SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!  

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;  

Conspiring with him how to load and bless  

  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;  

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,         

  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;  

    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells  

  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,  

And still more, later flowers for the bees,  

Until they think warm days will never cease,  

Yes, it is Keats' “Ode to Autumn” does it sound strange to be starting a newsletter with a quote from an Autumn poem in May? If it does maybe you are amongst those who forget all about us in the Southern Hemisphere who are going right into the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as those of you in the Northern Hemisphere gear up for Spring layouts.

One of the parts of belonging to Digital Scrap Book Place that I love are these differences – whilst I drink my early morning cupper, trying not to be bleary eyed at 4.00 a.m. for my Heritage Scrap and Chat, most members are preparing to go to bed for the night (sadly, my South African friends seem to have deserted me when daylight saving in the U.S. changed the time here from 5.00 a.m. in our summer to 4.00 a.m.  in our Winter! – NOT that I blame them) Then of course, when we are having breakfast our friends “down under” are busy peeling the veggies for dinner……

Whilst I’m sweltering in Durban’s semi-tropical humidity how refreshing it is to see layouts of ice and snow, hear tales of being “snowed in”, reading comments on my Christmas pages which ask if we were not a bit chilly – a reference to the shorts & t-shirt attire which is all we can manage at Christmas time!

Yet, in all these differences we are one in our love for digital scrapbooking – this is the love that makes us keep weird hours, makes us stay glued to our computer screens. We spend hours in the gallery, making comments which we hope will encourage other members, we then spend more hours in the forums, again encouraging, maybe congratulation or hoping we can help someone with a problem they have encountered with their software, or to help someone make the right choice in their choice of camera of scanner. These are all such good habits to keep – habits which aid in binding us together in our mutual love, habits which will ultimately make us all better scrapbookers, better people. (Pity is that there are not so good results too - developing trigger fingers and carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of over doing the mouse…………. Has anyone a solution to this??? That is apart from the obvious???)

May is also the month in which we traditionally honour our Mothers – if it is a layout you are going to do, I have heard whispers that May’s Club Digital will be of great help with this. This May I have every intention of doing a layout for my own dear Mum – it is a layout I keep shelving as nothing that I think of seems to be quite good enough for the wonderful Mother that she was.

My tip this month – if you are blessed enough to have  Mother living, treasure and spoil her, and make the very best layout of her that you can, for her to see and enjoy. If yours, like mine, has passed, do the layout, even if it is NOT the best that ever was made - she always understood whilst she was here on this earth, she will understand and love you for it now.

Have a wonderful May and take care of yourselves,