It snowed again yesterday. But though we had two or three inches it’s thawing already, so when I took Sid to the playing field this morning I wasn’t really expecting to find anything pretty, let alone a thing of beauty – but I did!

Take a good look at that picture up there. It’s just a park bench, right? And some local idiot has been walking on it. Well, good grief .. can’t they find anything better to do? I dunno. Youth of today. Thugs and vandals the lot of them.

Except … take another look. This time, look at it this way -

Before school this morning, a young man – judging by the size and type of the footprints – is struck with youthful exuberance. He delights in the clean, white appearance of the world and he’s suddenly a few years younger, just for a little while. On a whim, he jumps up onto the bench, bunnyhops along it and jumps down at the other end, just like Sam in Benny and Joon*.

It must have felt good, because a little further along, he decided to have fun with the bicycle ramps, too!

I think he was walking the family dog, because if you look closely at this second picture there’s a set of doggy footprints following along at the side, and I’m betting the dog had fun, too!

Now, isn’t it a thing of beauty that a young man (whether twelve, sixteen or nineteen, it doesn’t matter) should suddenly find his heart lifted so that he just has to express it in physical joy?

I think so. I think it’s sad that we lose that, as we ‘grow up’. So, go on – do something a little young for your years today. It’ll be fun!

And if you’d like to see more examples of the beauty that people have found in their lives this week, pop along to Claudia of Dipity Road.

*A Johnny Depp movie, needless to say

What better ‘E‘ word to begin with for ABC Wednesday with the greyhounds than ‘elegant‘?  And here is the beautiful Sid, showing us that he is an extremely elegant dog indeed!  Propped up on his elbows, with those long legs extending in front and his head erect, he is the very epitome of the word, is he not?

For those who are new to this blog and don’t know, Mr Sid is a tripod – he is missing that other back leg – and that is why he has visible ribs and spine.  He might look emaciated there, but really and truly he is not.  He is a very well muscled and fit dog, and we can’t allow him to be anything else or it would put a strain on his remaining hind leg, which would not do.

Our very first greyhound, James, was elegant too.  He was such a sweetheart of a dog!

He was beautiful, and so eager to please that he turned out to be a quite extraordinary dog.  He knew all the usual commands and then some – unlike most greyhounds he would play fetch!   And he had an extensive vocabulary.  I counted up the words he would respond to one day, and it was over three hundred. Now, it’s true some of them were duplicates – for instance, he knew half a dozen ways we might say his dinner was ready, but it’s still amazing.  Since he was our first dog I had no idea he was so unusual, and I just kept on training him until we both got bored.  In the end he could do tricks like ’singing’ and even growling to order (tail lashing away madly in the rear) and he would stare fixedly at a treat on the floor until he was told he could have it.  He would shake paws and do a high five and … oh, all kinds of things.  And all this in a dog who was abandoned one winter with hideous old wounds and covered in mange.  Quite extraordinary.

Here he is as a senior, elegantly enjoying the sunshine.

The Princess Renie was a very elegant dog, too.  Almost everything she did was done elegantly. She was dainty, and fastidious – she would always walk around a puddle or patch of mud, for example.  And just like the princess in the fairy story, she would always elect to lie on the softest bed going.

Apparently, sheepskin is also acceptable for a Princess.

One thing she and James had in common was an inability to put their ears up properly.  They both had small, soft, tightly-folded greyhound ears.  Not so our little Pirate Jack!

Little Jack had enormous ears!  Incidentally, there is no tattoo in that ear because Jack was English bred.  Most racing greyhounds in the UK are Irish, and they have a tattoo in each ear, which tells us what year they were whelped and what their parentage is etc.  English greyhounds are tattooed in one ear only.

That’s not the only difference between the Princess and the Pirate.  The Princess was elegant, as I’ve said.  The Pirate?

… Not so much!

Well.  He was a Pirate!  What do you expect?

Now, lest your experience so far of my dogs leads you to suspect that they lived their entire lives horizontal and semi-comatose, I must tell you that they did, on occasion, become excited.  Here’s Jack, bouncing in happy expectation of a treat.

See those ears?  Oh yes, he could get them both perfectly erect when he felt like it.

Being a buccaneer by nature, he loved to go off exploring.

And sometimes he’d bring back exciting booty.  Yes, that rabbit expired quite some time ago, but Captain Jack didn’t care!  He caught it, and even though it was only half a rabbit, and wasn’t actually moving at the time, he was exhilarated!  Princess Renie, on the other hand, followed behind in a spirit of mild enquiry.  She wanted nothing to do with stinky decomposing rabbit anyway.

But in case you fear that the Princess never stirred herself to any kind of strenuous excercise, I will leave you with this video of her playing.

That’s Jack’s yellow duck she was playing with, but he didn’t mind.  She killed it several times over, and then, exhausted, she slept.

Here we are on Macro Monday again! And I have another fairly easy puzzle for you.

Well. That’s easy for me to say, I suppose, but I think it’s easy.

This is something that not all households will have, but I would think most will have seen. Some households might have had many more than one of these, at one time, but don’t need them now.

They don’t all look exactly like this, of course, but isn’t that true of almost anything, from a vinegar bottle, a patch of graffiti on a wall, to a set of fire tools or an egg box and back? Even such a ubiquitous object as a spoon will vary from kitchen to kitchen across the world.

This thing can actually vary quite a lot, and it isn’t quite such a ubiquitous – or necessary – object as a spoon. However, those that do have them would be sorry to be without them, I venture to guess.

Confused yet? Oh, I do hope so!

As usual, check back tomorrow evening (UK time) for the answer. I’ll add a link to the big picture at the bottom of this post, and also the answer will turn up in the comments at some point. And thank you all for playing!

And the answer is here! Congratulations to our winners this week, Liz and Jake (who’s probably seen this very dog biscuit, or its brother), with a commendation going to Colleen for being as close as it’s possible to be without being spot on. Well done, you guys!

I know I’m late with this one. I didn’t think I’d have anything for you this week.

Having looked through my recent photo files and found nothing of any real interest, I looked further and further back and found a beautiful photo, but .. for me, Finding Beauty isn’t merely about the physical, but needs to include some wider meaning.

So the day wore on and the time came for us to take Sid out for his second walk, and as I was getting him dressed in his warm coat and finding the lead with the reflective strips, OH suddenly made a dash for the door and disappeared without us.  I carried on getting us ready, because I’m kind of used to these odd kicks in his gallop, but when he returned I was truly surprised.

He came through the door bearing that gorgeous bunch of red roses that you see up there.   And he looked worried.

‘I’m sorry!’ he said, as he gave them to me. ‘I’m really sorry, but I can’t leave them in the car, they’ll freeze!’

I took them, I oohed and aaahed, and sniffed deeply.  They smelled divine.  Pure sweetness, powdery and rich.  And I thanked him and kissed him, as you do.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

‘Why are you sorry?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘But it’s not the day!’ he replied.

See, that’s finding beauty, right there.  Not only does my lovely husband buy me a huge bunch of fragrant red roses for Valentine’s Day after thirty-two years of being married*, but he frets over getting it right.

The roses are very beautiful, and they’ll give me a lot of pleasure while they last, but the thought behind them is priceless, and even more beautiful than they are.

Does it matter that it’s ‘not the day’?  Not at all.  It matters that he bought them for me, and that he took the trouble to sniff each and every bunch to make sure he got the scented ones.  It matters that he loves me.

There’s really nothing more beautiful than that.

*Oops .. I just realised it’s thirty-three, not thirty-two!