The February Calendar

“There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer.”

— Gertrude Jekyll

But, Miss Jekyll,  I like Winter too, and Spring and Autumn.  

This Greencheek Parrot fish - from the lovely Indian Ocean - is our calendar pic for February.  One of Col's photos of course.  He has done a fish calendar this year, portraits of fish taken during his Diving in Tropical Waters Years, as he is not really photographing much at the moment. Metal detecting possesses him  

Divers say you can hear the parrot fish crunching on their coral dinners when you are underwater. They clearly have strong beaks.  As soon as we came out of the airport on our Maldives trips,  and started to make our way over to our waiting boat, I would look over the harbour edge and always always - except for the very last time we visited - see at least one lovely parrot fish.

How amazing and how wonderful the creation is.  Isn't this fish telling us that it was made by the greatest artist, designer and engineer of all - our Grand Creator, Jehovah.  Also though we will see the awe-inspiring power of the creation even clearer than we do now when paradise is restored, we will have no reason to fear it. I say that as I was remembering our very last trip to the Maldives, and our last boat ride back to Airport Island, because it was a very stormy crossing.

We were thrown about all over the place and I was only kept from panicking and screaming "We are all going to die!!!" by the fact that there was a young child being thrown about in the seat in front of me, whose mum was working hard to keep him calm and reassure him. I prayed to Jehovah to keep me calm so that I wouldn't let her down.  And we got there safely and on time.

Apparently storms still range in the Northlands - but its calm here so far. And still much warmer than it should be.  I love to hear and look out on a stormy sea.  It's a wonderful sound, like a thousand freight trains roaring straight at us.  But of course I don't want the power going out, as has happened in Scotland, nor do I want our roof blown off.  We get the full brunt of it here, when it happens, yet our balcony geraniums sail serenely through the storms - sometimes with their leafy sails at full billow, and probably will sail calmly on even while the roof is being blown off (though I hope that hypothesis will never be put to the test).

But how is that for some perfect design?