Venus Rising over the Lake - a Reflection

Venus



I was in Pifflechat today shortly after sunset, when I looked up and saw Venus reflected in the lake. The water was unusually still and glassy and you could see Venus's reflection clearly. I told Bevis (in England) that I was going to run out and take its picture and he said "Go for it." So I did. It was so dark that I had no notion it would come out, just my ordinary digital camera on no special setting, but it did. And five minutes later, I was showing the picture to Bevis and to his fiancee Helen in Australia. A very internet moment! I only saw stars reflected in a lake like that once before, at Lake May last summer; never thought I could actually take a picture of the phenomenon. But there it is.


Candlelight dinner

As I'm writing about Piffle, I'll say I was completely charmed when another piffler, Farley's Footwear (real name Ian), wrote a haiku about me at Lake Temagami. To understand the poem, you have to know that my Piffle nom is Miss Schuster-Slatt, after the pushy character in Dorothy L. Sayers' Oxford novel, Gaudy Night. I relate to her in a similar way as I do to Mrs. Elton. (By the way, Bevis's Piffle nom is Vamping the Senior Common Room, and his fiancee Helen's is Leoville. I chat with them most days, and also with Sandy (Rachel Levy), Debbie (A Menace to Society), and others. Here's the haiku:

Cabin on a lake
Snow at Lake Temagami;
Miss Schuster-Slatt writes