Alfred the Great

Photo credit: Odejea
Wikimedia Commons

 "O God, who didst call thy servant Alfred to an earthly throne that he might advance thy heavenly kingdom, and didst give him zeal for thy church and love for thy people: Grant that we, inspired by his example and prayers, may remain steadfast in the work thou hast given us to do for the building up of thy reign of love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

 On this day in the year of our Lord 899, Alfred King of the Anglo-Saxons passed into glory. He was a good man -- a poet, a scholar, a warrior, a lawgiver, and above all a devout Christian.

This month I've been reading aloud on Zoom G.K. Chesterton's magnificent Ballad of the White Horse, which is about Alfred's fight against the pagan invaders. Here's the link to the read-aloud on YouTube, if you'd like to listen. I've read it aloud to my kids nearly every October for over a decade and they've all graduated and I'm having my Morning Time alone these days, so that's why I decided to read the Ballad on Zoom. I'm glad I did -- it was a lot of fun. You know, I didn't even think about mentioning it here ahead of time!

You can read more about Alfred at this Lectionary page. It includes the Collect I've quoted above, plus Scripture readings for the day, and brief history of Alfred. 

This article from the University of Oxford has more information, including excerpts from some of his writings.

And here's an interesting article from a few years ago about the coin known as the Alfred coin

Enjoy!

 

Sorry about the unexpected hiatus

Violin Daughter had her senior recital last weekend, so my Minnesota daughter flew in at the beginning of last week, then my mom flew at the end of the week, then Minnesota daughter flew back home at the beginning of this week and my mom flies back tomorrow afternoon. So, no blog post this week, either.

As a consolation, here are a couple of recordings from the recital. This first one is the Meditation from the opera Thaïs by Jules Massenet, accompanied by her former music teacher.

This next one is the 4th movement from JS Bach's Partita in D minor. When we were discussing whether to hold her recital in the parish house where there is a grand piano (she also played two piano pieces, a Rachmaninoff and a Debussy) or the sanctuary of our 250 year old church building, she said she needed the acoustics of the sanctuary, "Because that Bach piece is LIT."

Around the farm

Actually, this photo was taken
by my daughter

On the way home from church today we stopped so I could take a picture of a pretty plant I'd seen blooming along a stretch of road.

I was pretty sure it was chicory, but I wanted to ask Heather, my herbalist friend, who confirmed that it is indeed chicory, and now is the time to harvest the roots.  Heather says, "I like chicory (and dandelion) as a coffee additive because it really nourishes the liver and makes the coffee less taxing on the kidneys."

I love chicory in my coffee, but... um... in spite of the farm stuff we do around here I'm still more of an armchair agrarian than otherwise.

Ahem.

What was I saying?

Oh, yes.  We stopped and took this picture on the way home, and I guess that's what inspired me to take pictures of the things blooming around the house, so I took my phone with me on my afternoon ramble around the yard and took pictures of just about everything that's blooming right now.

First, there are still several blossoms on the climbing rose that grows across our porch.  Here's a nearly perfect one.

Beyond the garage/barn we have a huge stand of Jerusalem artichoke.  Our pastor gave us the ancestors of this batch a few years ago.  The succeeding generations are all volunteers.  Eldest Daughter makes a lovely soup out of them that's every bit as good as cream of potato.

Jerusalem artichoke, and poultry

Gratuitous poultry shot

Here's a better picture of the Jerusalem artichoke flowers.  They're related to sunflowers, so some people call them Sunchokes.

And here we have one of my daylily beds, which is overgrown with mint and some other weeds.  There's some kind of wild sweet pea in there on the left edge of the photo, but it doesn't really show up well.  And that pinkish-purplish beady stuff, that I have no idea what it is.

Honeysuckle!

Thistle?

I remember that I identified this plant in 2008 when I attempted the 100 Species Challenge, but now I don't remember what it's called.  That was on my Wordpress blog, which only exists in my Google Reader archives, which I have not yet figured out how to access.

Daisy fleabane?  I think?

Our geese were extraordinarily noisy while I was taking pictures.  Don't know whether they wanted me to feed them or to go away.

I think it was the latter.

More of that pretty pinkish-purplish flower. 

I think this is different from the daisy-like one above.  The leaves are skinnier.

This seems to be a variety of dandelion.  The flowers bloom on tall stems, and they're real team players -- all the plants in the whole yard bloom one day, then they close up at night and the next day they've all turned to puff balls.  By the time I got around to this one it had already started closing up for the day.

Golden ragweed and an unidentified legume under my clothesline.  This legume is a lot bigger than the ones that infest the flower beds on the other side of the house.

The goats were unusually playful.  They're probably in heat.

The darker brown one is Jemima, who is a six year old half-Alpine half-Nubian.  The lighter brown one is Sunday, who's five.  She's a three-quarter Nubian, one-quarter Alpine.  Psyche is the big white one.  She's the herd queen and I think she's just interfering on principle.  All three of these girls (and Sunday's father) were born here.

This doesn't show well, but two of our crape myrtles are still blooming.

And here's a gratuitous sunset shot, taken by my shutterbug daughter a few days ago.

Hope you all had a lovely Michaelmas.

Fun Stuff

[This is an edited repost of my last entry. I've tried all the HTML I know to turn off the autoplay on the Flash video I posted and it's not working. If you have any ideas, please pass them along. In the meantime, I've stuck that sill Elf Yourself video at the end of the post after a break so it won't turn itself on whenever anyone loads this page!]



Pretty fun

Make-a-Flake snowflake maker.

Musical fun





Silly Fun


Elf Yourself!

Click below for my video:

Babies!

Our bantam hen, Chocolate Chip, hatched a brood this week. She had ten eggs, but one didn't hatch and one died shortly afterward -- its fluff didn't even have time to dry. We discovered them on Wednesday (CC was very well hidden) and they looked like they were a day old. Thursday was their first day out of the nest, and these videos were filmed today. Enjoy!

The teeny chirps are chicks' noises. The hen squawks a little in this one, but you can hear her clucking in the next (bok, bok).




This one was taken just a few minutes after the first one. The chicks look like they're just standing around, but they're mostly napping. In this one you can hear our guinea hen in the background starting around 40 seconds. #1 Son was recording it on his cell phone and wanted to get a closer shot of the chicks with their eyes closed, which displeased Chocolate Chip.



The mama is less than eight inches tall, and the babies are under two inches. Adorable.