Life inside for winter time - a month of flowers

  Dawn on Winter Solstice...the furthest into my apartment that the sun would shine around 8 am. The growth of daylight hours each day past the solstice is very slow at first.

My new little friend, a Christmas Cactus graces my old sewing basket. It is now happily soaking up winter sunshine, but has lost all it's blooms, sigh.

While I meet with friends at the Dripolator Coffee Shop, the Harwood Funeral Home looks down on our simple fare reminding us of our mortality.

This orchid has at least two stems putting forth blooms for the season. So thrilled!

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Today's goddess:

Inanna, The Queen of the Night (Burney Relief) fired clay, Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian era, 1800-1750 BCE.

In the misty origins of ancient Sumer, the goddess Ishtar (originally known as Inanna) stands as a paradoxical figure of staggering complexity—a "Mother Goddess" who, interestingly, was rarely depicted as a literal mother or wife. Known as the Queen of Heaven, she personified the raw, untamed forces of both sexual desire and the violent chaos of war. To the ancients, she was the "Lady of the Morning and Evening Star" (the planet Venus), representing the dualities of life: the beauty of the sunrise and the looming mystery of the dusk. Her most famous myth, her descent into the Underworld, reveals her as a deity of profound transformation; by stripping away her royal garments and facing death itself at the hands of her sister Ereshkigal, she embodied the cyclical nature of the seasons and the fragile threshold between the world of the living and the realm of shadow

Source: The Secrets of the Ancients FB page

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Today's quote:

Love is to life what life is to death. And so we risk everything trying to touch the ineffable by touching each other. Over and over. Again and again… Patterned behavior alternates like shadow and light… We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay. Life spirals in and then spirals out on any given day. It does not have to be one way, one truth, one voice. Nor does love have to be all or nothing. 

Terry Tempest Williams

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A time when my shaky fingers posted this in error...namely on Dec. 8. But here it is, again!

Today's new header - I think I was trying portrait settings on the iPhone. It created that halo effect on the central blossom.

Joining Floral Friday Fotos (which is already open!)

Sunny Mondays

There are some redeeming qualities when the sun is shining, no matter what day of the week.

I haven't much good to say, which reminds me to be quiet.  But I do celebrate the sunshine.  So I'll share that feeling of joy with you.

I also have a small little (miniscule really) joy of life to share.  The guppies had babies again.  I don't know what I'll do when they all grow to full size, as they are just in a little 10 gallon tank.  But life continues.  And I smile in the simplicity of new beings to share it with.

On the other hand, the Christmas cactus which I rescued from beside the road about 6 months ago, continues to not bloom, but stay alive.  Any suggestions as to how to get it in the mood for blooming?

I tried fertilizer (liquid) and sun (all summer) and now it's indoors in an east facing window which also gets a bit of afternoon sunshine.  It's gone dry, and it's been overwatered.  But it just sits there looking peaked.

I hope your Monday is full of blessings of whatever variety pleasing for you!