Sunday, December 6, 2009

What I've Been Up To

I'm still around, just have been so busy I sometimes can't tell which day it is.  I have so many pictures to share I hope it doesn't slow down the page load too much.

2 weeks ago we went to Saturday night vespers at St. Vladimir's Russian Orthodox Church.  It was a gorgeous church and a beautiful service with a bishop in attendance.  He's there in the center in black.
 
You can see the gorgeous iconostasis in this picture, I especially loved the carvings that set off the icons.  I've lightened the photos so you can see everything better, but this night service was done mostly by candlelight.
This is the Gospel being brought out.
This church has a beautiful golden onion dome on top, something you don't see very often on the smaller orthodox churches around here.  Because it was a hierarchical (hope I spelled that right) service with a bishop, the service was 3 hours long.  And even though I knew what the different parts were, I had no idea what was being said as 99% was in Slavonic and I only speak English. 
***


Here's my resident poet with my latest project.  I picked up some lovely grey wool at the charity shop for $2 and he requested a hat.  I never made one before and made it up as I went along, it didn't turn out too bad!  Good thing as I finished it the day this came...
That folks is snow on Dec 4th, 2009, late afternoon.  We are just north of Houston and in nearly 30 years I this is the 4th time I've seen snow, and it has never been this early.  So much for the global warming scam.
It won't look like much to anyone that gets a real winter, but it actually snowed enough overnight for kids to make snowmen, very small snowmen, before the sun came out the next morning and just like Frosty, it all melted away...
But the resident poet snapped quite a few pictures before that happened.

Sadly all the roses and other flowers are now shriveled and blackened.


But don't they look glorious covered in ice!

Click on the photos to see them larger for more detail.

This is the view through my bedroom window as I sat in my chair and watched the big fat flakes come down.
***
If it's snowing and cold where you are, curl up with a cup of cocoa or a bowl of chili like we did and enjoy watching God's painting of Winter.

4 comments:

Lord Wellbourne said...

Wish the pictures of St. Vladimir's came with sound--I'm sure the music was beautiful. Currier and Ives visited you!! How exciting. Looks like they're taking up permanent residence here.

June said...

How pretty that faint dusting of snow is on your flowers and through the window!
And how absolutely marvelous that it all went a-way!

Yoyo said...

What a beautiful church, and I too envy the missing music, I'll bet it was lovely. I do so miss the wonderful music we used to get all the time from church choirs. I love it when we get a lot of ice, our trees are just gorgeous, but, like you say, the flowers don't care for it much.

Love to have you in the Christmas Design SAL, and yes, pictures should be e-mailed to me. I hope you were only asking for an e-mail address and not "instructions" because I don't know what program you use to e-mail so can't tell you the "how". But if you do know the how, then the where is yoyo_9203 at yahoo dot com (notice the understroke in my username). See you on the first.
Hugs

Jean said...

likd color of d flowers

A smile from SJ =)

A Quilt Repair While I Was On Vacation

 I went to visit my parents for a month and while I was there I repaired a quilt. Sorry the image is not very good, it was taken with my pho...