Occasion

National Doughnut Day, held the first Friday of June each year, was originally established in 1938 by the Chicago Salvation Army

National Doughnut Day, established to honor women who served donuts to soldiers during World War I

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
Oscar Wilde

{ 0 comments }

Victoria Day is set to honor both Queen Victoria’s birthday and the current reigning sovereign’s official birthday.

The past cannot be cured.
Elizabeth I

The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, God save the Queen; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister.
Winston Churchill

It is as queen of Canada that I am here. Queen of Canada and all Canadians, not just one or two ancestral strains.
Elizabeth II

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
Queen Victoria

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.
Queen Victoria

Although a madman, Norton wrote letters to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria which they took seriously.
Kerry Thornley

God bless America. God save the Queen. God defend New Zealand and thank Christ for Australia.
Russell Crowe

I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman.
Elizabeth I

And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
Erasmus Darwin

Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus going into downtown Wilmington, North Carolina.
Althea Gibson

{ 0 comments }

Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.
Phyllis McGinley

Shirley MacLaine said, You’re so funny, then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see. I thought I was going to pass out.
Lisa Kudrow

A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world.
Charley Pride

Hug the shore; let others try the deep.
Virgil

I want to make wines that harmonize with food – wines that almost hug your tongue with gentleness.
Robert Mondavi

The decisions that Ellen made on her show were between her and her producers. I supported her decisions. I was there to hug her when she got home.
Anne Heche

Where I live if someone gives you a hug it’s from the heart.
Steve Irwin

And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That’s important to me too.
Jim Valvano

Did you know that, if you visualise, you can actually hug on the phone?
Shelley Long

Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?
Desiderius Erasmus

HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven knows they need it.
Princess Diana

If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you.
Peter Marshall

I wish I could just hug you all, but I’m not gonna.
Layne Staley

Like you and your woman ain’t gettin’ along and you’re in love. You can’t sleep at nights. Your mind is on her – on whatever. You know, that’s the blues. You can’t hug that money at night. You can’t kiss it.
John Lee Hooker

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.
Edward Hoagland

Again, I find it difficult to be taken care of and rarely acknowledge it, and every act he does registers, but I also just need to verbally acknowledge him and hug him.
Patricia Heaton

Now I know why guys like to hug girls. You guys just want to cop a feel. I can’t believe that I’ve fallen for it all these years!
Sherilyn Fenn

Once the bear’s hug has got you, it is apt to be for keeps.
Harold MacMillan

I will not play tug o’ war. I’d rather play hug o’ war. Where everyone hugs instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, and everyone grins, and everyone cuddles, and everyone wins.
Shel Silverstein

A hug is like a boomerang – you get it back right away.
Bil Keane

{ 0 comments }

“What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worth while,
So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.
George Asaf

“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”
Richard Bach.

“Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.”
Mildred Barthel.

“Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor…”
Henry Ward Beecher

If my heart can become pure and simple, like that of a child, I think there probably can be no greater happiness than this.
Kitaro Nishida

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

{ 0 comments }

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
John Muir

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Henry David Thoreau

It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the nation’s need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.
Theodore Roosevelt

The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the beautiful, and the ennobling in man, and for one, I wish to see it become universal.
Julius Sterling Morton

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau

{ 0 comments }

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams…. Man… is above all the plaything of his memory.
Andre Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism,” 1924

A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
Erich Fromm (Thanks, Sarah)

Dreams are free therapy. Consult your inner Freud.
Grey Livingston

Dreams are free therapy, but you can only get appointments at night.
Grey Livingston

Some colors exist in dreams that are not present in the waking spectrum.
Terri Guillemets

The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.
Ashleigh Brilliant

Dreams are nature’s answering service – don’t forget to pick up your messages once in a while.
Sarah Crestinn

Codi: “So you think we all just have animal dreams. We can’t think of anything to dream except our ordinary lives.”
Loyd: “Only if you have an ordinary life. If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.”
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Dreams are road signs along the nighttime highway of sleep.
Astrid Alauda, Dyspeptic Enlightenment

We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams… we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake.
Erich Fromm

For a dreamer, night’s the only time of day.
From the movie Newsies

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1580

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.
H.F. Hedge

Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask.
X-Files

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Elias Canetti

Dreams are only thoughts you didn’t have time to think about during the day.
Author Unknown

A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.
The Talmud

Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.
Marsha Norman

A dream has power to poison sleep.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mutability”

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
William Dement

Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.
Edgar Cayce

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy”

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.
Henri Amiel

There’s a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams.
Stoddard King, Jr.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.
E.M. Cioran, The Tempation to Exist

Dreams digest the meals that are our days.
Astrid Alauda, Dyspeptic Enlightenment

Pay attention to your dreams – God’s angels often speak directly to our hearts when we are asleep.
Quoted in The Angels’ Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.
Evelyn Waugh

Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language.
Gail Godwin

That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it…. We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.
Paracelsus, quoted in The Dream Game

Huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were trouble to my dreams.
Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence

Recall the old story of the rather refined young man who preferred sex dreams to visiting brothels because he met a much nicer type of girl that way.
Vivian Mercer

Dreams are free, so free your dreams.
Astrid Alauda

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can play together all night.
Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

For dhrames always go by conthraries, my dear.
Samuel Lover, Rory O’ More

In a dream you are never eighty.
Anne Sexton

In dreams, we enter a world that’s entirely our own.
Steven Kloves, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (movie)

{ 0 comments }

That city will come back,
Mardi Gras

It was good because I got some beads,
Mardi Gras

[Before he left New Orleans, the 2004 Masters champion landed yet another of those] opportunities … On a bad day we get a half million or three quarters of a million people. On a good day, with someone like Phil Mickelson leading the parade, it’s more like a million.
Mardi Gras

Please, mister! Please, mister!
Mardi Gras

N’Awlinz: Dis, Dat or d’Udda.
Mardi Gras

That was a prison.
Mardi Gras

Really the soul of the city is what people are trying to get back to. Its not a structure. Its not a street name. Its what we know as New Orleans. And what we can feel when we get together.
Mardi Gras

Everything down there is in perfect working order I can assure you of that!
Mardi Gras

If we can do this, it says we’re back.
Mardi Gras

{ 0 comments }

Famous people who agree with Saint David from Wales

A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.
Dante Alighieri

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
Johann Schiller

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Antonio Smith

Do little things now; so shall big things come to thee by and by asking to be done.
Persian proverb

Someone once said, ‘God is simple, all else is complex.’ The more attuned you become to God, the simpler and more beautiful your life becomes.
John Harricharan

I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.
Robert Brault

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Morrie Schwartz

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Yes, I do touch. I believe that everyone needs that…
Princess of Wales Diana

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
Mother Teresa

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou

Small kindnesses, small courtesies, small considerations, habitually practiced in our social intercourse, give a greater charm to the character than the display of great talents and accomplishments.
Mary Ann Kelty

Little by little does the trick.
Aesop

Wellbeing is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.
Citium Zeno

{ 0 comments }

“There is nothing here
except the constant, looping clicks and caws
of birds, lost in trees erased by white.
My sight condensed
by each fresh, foggy breath,
a hanging depth
my head sinks through.
Nothing here
but mulching steps,
the soft snap of twigs long soaking,
the sticky sound
of car tire on wet road.

I am drenched
by a sudden gang-up of water,
a brief yawn of thunder far away.
There is nothing here
and I am all wet.”
John Goss, Fog

“Was it the smile of early spring
That made my bosom glow?
‘Twas sweet, but neither sun nor wind
Could raise my spirit so.

Was it some feeling of delight,
All vague and undefined?
No, ’twas a rapture deep and strong,
Expanding in the mind!”
Anne Bronte, In Memory of A Happy Day in February

“Grave stone
Wearing a rosary
Christmas!

Colour purple
Dream burning,
February’s sea.”
Sadayo Takizawa, Winter

“Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do – or because you can now and then permit
yourself the luxury of thinking so.”
Stanley Crawford

“Falling and rising – spheres of blackbirds.
Coming and going – lines of geese.”
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

“Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.”
Bill Morgan, Jr.

“February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back
any air of summer.”
Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons

“In tangled wreath, in clustered gleaming stars,
In floating, curling sprays,
The golden flower comes shining though the woods
These February days;
Forth go all hearts, all hands, from out the town,
To bring her gayly in,
This wild, sweet Princess of far Florida -
The yellow jessamine.”
Constance Fenimore Woolson, Yellow Jessamine

“Winter teaches us about detachment, numbness. But it’s a way to get through.
From winter we learn silence and acceptance and the stillness thickens.”
Gail Barison, The Winter Solstice of my Soul

“February makes a bridge and March breaks it.”
George Hebert

“There is a privacy about winter which no other season gives you … Only in winter…can you have longer,
quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
Ruth Stout, How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back

“Winter is a time of promise because there is so little to do, or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.”
Stanley Crawford

“Dead of winter.
Cold hands warm heart.
As pure as snow.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
Left out in the cold.”
Clichés for Gardeners

“Candlemas’ is the Christianized name for the holiday, of course. The older Pagan names were Imbolc and Oimelc. ‘Imbolc’ means, literally, ‘in the belly’ (of the Mother). For in the womb of Mother Earth, hidden from our mundane sight but sensed by a keener vision, there are stirrings. The seed that was planted in her womb at the solstice is quickening and the new year grows. ‘Oimelc’ means ‘milk of ewes’, for it is also lambing season. The holiday is also called ‘Brigit’s Day’, in honor of the great Irish Goddess Brigit. At her shrine, the ancient Irish capitol of Kildare, a group of 19 priestesses (no men allowed) kept a perpetual flame burning in her honor. She was considered a goddess of fire, patroness of smithcraft, poetry and healing (especially the healing touch of midwifery).”
Daven’s Journal – Imbolic

“Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“Come when the rains
Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,
While the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering.”
William Cullen Bryant, A Winter Piece

“The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.”
William C. Bryant

“February, fill the dyke with what thou dost like.”
Thomas Tusser

“Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Snowflakes

“Valentine’s Day is most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of “valentines.” Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards. The mid-nineteenth century Valentine’s Day trade was a harbinger of further commercialized holidays in the United States to follow. The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.”
Valentine’s Day – Wikipedia

“Tinsel in February, tinsel in August.
There are things in a man besides his reason.”
Wallace Stevens

“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you ….. In spring, summer and fall people sort of
have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches
when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
Ruth Stout

“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
Joseph Wood Krutch

“And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp
and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms . . . For summer being done, all things stand upon them
with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a
wild and savage hue.”
William Bradford, Plytmouth Plantation, 1640

“I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.
There was not other creature
That saw what I could see,
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.”
Sara Teasdale, February Twilight

“January gray is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps—but, O ye hours!
Follow with May’s fairest flowers.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dirge for the Year

“Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
February has twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one;
Excepting leap year, that ‘s the time
When February’s days are twenty-nine.”

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
William Blake

“There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the
still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig,
is clad with radiance.”
William Sharp

“The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a
milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way
no other season did, hushed, solemn.”
Patricia Hampl

“Dead of winter.
Cold hands warm heart.
As pure as snow.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
Left out in the cold.”
Clichés for Gardeners

“Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that
Winter’s woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air.”
William Morris

“When daffodils begin to peer,
With the heigh! the doxy over the dale,
When, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.”
William Shakespeare

“We may owe our observance of Valentine’s Day to the Roman celebration of Lupercalia, a festival of
eroticism that honored Juno Februata, the goddess of “feverish” (febris) love. Annually, on the ides
of February, love notes or “billets” would be drawn to partner men and women for feasting
and sexual game playing.”
Saint Valentine’s Day

“The February born will find
Sincerity and peace of mind;
Freedom from passion and from care,
If they the Pearl (also green Amethyst) will wear.”

“In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood had as iron,
Water like a stone,
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.”
Christina Rossetti

“I’m a little groundhog, it’s my day.
Wake and stretch, go out and play.
Down in my burrow, down so deep,
Time to wake, from my long winter’s sleep.

Grumble, grumble, scratch, scratch,
Grunt, grunt, yawn.
I’ll eat my breakfast in your front lawn.
I’m a little groundhog, it’s my day.
Wake up and stretch, go out and play.’
Author Unknown

“Probably more pests can be controlled in an armchair in front of a February fire with a garden notebook
and a seed catalog that can ever be knocked out in hand-to-hand combat in the garden.”
Neely Turner

“Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.”
Matsuo Basho

“Valentine’s Day is thought to have evolved from a spring holiday celebrated in the days of ancient Rome. The feast of Lupercalia was actually celebrated on February 15 and honored the god Lupercus, who protected the people and their herds from wolves. On this day, dances were held for all the single young men and women. A man would draw his partner’s name from a piece of papyrus placed in a bowl. The man not only danced with his partner but was also obligated to protect her throughout the new year, which began in March. In many cases, the partners became sweethearts and were soon married. When the tradition of these dances was later revived in the Middle Ages, a man would wear his sweetheart’s name on his sleeve. Even today we refer to someone quick to show feeling as “wearing his heart on his sleeve.”"
Valentine’s Day Legends

“A melancholy mantle rests
Upon the land; the sea.
The wind in tristful cadence moans
A mournful threnody.
There flits no gleeful insect,
No blithesome bee nor bird;
0′er all the vast of Nature
No joyful sound is heard.
In garments sere and somber
Each, vine and tree is clad:
It’s dreary-hearted winter,
And all the earth is sad.”
Hazel Dell Crandall, The Lilt o’ the Year

“There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.”
Kathleen Norris

“The season’s anguish, crashing whirlwind, ice,
Have passed, and cleansed the trodden paths,
That silent gardeners have strewn with ash.

The iron circles of the sky,
Are worn away by tempest;
Yet in this garden there is no more strife:
The Winter’s knife is buried in the earth.
Pure music is the cry that tears
The birdless branches in the wind.
No blossom is reborn. The blue
Stare of the pond is blind.

And no one sees
A restless stranger through the morning stray
Across the sodden lawn, whose eyes
Are tired of weeping, in whose breast
A savage sun consumes its hidden day.”
David Gascoyne, Winter Garden

“Loud are the thunder drums in the tents of the mountains.
Oh, long, long
Have we eaten chia seeds
and dried deer’s flesh of the summer killing.
We are tired of our huts
and the smoky smell of our clothing.

We are sick with the desire for the sun
And the grass on the mountain.”
Paiute Late Winter Song

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and
for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
Edith Sitwell

“February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so
that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and
cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.”
Anna Quindlen, One True Thing

“Keep your faith in beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.”
Roy R. Gibson

“Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;
A poet’s face asleep in this grey morn.
Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
A mystic child is set in these still hours.
I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn.”
Alice Meynell, In February

“The word February is believed to have derived from the name ‘Februa’ taken from the Roman
‘Festival of Purification’. The root ‘februo’ meaning to ‘I purify by sacrifice’. As part of the seasonal
calendar February is the time of the ‘Ice Moon’ according to Pagan beliefs, and the period described
as the ‘Moon of the Dark Red Calf’ by Black Elk. February has also been known as ‘Sprout-kale’
by the Anglo-Saxons in relation to the time the kale and cabbage was edible.”
Mystical WWW

“Late February, and the air’s so balmy snowdrops and crocuses might be fooled into early blooming.
Then, the inevitable blizzard will come, blighting our harbingers of spring, and the numbed yards will
go back undercover. In Florida, it’s strawberry season— shortcake, waffles, berries and cream will
be penciled on the coffeeshop menus.”
Gail Mazur, The Idea of Florida During a Winter Thaw

“Away in a meadow all covered with snow
The little old groundhog looks for his shadow
The clouds in the sky determine our fate
If winter will leave us all early or late.”
Don Halley

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the withered air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, and housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.”
Gertrude S. Wister

“Surely as cometh the Winter, I know
There are Spring violets under the snow.”
R. H. Newell

“Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year’s ill,
And prayer to purify the new year’s will.”
Helen Hunt Jackson, A Calendar of Sonnet’s: February

“Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are are then prepared to ignore them
until the spring. I am quite sure that a garden doesn’t like to be ignored like this. It doesn’t like to be
covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially
since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter,
if you only give it a chance.”
Beverley Nichols

“If apples were pears
And peaches were plums
And the rose had a different name.
If tigers were bears
And fingers were thumbs
I’d love you just the same.”
Valentine’s Day Songs and Poems

“Wishing and wanting
to see you,
I step on thin ice.”
Madoka Mayuzumi

“February is merely as long as is needed to pass the time until March.”
Dr. J. R. Stockton

“Awakening,
I hear the truth–
grey rain on clay.”
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

“Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle … a seed waiting to sprout, a
bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.”
Barbara Winkler

“The birds are gone, The ground is white,
The winds are wild, They chill and bite;
The ground is thick with slush and sleet,
And I barely feel my feet.”
Winter Poems

“Standing in a valley,
With the mist coming in,
Berries grow on the holly bushes.
Robins hide in snow-ridden woods.
If I could stay here, I would.”
Bethan Williams

“O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth.”
John Davies, 1570-1626, Ode to the West Wind.

“Go to the winter woods: listen there, look, watch, and “the dead months” will give you a subtler
secret than any you have yet found in the forest.”
Fiona Macleod, Where the Forest Murmurs

“Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey,
and enjoy every idle hour.”
John Boswell

“From December to March, there are for many of
us three gardens:
the garden outdoors,
the garden of pots and bowls in the house,
and the garden of the mind’s eye.”
Katherine S. White

“He knows no winter, he who loves the soil,
For, stormy days, when he is free from toil,
He plans his summer crops, selects his seeds
From bright-paged catalogues for garden needs.
When looking out upon frost-silvered fields,
He visualizes autumn’s golden yields;
He sees in snow and sleet and icy rain
Precious moisture for his early grain;
He hears spring-heralds in the storm’s ‘ turmoil­
He knows no winter, he who loves the soil.”
Sudie Stuart Hager, He Knows No Winter

“Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.”"
Robert Byrne

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”
Pietro Aretino

“The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.”
Anne Bradstreet

“The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Afternoon in February

“Gung Hay Fat Choy!”
In China, every girl and boy
Celebrates the New Year
in a very special way -
With fireworks and dragons,
colored red and gold -
They welcome in the new year
and chase away the old!
Helen H. Moore

“I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see–
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.”
Sara Teasdale, February Twilight

“Nature has undoubtedly mastered the art of winter gardening and even the most experienced
gardener can learn from the unrestrained beauty around them.”
Vincent A. Simeone

“Freezing
cold winds,
biting chills, and
white snow fluffed hills
Valentines day, oh how gay!
presidents’ day is coming our way.
February, sweet and small, greatest month of all.”
Eric Lies, 28 Word Poem for February

“Winter dies into the spring, to be born again in the autumn.”
Marche Blumenberg

“Wan February with weeping cheer,
Whose cold hand guides the youngling year
Down misty roads of mire and rime,
Before thy pale and fitful face
The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace
Through skies the morning scarce may climb.
Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,
But lit with hopes that light the year’s.”
Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Year’s Carols: February

{ 0 comments }

If you catch me saying ‘I am a serious actor,’ I beg you to slap me.
Johnny Depp

Never slap a man who chews tobacco.
Willard Scott

I know that. I’m having a ball. I’m not slap happy. I’m just filled up with joy and with peace and with all kinds of things that have eluded me for quite a few years. And they’re back and they’re thriving.
Liza Minnelli

Sometimes those fears creep into the back of your head, but then you slap yourself and think, ‘Oh, woe is me! People actually like me.’ What a silly thing to worry about. This is a huge opportunity, and I’m excited.
Ben McKenzie

I like America anyway. In Japan we are much more formal. If two friends are separated for a long time and they meet they bow and bow and bow. They keep bowing without exchanging a word. Here they slap each other on the back and say: Hello, old man, how goes everything.
Sessue Hayakawa

I think I’m the only actor in the history of film who got to slap Sam Jackson on the face and butt and lived to tell about it.
Eugene Levy

I’ll take anything and slap it on a canvas.
Matthew Lawrence

The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It’s constantly stimulating, it’s like a slap in the face.
Carter Burwell

I just did an ad with Microsoft. I’m dressed as Napoleon, and I get to slap Bill Gates.
Jon Heder

I’ll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I’ve been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it’s – it’s – and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven’t been successful at it every day.
Mel Gibson

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.
Katharine Hepburn

I’m shy and can’t for the life of me barge around and slap people on the back. I sit in a corner by myself and am tickled to death when someone comes over to talk to me.
Alan Ladd

You don’t know who you messing with man, I slap people for fun. That’s what I do man! You wanna play rough, huh, I kill for fun!
Chris Tucker

Actually, my favourite roles have been in theatre, but on TV, my faves were Slap Maxwell and Larry Sanders.
Megan Gallagher

And before I’d got to the end of the first paragraph, I’d come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it’s this: where am I telling it from?
Philip Pullman

I began imagining scenes in public which some drunk would come up to me and slap me in the face. Nothing like that ever happened, but I often wonder if I would have turned the other cheek.
Max von Sydow

I don’t think I’ll have to kill her. Just slap that pretty face into hamburger meat, that’s all.
Sterling Hayden

{ 0 comments }

May Lord shiva bless you and your family/ May happiness surround your environment. Happy Maha Shivratree.

Show your blessing and love your elders on this auspicious day of Maha Shivratree.

Start the day by saying bam bam bhole. Happy Maha Shivratree.

Shivratree blessing to you and your family. May Lord Shiva bless you with good health.

For more of our Maha Shivratri related posts, check here.

Today is the auspicious day of Lord Shiva. Celebrate it with joy of heart and help people understand the values of Lord Shiva.

Shivratri ke is pawan parv par safalta ka damru sadev aapke oopar bajta rehe.

May Lord Shiva shower his benign blessings on you and your family. May happiness and peace surround you with his eternal love and strength.

JAI SHIV SHANKAR BHOLENATH!!!
Bless us with the happy & peaceful life with noble wisdom. May there be peace in every home!!!

Happy Shivratri!! May Shivji shower his blessings on both of you. Shaan hope you meet your life partner soon and have a happy life.

Ram Ram from the island paradise of Fiji known as Ramnik Dweep in Bhagwat scriptures. I wish all Hindu brothers and sisters worldwide a happy and blessed Mahashivratri
Jay Shiv Shankar

May Lord Shiva shower blessings on all and give power and strength to everyone facing difficulties in there lives.

Shivratri ke is utsav par Bhagwan Shiv aur maa Shakti is kripa aap sab par bane rahe.

Wishing you all a very happy Mahahivrati. God bless you all with lots and lots of happiness, your wishes will be accomplished. Om Namah Shivaya..

Jai Bhole Shankar Ki to all people of our beautiful Fiji Islands. On this auspicious festival of Shivratri, I, on behalf of my organisation would like to wish all Sanatanis a very happy Shivratri and may Lord Shiva and Mata Parvati shower their blessings to everyone. May this festival be a purposeful one to everybody.

Happy Shivaratri to all in advance.

Happy Shivaratri to all. Bhagwan Bholenath, I pray to you for all the people in this world. Please give everyone happiness, peace and lots of smiles. This is my prayer for today. Om Namah Shivaaye!!

Show your blessings and love on elders, children and your beloved on the auspicious occasion of Mahashivartri.

Shivratri blessings to you and your family. May the almighty Lord Shiva bless you all with good things and perfect health.
God Bless

OM NAMAH SHIVAYE
Lord shiv please give your blessings to my family and especially to Arjun and me. I really love him. I don’t know why is he treating me insensitively. I hope this Shivratri, things turn out to be perfect between me and Arjun. I will also keep a fast on Shivratri. Let us be the ideal couple like Shiv and Parvati. Make him come back and marry me.

Wish you all a very Happy Shivratri.
“Krinvanto Vishvam Aryam” the ved mantra which means “sare vishv ko arya bana do arthat sreshth bana do.

On the occasion of Mahashivratri I pray that God bless us always. I keep fast on that day and I pray that God give me what I want.
Happy Shivratri.

On the occasion of Mahashivaratri, I pray to Lord Shiva that His blessings may always be with you.

May Lord Shiva grant you a handsome and decent match this year and may you live happily always.
Love,

On this Maha Shivratree night may all your wishes come true.

Anger he is, love he is, destructor he is and creator he is. Say bam bam bole.

We are only mere puppets in Shiva hands.

Let us celebrate the Maha Shivratree night. The night of Shiva-Parvati union. The night of destruction and the night of creation. The night of the Lord of lords.

We saw his anger, we saw his fury, we saw his restlessness and maha shivratree night calmed him down.

Celebrate the auspicious moonless night of Maha shivratree in Shiva name.

Maha Shivratree is the dark night which will bring a new dawn.

Krinvanto Visham Aryam. Wishing you a happy Maha Shivratree

On this occasion of Maha Shivratree. May Shiva bless you.

On the occasion of Maha Shivratree, we pray to Lord Shiva that his blessing may always be with you.

May lord Shiva grant you with generosity and patience.

Today is the auspicious day of Lord Shiva. Celebrate it with a clean heart. Happy maha shivratree.

{ 0 comments }