Heartfelt Wishes

I'm still feeling a bit "lost in time", after weeks of rather monotonous winter weather.

For some reason (or rather - no reason), I've been thinking all week that on Friday it will be Valentine's Day - here in Sweden known  as Alla Hjärtans Dag = All Hearts' Day" ... Only to suddenly realise, just as I started preparing this post today, that no, that's not until Saturday!

But I decided to go ahead and post this for Friday anyway. Who knows - the need for some extra heartfelt good wishes might perhaps be even bigger on Friday the 13th...!  

I've never really been in the habit of doing a lot extra of decorations especially for All Hearts' Day.  But I put a table runner with embroidered hearts on the living room table...

   

... and hung some red hearts on the branches in the vase on the old chest in the same room. 

That vase, by the way, is really just plain brown, but in the photo below it has been given an interesting striped pattern by the sun shining in through the blinds in the window! Which just goes to show that there's always something new to discover, if one looks hard enough.

 

And on that note, I wish you good luck both for the 13th and the 14th. 
And keep your hearts as well as your eyes open to notice the details around you!

 (Owl copied from some website with free images.)

The Blue Bird

 "The Bluebird of Happiness" seems to be a wide-spread symbol across several cultures, representing "hope, love, renewal, and the beauty of life". References to it can be found in old mythology and folklore from various corners of the world, as well as in modern popular culture. 

 

This little blue glass bird used to belong to my paternal grandmother. I remember it sitting in one of the windows of her glazed veranda. Nowadays it lives in my bedroom window. 

In Maurice Maeterlinck's 1908 stage play named The Blue Bird, two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, are sent out by the fairy Bérylune to search for the Bluebird of Happiness. Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their house all along and they create great happiness for another by giving their pet bird to the sick neighbor child. (Source: Wikipedia)

Homefront Sleuths Mysteries - (Audio) Book Reviews

 

 

The Blackout Murders
(The Homefront Sleuths Cozy Mystery Series, Book 1)

By Anna Elliott, Charles Veley
Narrated by Iona Campbell

England, 1941. The tranquil village of Crofter’s Green seems like a haven from the chaos of wartime. But when a local air raid warden is found dead in the village churchyard, five villagers decide they need to uncover the truth:

Evie Harris, recently widowed, is new in the village, where she is opening a tea shop (in spite of the difficulty of finding ingredients in wartime).
Dorothy Baker is a young mother who is helping her 
Alice Greenleaf, the village herbalist.
Blake Collins, a schoolteacher, wounded in the war (and with a talent to see patterns that others might miss).
Harry Jenkins, a retired detective. 

 

(The setup of characters reminds me a bit of "The Thursday Murder Club" which I watched as film some time around Christmas, and then also listened to as audio book - but found my impressions of the two clashing a bit in my head, so did not get round to writing a review.)

 

As I'd never heard of this book/series before, and it was included for free, I didn't expect all that much from it. But I found it entertaining enough to keep me company through the first week of my recent cold - even if I also frequently kept dozing off to it, so for that reason did not find it all easy to keep track of all details. 

 

And when I had finished the first, the next one in the series turned up for me as well - so why not continue...

 

 

 

The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor 

(The Homefront Sleuths Cozy Mystery Series, Book 2)

By Anna Elliott, Charles Veley
Narrated by Iona Campbell 

 

"England, 1941: Evie Harris doesn’t believe in ghosts—not even when she spots a glowing figure outside her bedroom window in the quiet village of Crofter’s Green. But when the same eerie spectre is seen by Lord Hawthorne, tied to a long-buried family scandal, even Evie starts to wonder if the past is haunting Hawthorne Manor.

Before she can investigate, Lord Hawthorne is found dead at the bottom of his grand staircase. An accident? Not likely. When the glowing figure begins tormenting Lady Gwendolyn, Evie rallies the Homefront Sleuths to unravel the manor’s secrets.

As the sleuths dig deeper, the twists keep coming:

    A furious daughter returns for the reading of the will.
    Priceless antiques vanish from the estate.
    And Lady Gwendolyn’s strange behavior hints at dangers far beyond ghostly hauntings.

With hidden passageways, family feuds, and wartime schemes at every turn, the sleuths must race to uncover the truth. Is the danger truly from the dead—or the living?"¨

(Just quoting the Audible presentation in full with this one.)

Having got to know the characters a bit better now, I think I'll also continue with No 3 in the series - which also automatically popped up as soon I had finished No 2...

 

 

 

For those who prefer reading with the eyes rather than listening, I see that the books are also available for Kindle at rather reasonable prices.

Following the Tracks

 

The combination of winter sun and freshly fallen snow does often tempt me to go out for a little while, even if at present I prefer not to stray very far from home. It was on Friday that it snowed all day. By now (Monday) it's obvious that where no official paths have been  cleared, people still make their own... Like across the lawns to the playground (above)!

But humans are not the only ones leaving tracks in the snow! Here, for example, a big bird or two seem to have been out walking in the company of two hares... 

Tracks like these always make me think of a chapter in Winnie the Pooh, where Pooh and Piglet go following some tracks, which they suspect may have been made by a Woozle...

 ... but the tracks keep multiplying, so that after a while it seems there must be at least two Woozles, now also joined by, perhaps, a Wizzle... 

 

... and after yet another turn around the same bush, the two friends begin to fear that there are even more potentially dangerous animals about...

 But of course all is explained when Christopher Robin turns up:

'Silly old Bear,' he said, 'what were you doing? First you went round the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after you and you went round again together, and then you were just going round a fourth time - '

 

Shadow Shot Sunday

Today started with a view of blue sky and white fluffy clouds - a rather rare sight lately.

 

Also quite a lot of white fluffy stuff on the ground again, since the snowstorm on Friday. The rectangular spots of light are reflections from windows on the building across the lawn. 

 

Low sun casting long shadows

 

In the afternoon, I decided to venture out for a short walk to catch a few of the rare rays of sunshine, and to get a "feeling " for how slippery or not it felt on the ground. It wasn't "too" bad, but I still felt that even using two walking poles I had better keep my eyes on the ground with every step. I did go over to the old cemetery, but only went in far enough to snap this photo of a path that had not been ploughed: