Ambition

In the midst of writing another chapter of The Ash Spear, I've been diverted by a new game. The topic for the upper level competition at Cymdeithas Madog's July Welsh course just came out (click on the link and scroll to the bottom of the page to see what I'm talking about).

Briefly, for 31 years now CM has been holding a one-week language class every July somewhere in North America (except for 2000, when we had it in Wales as a special millennial treat!). At the end of the week there's a class eisteddfod (literary competition), subdivided into three levels, the topics to be announced at the beginning of the week. For the last few years, however, they're started to announce the topics for the upper division a couple of months in advance, to allow us the chance to do better work. This year's upper division topic is "Pontydd" ("Bridges") - a minimum of 350 words in either prose or poetry. And of course I had to choose poetry... you see where the title of this piece comes from?

If the result is passable, I'll share it here after the class. In the meantime, I'm having fun.

-GRG

Beltane

Tonight is Beltane, May Eve, the spring fire festival: Nos Calan Mai in Welsh. In my garden yesterday the first apple blossom and the first six or seven cherry blossoms opened, and the first pea flower appeared. Tomorrow we may have snow again, but it will be quickly gone.

We have deferred our Beltane celebration to Saturday night, partly because of logistics, partly because the first local farmer's market of the season is Saturday morning, and we like to shop there for part of the feast. I feel there has been enough calendar reform over the centuries that any time within a few days of the date is good enough.

Last year I posted a description of an ancient Beltane celebration from my book Storyteller. On another blog this morning I read a beautiful description of a small modern celebration. There are many ways to celebrate the turning of the seasons. The main thing, I think, is to be aware.

-GRG

Two Weeks...

Well, I have been busy, but it's really no excuse. A weekend out of town, another involving SCA activities. Welsh class, gardening - including some emergency rose salvage when the empty house next door finally sold and the new owners decided to make a clean sweep of the back yard! - and life in general. No new chapters of Ash Spear, either - but that should change. I've set aside this weekend and most of next weekend for writing. We'll see how far I get!

Now for something different...

Lately I've been enjoying Xcel Energy's webcam link to the pair of eagles nesting on one of their properties. Spring is Colorado can be harsh, and the third egg hatched late yesterday. As of this morning both parents were sitting on the nest together to protect their three small chicks from the snow!

-GRG

Update...

Finally finished another chapter of Ash Spear - figures on the sidebar as usual. A busy weekend, and I'm tired - perhaps I'll post more tomorrow. I still have to explain about the Great Expulsion of Mice...

-GRG

Tomatoes in the Cold Frame

And here's the picture I took yesterday of the tomato seedlings. There are 22 of them, all heirloom varieties. Four are for friends; the rest I'll have to find space for in my garden! They're currently in 3" pots - click on the picture to get a better view. The blue objects on the right are two of the eleven 5-gallon water bottles which act as a thermal reservoir to keep the cold frame above freezing on our frosty nights.

-GRG

Writing again...

A little update on the "progress" box on the sidebar. I got about half a chapter done this last weekend between gardening, puttering with books (yes, still adding stuff to LibraryThing), and breaking up cat fights. The fights were not between my two, but a case of them defending our yard from intruders.

Then there was the great mouse expulsion... but more of that later.

-GRG

Updates...

No writing this past weekend. Saturday's weather was too good - dry, sunny and breezy - so I spent the afternoon tilling part of the garden and preparing the long bed where I'm going to grow fava beans this year. It's been a tomato bed for the last two or three years and tomato diseases and pests were accumulating, so it was time for crop rotation. I didn't grow fava beans last year due to tomato-mania, but found a couple of new recipes I want to try more often. And the plants are reliable, hardy, and pleasant to look at. Favas are a form of the European broad bean which would have been grown in Britain in Gwernin's time (most of our current bean varieties are New World imports), and it's interesting that the Welsh word for "beans" is ffa.

I actually got the beans planted Easter Sunday, after the small amount of snow we had Saturday night had melted off. With another run of warm sunny weather expected this week, I should be seeing the first plants in 10-12 days. I was glad to get them planted this early - some years we still have snow cover/frozen ground at this point, but it's been a relatively warm spring. Fava beans don't mind a little frost, so the earlier they're planted the better.

In the cold-frame the tomato seedlings are still doing well - second true leaves on some the earliest ones now, and all remaining short and stocky due to the natural light and cool nights, a nice change from the spindly ones I've gotten in previous years when I grew them indoors under lights. I meant to take a picture yesterday while they were in the sun, but forgot - maybe next weekend.

-GRG

Update...

A little snow here yesterday, but not the 5-10 inches they had predicted, just a little welcome moisture. Can't say I mind. The first signs of spring are appearing at last - a few crocus here and there. Why are the yellow ones usually the first to bloom, and the first to disappear? Spring in my cold frame is farther along - the azalea is blooming enthusiastically, and also the flower spikes are filling out on grape hyacinth bulbs that overwintered there. Hopefully the tomato seedlings survived last night's cold snap after two days of cloudy weather - I'll see tonight.

The Ash Spear is coming along, if slowly - I got another chapter written this past weekend. Wet or snowy weather helps - I'm not tempted to be out in the garden as I was the weekend before. I've update the progress indicator on the sidebar as usual. Target size for this book is 300 pages, about like Flight of the Hawk. I can't make them much longer if I'm to sell them for a half-way reasonable price on Amazon.

I'm continuing to catalogue my books - Library Thing is addictive! I have over 100 items in Welsh alone, many of which aren't in anyone else's catalogue. On that subject, by the way, I'm going to be actually teaching my Welsh class the next three weeks while our instructor goes to Wales to get married. I've been busy preparing some reading material, as well as grammar handouts on points where I think we need a review. It should be fun!

-GRG

Celtic languages

A few links for the linguistically inclined, from "The Exvulsion of the Blatant Beast". First, a couple of fascinating posts from a while back on the evolution of the Celtic languages: here and here (I would have linked to these sooner, but the background color on the site has been ... strange ... lately, and I couldn't stand to look at it long enough to find the links again).

Then, for the really ambitious (also courtesy of "Beast"): Early Indo-European Online. No Old Welsh, unfortunately... but then modern Welsh is keeping me busy enough at the moment.

More on that later, though.

-GRG