Learning together

In between the gloomy grey days we’ve enjoyed some lovely sunshine this month and have gone out to walk in the local area.

We’ve done a little exploring and found a few little trodden paths between houses. Mostly we’ve found mud but as the month has gone by we’ve noticed more and more growth.

We’ve found snowdrops.

and a daisy – yeah!

(It’s the white splodge in the middle of the photo – I had to use zoom as it was in a garden and …..)

Wish I instantly knew what these flowers are? Buttercup? (It doesn’t look like the pictures in my books, but I’m reasonably sure it is in the Ranunculus family. )

More of the same? Different?

A few crocus – not many.

A lot more snow drops!

and these… I can’t even guess on this one. They are amazingly delicate and so pretty! (Another one NOT in my books!)

And these daffodils, making the most of the sun, are very close to blooming.

The bare trees are changing shape as the buds grow.

We’ve listened to the birds singing and getting very excited as they began to build or rebuild their nests.

And, the days are getting longer. It’s all good!

When I was a child my favourite book was The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton.  I thought Enid Blyton was a man  (I didn’t know Enid was a girl’s name) and was quite suprised when I learned differently!  

I could still take you to the very spot where it sat on the library shelves.  I knew.

When I was older I went back to visit the library (no mean feat as it’s in a remote part of Zambia) and looked in vain for the book.  I guess it had become too well loved and had had to go.  It was a hard back edition of the book with great illustrations and I wanted to touch it again.

When I got my first (proper) full time job there was no question as to what part of my salary would be spent on.  Each month I went to the bookshop and bought myself several books.  I bought all eight of the  ‘Adventure’ series and read them in order for the first time.  I still thought they were good.  The Valley of Adventure is number 3.  (I also bought the set of  The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis and the Anne books by LM Montgomery.)  These were all paperbacks and sadly, the Adventure books no longer had illustrations.

More years went by (I went back to the library again, just in case!) and then I got married.  My wonderful husband found me an old copy of The Valley of Adventure on ebay. Yeah!!  It doesn’t feel quite right, but it is the version I originally read.

Just look at these illustrations by Stuart Tresilian…

I loved them!

I’ve been waiting (rather impatiently) to start reading these books to my boys and recently I gave in and we read book 1 The Island of Adventure.  They LOVED it!  Several nights we stayed up late because we just had to read the next chapter (and the next!).  They are the third generation in this family reading these books.  My mother was bought books from The Famous Five series and a few of this series by an older cousin as they were first published (wish she’d kept them!!!) and enjoyed them too.

(Thought I’d slip another one in!)

The children in the story have their adventures in the holidays, so as they’ve gone back to school to study different books,  we too are having a break and will read something else, before I get overcome with wanting to read book 2.

(I wrote this in draft, waiting to take photos to illustrate, and in the meantime we’ve read whatever we choose in between and are on book 2 The Castle of Adventure.  It’s already exciting and I need to go read some more now!)

This year we’ve started reading Enid Blyton’s ‘Nature Lover’s Book’ again. 

Last year (or was it the year before?) we didn’t get very far with it and I am detemined to get a bit further with it this year.  With all the talk of climate change you might think that the weather now is dramatically different to 20+ years ago.  From books I’m reading from then and much further back, I’m seeing a lot that is still the same, at least here, anyway.

I was surprised the first time I read the January section of this book that it talked of so many flowers that were to be seen.  Whilst I was aware of pansies and snowdrops, I didn’t know even daisies could flower this early in the year.  On a recent wander with the boys we only found a few flowers, but slowly we are becoming more observant.

Winter Jasmine

In our garden the pansies have started to flower again after the battering of very cold weather and deep snow in December.

We also noticed the daffodils and tulips are beginning to grow.

There are also plenty of signs of new growth on the roses and many other plants.

Slowly, but surely, spring is on its way!

Following on from my post about the new Kiluba Bible I got to thinking about the beauty of  languages.

Languages are fascinating.  I understand that almost all European languages, along with Persian and Sanskrit have common roots and belong to the Indo-European language tree.  Several have strong links to Latin and understanding one can help you understand another.  Hungarian is different and links with Finnish and the languages of the Baltic. 

When I was in Poland, I lived in a border town with the Czech Republic.  It was a town divided by a river which is a natural boundary, but sadly it divided families when the decision was made to use the river as a country barrier.  The Poles used to tell me that the Czech language was like a small child speaking Polish.  There I met a man who was fluent in over 20 languages – a rare gift.  Having learnt the grammar and vocabulary of one language in a group he could then easily assimilate the new words necessary to make himself understood.  I watched him over a period of a week go from not understanding a word of Polish to being able to converse with some fluency with the same people I had been struggling to talk to for about 6 months!  (I never did get very far with Polish!)

Language can tell you what is of importance to the people who use it.  The Inuit have many words for snow.  English has one.  For the Inuit it’s an integral part of their lives.

Kiluba is an alliterative language.  In English we have ‘agreement’ mainly by adding suffixes.  Verbs and  nouns change when we add different endings to them.  I carry a box -> I carried some boxes.  In Kiluba the prefixes change and agree with the noun or the verb.  One child is mwana, children are bana. 

The child reads a book.  (to read: kutanga; book: dibuku)

Mwana utanga dibuku. 

Many children read many books.

Bana bavule batanga mabuku mavule. (many: vule)

In the language there are many words for the trees, bark and roots, things which are important to them, however the only colour words are red, white and black.  They borrow the other colours from French.  Living up in a remote village a friend of mine was roundly laughed at for having a discussion with a friend about the flowers and how pretty the colours were.  The men thought it hysterical!

I do like languages, words and their origins and families.  I find it endlessly fascinating!

Yesterday I bought this:

and with that one act the chances of snow falling anywhere near here in the next 10 years dropped to about zero!!!

A few days before we had snow I noticed sledges for sale in our local diy shop.  I couldn’t get it then so told myself I would be back ‘just in case’ we got snow.  Then it snowed.  By the time I reached the shop, maybe 5 minutes after opening he’d sold out – of course!  So I promised myself the next time I saw one I would buy it.  So I have.

I warned the man in the shop that now I’d bought one there was little chance of snow, and he laughed and said he’d thought the same thing on Monday when he took delivery of 100 sledges!  Mind you, that day it snowed he could have shifted at least 300..

Anyway, just thought I’d let the northwest of England know that we’ll be snow free for a while now!!!