will lead us).
DeleteI mentioned having SAD the other day to some new friends. I could tell they don't understand such a thing at the "happiest time of the year". Better off just getting through this and having empathy for one another. We care. We can always come here and enjoy some France.