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Art journal page (full page scan: low res) (watercolour)
Artist: Cindi Moynahan-Foreman |
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Detail: February 1 (watercolour)
(taken on iPhone) |
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Detail: January 31 (watercolour)
(Taken on iPhone) |
As January ends, Ottawa's
Winterlude has just begun, a wonderful new pizza place has been found (
ZaZaZa) and snuggling and snoozing with Lexie brings much needed warmth whilst a Canadian deep freeze descends.
Edith Sitwell wrote,
"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." I am sure Edith would agree that a friendly paw is equally wonderful!
February also brings
groundhog day,
Valentine's day,
Family Day (Ontario),
Chinese New Year and my birthday. That's why I love February so much. It's my birth month....where I started and restart my trips around the sun each year.
February, at one time was the last month of the Roman calendar and a time of ritual purification by washing.
A Calendar of Sonnet's: February
Helen Hunt Jackson
"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."
In Ireland, by way of contrast, February is officially the first month of spring, and the first day of the month known as Imbolc, a Celtic fire festival.
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| Celtic wheel of the year |
Some more February poems:
Leap Year Poem
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."
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