SUMMER DAYS

Keeping up with the internet

 Not only was it a very hot day in Dunedin - our thermometer here in Opoho reached 35 degrees Celcius in the shade  but also my new website was lifted into the internet space: www.huberta.co.nz

 Thanks to the amazing fast and professional work of Doug Lilly I am now the proud owner of a website. Scary, yes, but also exciting since the new year has begun with lots of serendipitous moments and I don't want to stop this flow.  

 Doug has created a modern, colourful and easy to operate website.  Of course I hope that it will promote sales of The Madonna in the Suitcase  but it especially provides a wonderful opportunity to show the paintings Miriam did before she had a stroke.  In those days she used to go to Queen's High School and produce a painting in exactly the one hour the students in the final year arts class had.  Her fellow students didn't understand how it was possible that she knew how to paint.  After all, she'd never learned about techniques or placement.  But she knew about colours, bright and bold colours, full of life.

Summer Saturday in January 2013.

 And now she works on her Word Find books and was intensely pleased when I recently managed to buy the latest February book. 

 Jumping from a summer's day to a summer's evening: at this time of the year I often see a kereru trying to find food in the Vergilia tree outside my study's window.  This photo is a few years old, the recent photo I took showed too much of my dirty rain-striped window.  

Kereru

  Talking about birds, tomorrow the Christmas tree will go back to its box and the ornaments carefully placed in a large plastic container.  One of the ornaments is an owl, given to me by my American friend, Kitty Guthrie.  I met Kitty in 1990 in a Stage Two Greek Tragedy class and, as adult students, we had much to talk about.   Kitty died just before Christmas 2000 but I still miss her and her loving and stimulating company. 

Close-up of Kitty's owl.

Our very airy Christmas tree, Vergilia just visible through window.

   Kitty was a wise woman and each year I treasure her owl in our Christmas tree.   She showed love to us all in her own wonderfully spontaneous way.
She would have liked the following poem by Marion Woodman and Jill Mellick (Coming Home to Myself) :

There is no growth without real feeling.

Children not loved for who they are

do not learn how to love themselves.

Their growth is an exercise in pleasing others,

not in expanding through experience.

As adults, they must learn to nurture

their own lost child.