These are the replies Fred received from his true love, when he actually sent her the gifts of the 12 days of Christmas: Miss Sara TrueloveSomewhere, UKDecember 26 Dearest Fred: I went to the door today and the postman delivered a partridge in a pear tree. What a wonderful thoughtful gift! I couldn't have been […]
The Holidays are here, and most of us are getting ready to deck the halls in one way or another. Before you pull out the tinsel and tree, take a couple of hours to make some quick changes to update your rooms, and provide a great background for your Christmas and holiday trimmings.
Think of decorating for the holidays as making a cake. Before you get to the icing, you need to have a good foundation. Then you add the filling, and lastly comes the decoration on top! Here are ideas for all three!
Edited by Lynne Hand
Many flowers have important symbolic meanings in Western culture, and the practice of assigning meanings to flowers is known as floriography. For example, red roses are often regarded as a symbol of love, beauty, and passion. Lilies are used in burials as a symbol referring to "resurrection/life". They are also associated with stars or the sun, with the petals blooming or shining.
Red poppies are a symbol of consolation in time of death, they are worn to commemorate soldiers who have died in times of war. In the UK in November you will see many people wearing artificial poppies on their clothes, they are also worn in New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
I bought a beautifully illustrated book of poetry at a charity sale today. It has lots of the classics as well as some I’ve never seen before. Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ for instance , which I remember hearing at school. I wonder if the teacher would have read it to us if he had known that it was composed during a drug induced delirium?
I loved it for its sounds, even when I did not understand the language, nor did I know where Xanadu was or what a zither sounded like.