Celtic Harvest

Thanks to my fellow blogger Jaz from October Farm, I have learned from one of her posts that it was yesterday Lughnasadh/Lughnasa, the Celtic day celebrating the beginning of harvest. In fact it starts at sunset on the 31st of July and ends at sunset on the 1st of August. I know August is still sumertime, but I find the way the Celts say the seasons very logical. August is for me the beginning of harvest, and thus is in a way a prologue to autumn. There was one way I could commemorate the Celtic beginning of harvest: by posting a picture of the family's crabapples tree. It gives fruits every two years, in theory, although sometimes the crabapples show up every year. It is one of the first trees to show its fruits ripe. The tree gets so heavy with them the branches go down. There is nothing more harvest-like than this image of a crabapples tree full of fruits, ready for the picking. It is a fitting picture. It is also the first published picture of August.

Brocéliande sur ses chemins de légendes

J'ai décidé de ploguer un bouquin acheté lors de mon dernier séjour en Bretagne: Brocéliande sur ses chemins de légendes. Je l'ai acheté à l'état neuf pour une bouchée de pain dans une librairie usagée. Ah, les trésors que l'on peut trouver parfois dans les librairies usagées! Bon, je sais, ce n'est pas un grand livre, mais c'est un beau livre, qui parle bien sûr des légendes et des lieux de Bretagne, par le biais d'une excursion texte et images dans la forêt de Brocéliande. Les photos sont absolument superbes. Le paysage s'y prête, bien sûr.

Je lis le livre sporadiquement et depuis que je l'ai acheté en août 2011 je n'en suis qu'à un peu moins de la moitié. Et je crois que ce genre de livre se lit mieux à l'automne et l'hiver. Surtout à l'automne en fait. L'auteure fait d'ailleurs commencer la "promenade" à l'Halloween, fête celtique par excellence. Beaucoup de photos sont automnales. Alors je lis Brocéliande à très petites doses, en espérant qu'il m'en restera un peu à l'automne prochain. Cela dit, je vous recommande de jeter un oeil dessus, ne serait-ce que pour les photos.

Et j'ai conscience que la photo de la couverture jure un peu avec le mois de mars et ce printemps. Mais je ne voulais pas attendre six mois avant de bloguer sur le bouquin.

A bookworm's Saturday

I did not want to go out today and I barely did. I know what I said about walking nowhere, but after a search today on the net there was no nowhere nearby that inspired me enough, no little village I wanted to see, or maybe I was just too tired. I feel like an hermit anyway these days. I say hermit, but it is maybe more a monk, as I have decided stay in and read. I went out once today, but it was to visit the local library and get some more books, among them a book about Stonehenge, just because. I love just stumbling on some random work and just get it. However small is the local library, I love re-exploring it. I am a bookworm, sometimes a caricature of one: the glasses, the slight frowning when I read, the trepidation when I am looking at bookshelves. I feel very much like one today.

Circumstances seem to favour my natural state of mind: last Thursday was the World Book Day and there are still loads of programs that is celebrating it on the BBC. I am not reading anything profound at the moment, not great classic or obscure masterpieces, but I read. And I enjoy it tremendously.

Celtic and pseudo-medieval mish-mash

According to youtube, this was composed for the Cheftains and the Belfast Harp Orchestra. I like the music quite a lot (well, it's irish), but the montage is utterly kitsch, or quétaine as we say in Québec. Try to identify the different images and/or their origin. We have a few dolmens, some Elves (who drew them I don't know), some Dungeons & Dragons illustrations, a few drawings inspired by Celtic and Viking legends and random pics of forests at different periods of the year. Funny as it shows the clichés associated with medieval times.