life and growth

A rabbit got into the garden last week. He didn't seem to eat anything we would regret. They seem to find so much among the grass, God bless them. A simple diet is best, isn't it? Then I didn't see any rabbits for a week, until today when there were two baby ones, running around the hedges. So, it continues. 

Look what somebody dropped off at the library this week.

I love this story. Look at the cover!

So elegant, with the gold edging. But there's a fragrance, like the previous owner wore perfume and now the book has it. I might just bring it back - I don't fancy having to smell that whenever I read it. Such a disappointment.

I was reading in St. Matthew's gospel, near the beginning, and it said that after the Magi came and asked where the child was who was born king of the Jews, "he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him". I never noticed that before - all Jerusalem was frightened? How interesting. 

I picked a handful of beans today and steamed them; my brother can have them with his eggs tomorrow for supper.

and you thought journalism was dead

 With all the mentions I've made of Raynor Winn's The Salt Path over the past few years, I feel it incumbent upon me to make this post.

I was on youtube yesterday when a little video popped up. This one. A reporter at The Observer dug deep and found out that the Winns' real names are Sally and Tim Walker They are basically embezzlers and tax evaders, for a start. Three books were written, to acclaim, and now the film is out; I've been waiting for it to show over here. Now, I don't think I can bring myself. The full article - very thorough and interesting - is here.

I really am stunned. Of course we know these things go on. But it was a great story, and so hopeful, the way Moth seemed to get better after these long hikes they went on. They're not even sure now about the truth of his illness, and that whole part of it.

What really amazes me is that she has done so many interviews, her face has been everywhere, for those who've been following their story, and didn't she think that someday they'd be found out? That nobody they've ever known would be watching the news? What will happen now? You can run, but you can't hide forever, and especially not when you're famous. Incredible.

About "journalism". This reporter, Chloe Hadjimatheou, did a stellar job. But there is altogether too much of this: 

But I do agree with them on one point: They are extremely dangerous to our democracy.

o hear our song, God of all the nations

 

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine;

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

This was sung during Mass today, I'm sure because of our Independence Day holiday this weekend.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine:

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

The hymn, sung to the melody from Finlandia by Sibelius, speaks of his great love for his homeland, but without that sense of superiority that can border on the dangerous. 

May truth and freedom come to every nation;

May peace abound where strife has raged so long;

That each may seek to love and build together,

A world united, righting every wrong;

A world united in its love for freedom,

proclaiming peace together in one song.

It's so moving, especially at a time in world history when the real possibility of war threatens everything dear and familiar to us.

a lot of sparkle

I had just shut off the a/c, opened my side window, and was watching the pretty sparkle of the fireflies, when someone on the street behind us set off quite a colorful display of fireworks. So much for the quiet beauty of nature.

Daisy is in my back window, watching fireworks set off by another neighbor - it looks like a big sparkler, or something. Annie is on the hallway chair, which is brave for her; she isn't hiding. Our town event is scheduled for Tuesday, so this sort of nightly show may happen again. For the first time in days, I don't hear the mockingbird. Well, the creatures don't know what to make of the loud noises and I feel sorry for them. 

I don't know where I've been - mentally - for the past week. I always mean to post, but something gets in the way. I am making a linen top: sleeveless and simple, and I've been researching various ways of cutting bias strips. There are many, and it's interesting! I have to bind the neck and armholes and didn't want to use the packaged stuff. 

I've been experimenting with strawberry frozen yogurt, and frozen coconut milk pops, coffee-flavored. Something cold for the mouth must be kept on hand at all times in summer heat!

summer extremes

 It’s not quite seventy degrees today. And by that, what I really mean is, it’s thirty degrees cooler than it was yesterday. 

it was not this hot - the sun beats on it in the pm

I finished my firefly dress; I was going to wear it tomorrow to work - now I hesitate. Is seventy one degrees too cool for sleeveless? Probably, especially after such a cool, damp day.

it's a maxi

I had such a time getting the armhole binding to flatten out.

Wetting it, then pressing, over and over, to gently stretch the fabric. Patience and persistence were what I needed.

Last night's sunset -

I actually had to close my windows tonight - it's cool, and damp, which makes it feel colder.

Daisy in my window

solar summer - who knew?

 Here is a link to an article about solar summer - for Gretchen, and anybody else who's curious!

midsummer

 I look out my window into the night, and see fireflies flashing everywhere. I’d like to see them close up, but it’s not supposed to get below eighty till after one o’clock; I’ll stay in. 

It’s Midsummer's Eve. I have puzzled over that for years: it just turned summer, and now it’s midsummer.  But there was something on a weather site the other day which mentioned solar summer - which is May, June and July. Now that makes sense; if summer starts in May, it would be midsummer now. Now I can turn my wondering to the next thing.

singing to the Lord

 "I would feed my people with finest wheat and fill them with honey from the rock."

                                                  -  Psalm 81:17

It's the feast of Corpus Christi, and we're in a big heatwave - it often happens when Easter comes later, that we're outside in the hot sun for the procession. I heard a mockingbird singing a little way off - his song didn't interrupt our hymn-singing. 

Just now I stepped outside to empty some trash, and in the midst of excessive heat and humidity, I was surprised to hear a neighborhood mockingbird singing lustily; it's hardly to be imagined, but they must not feel the heat. Of all days, to be working so hard giving a concert. And who can appreciate it, with air conditioners running? I'm glad I came out for a moment.

"seeing beauty and value in the ordinary"

 "I wish there were more wild, undisturbed places, for both wildlife and for us as humans, and a greater understanding that restoring and appreciating nature meets needs we sometimes forget we have. Under the subtle influence of the hare, my own wants have simplified. To be dependable in love and friendship more than in work. To leave the land in a more natural state than I found it. And to take better care of what is to hand, seeing beauty and value in the ordinary."

                                          -   Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare

happy summer

 It was so hot and humid yesterday that I chose my pale chambray blue sheets when I changed the bed. Looking at blue does help in the summer. And it is summer! (or will be by eleven tonight)

Today was dreamy:dry and very windy, but it felt wonderful. Now, the humidity's come back. Is the whole summer going to be this way? 

I've been busy easing the bias tape around my dress armholes, which takes some coaxing. 

I planned a Summer Supper in honor of the longest day of the year. First, tuna sandwiches, recipe here; a favorite in this house for many years - a bit fancified, with kalamata olives and red onion. Also, an eggplant recipe, very easy, where you salt and pepper thick eggplant slices, lay them in a pool of olive oil and bake on both sides for about a half hour on a high temp. Top the warm slices with a mixture of feta, capers, tomato and a few other things and it goes together pretty quickly. And the juiciness of it was just what I didn't know I needed. Then, freezer pops for dessert.

This morning I started to make them, coconut milk matcha pops, but - I know I had matcha powder at one time, but I guess not anymore  and I had already begun the recipe. So I decided to use instant coffee granules, which worked very well, I have to say. Any flavor would taste good when you're hot. But I've started a big jar of tea in the fridge, so I don't have to turn to sugary treats when I need something cold.

days off

 We've had some people leave the library for various reasons, so I've worked a few double shifts - not exactly double, but I stayed till closing, eleven hour days. But now I have a week off! Sewing and gardening are the plan.

I'm making a dress with a firefly-printed cotton. A sleeveless maxi, a-line, a pattern I've used before. I'm almost done!

I've also got a dragonfly fabric in the wings. Black, with blue, purple and gold dragonflies. No plan yet.

a hundred airy harps

 Yesterday was a most beautiful day - sunny, breezy, dry. A perfect day for washing a few windows, but other things had to come first.

Today was rainy, all day. But I didn't know it was going to, and I awoke early to such pretty music. 

...those wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once
A hundred airy harps!

-  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Trinity Sunday

 May our knowledge of you become ever clearer
That we may know the breadth of your blessings
the length of your promises
the height of your majesty
the depth of your judgments.

- St. Francis of Assisi, 13th century

the telling of it

 "We temporarily added another member to the household this week when Hollyberry Red loped onto the terrace with a very wee rabbit. No bigger than a thimble, bright-eyed, incredibly soft, the rabbit was not injured by the sudden trip. The soft mouth of an Irish setter is always a surprise, it is really truly an egg can be retrieved unbroken provided you want to play games with eggs. 

Connie was home for the week end and she spent two hours at a stretch with a baby nursing bottle trying to get the tiny thing to take some nourishment. Finally she got down a few drops of warm evaporated milk via a dropper. She kept working every little while.

In four days the small one had developed personality, waggling its ears bravely, putting a paw out, giving great shiny looks when milk was in the offing. He also made small gestures toward fixing the grass up in his shoebox. 

By the time we learned from my naturalist-cousin Rob that rabbits have front teeth so designed that they must nurse sideways, so to speak, the baby was doing very well. His will to live was astonishing.

He fitted inside Connie's small palm at first, and then he seemed to begin growing. And then we gave him to a little girl whose rabbit had been run over, partly because she needed a rabbit and partly because it didn't seem practical to raise a rabbit with eight lively cockers and a livelier Irish setter romping around. Jill said everybody would get complexes. 

But I hated to see him go. The way this very small, very wild youngling adjusted to circumstances was amazing. Lugged from the nest by a fierce huge creature full of great teeth, dumped in the midst of people, he nevertheless gathered his small forces together and made up his mind to manage."

                                    -    Gladys Taber

I just finished the most wonderful book. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton - do you know of it? A true account of a woman in the English countryside, during the lockdown, who finds a baby hare alone on a path. She passes by again four hours later and it's still there, so she decides to take it home. 

When I think back on the books which have made a difference in my life, it's not ever just the story, but how it's told. Galileo's Daughter, The Salt Path, Under the Tuscan Sun, God's Hotel, Fort of Nine Towers - it's always in the telling of it. 

This woman focuses the book on the relationship between herself and the leveret (baby hare); she has a life, but it is in the background to this compelling situation which requires much of her time and attention. It's not a tragic story! No tears at the end, although hares and other wild creatures don't live as long as we do. She opened up her life, her home, her mind and her heart to this helpless animal, and she was changed by it. When I was done with the book, I looked around at my life and thought about all the extraneous things here, things I can possibly let go of. Things that would get in the way of allowing such an event to possibly overturn parts of one's life.

Chloe Dalton was the perfect person to have this experience, not only because she writes wonderfully, but because of the way she respected this creature so entirely. If you like animal stories, consider Raising Hare.

the end of Easter

 Well, it's Pentecost, the end of the Easter season.  And I got out the red tablecloth for dinner.

Tell of how th' ascended Jesus
Armed a people for his own;
How a hundred men and women
Turned the known world upside down,
To its dark and furthest corners
By the wind of heaven blown.

night lights

 I fully intended to make a blogpost today, but it was so hot, over ninety. I kept working through it all, and finally put on a bit of air conditioning at supper, but am too tired now for anything except to report that I just saw the first firefly of the season.

faces

 "I used to be a stupendous mouse-killer. Our Connecticut mice eat anything at all from my best wooden stirring spoon to a down cushion. They shred everything. But, on the other hand, there is a kind of look in the eye of a frightened mouse that arouses odd feeling in me. The beady, shiny eyes look out, so aware, so desperately aware. The small polished nose quivers. The tiny delicate paws tuck under, for defense."

   
                                               -   Gladys Taber

Have you noticed all the jumping spider videos online? They're popular pets, for the moment. The thing is, they have faces, which of course, changes everything, doesn't it? 

There is one that looks like an old man.  Rather cute, isn't he? And there's a young woman with several of them; she's made a pleasant habitat and she sings to them. Edelweiss, of all things. Here's another.

What I'm leading up to is - in the living room the other day, at the big window, and a little jumping spider dropped down in front of me. They move fast, and before this I would, as quick as possible, squish it. Spiders, more than anything, creep me out. But now - well, I was actually trying to see if this thing had a face. Too small to tell. But I find I can no longer just kill a spider so cavalierly, a breed of spider that has personality, and a face!! But they move fast. I ran to get a container and a paper, and actually managed to capture it and get it outside. I don't know what will happen next time; if they get away, they just grow bigger. That is a creepy thought, a bigger spider lurking in the house. But then, maybe I'd see the face. 

the prayer that is always appropriate

 Well, yesterday was forty days after the resurrection of Jesus, and now we are praying for the nine days before Pentecost.

"The Spirit is the fuel of the Church, the energy and life force of the Body of Christ. And we can't get him through heroic effort. We only get him by asking for him. That's why for the past two thousand years, the Church has begged for the Holy Spirit, this power from on high.

Jesus told us that the Father would never refuse someone who asked for the Holy Spirit. So ask, and ask again! The one prayer that is always appropriate, whether one is experiencing success or failure, whether one is confident or afraid, whether one is young or old, is 'Come, Holy Spirit!'"

                                   -   Bishop Robert Barron

seeing things differently

 "Carved into the high cross at Ahenny, County Tipperary, is a figure of a solitary monk sitting under a palm tree. Was he the founder of that monastery, being shown in the warm climes of Paradise? Possibly; no name is given. Or does he represent all the monks who came to Ireland from Egypt?

In Aghaboe, County Cork, is an Ogham stone near a well. Its inscription says, "Pray for St. Olan the Egyptian." Nobody knows how old it is, and some scholars say Ogham writing began in the first century. Almost all agree that the stone predates St. Patrick by at least a century. 

One thing is certain....by the sixth century,... monasticism was sweeping the world.

The term monasticism has picked up baggage in popular culture, and so it may be a good idea to place the early Irish monks in their historical context. First, dispel any mental image of Ellis Peters' fictional Br. Cadfael in his cozy sociable herbarium at his magnificent 12th century Benedictine abbey on the edge of Wales. Irish monasticism began a thousand or so years earlier, and monks in Ireland lived in cold, wet, rocky, isolated, storm-tossed places like Skellig Michael, leading a life of physical suffering, hardship, loneliness, hunger and inward struggle.   It was exactly the life that they sought."

                                  -    Connie Marshner, Monastery and High Cross

I've been taking too long reading this book, but now am trying to attend. It is very intriguing to think of Egyptian and Armenian monks traveling to Ireland and sharing their techniques in stonework and illumination of manuscripts. 

The rhododendron out back looks so pretty; it's so big. They do just grow. I have no problem with that. And there's another further out over the brook.

I can't complain about the views out my bedroom window.

One of the sewing channels I sometimes watch on youtube is an English woman who was recently showing how often she makes her favorite (should I say "favourite"?) patterns, the ones which suit her taste and her lifestyle. She would rather adapt one of her existing patterns than always be buying new ones. She had a style of tank top she's made - I don't know, eleven times? In different fabrics, as well as other colors. There was something about this video that struck me as something I hadn't realized before. I do have an a-line dress pattern I've made at least five times, but I think that's because it's a basic, classic style. It's hard to explain, but I suddenly was looking differently at my sewing aspirations.

So, looking to sew myself something versatile, I noticed on my pinterest page a few sleeveless tops with a slight swingy-ness to them. I actually have a tee shirt pattern, so I adapted it to be fuller. 

I think I've had this deep green broadcloth for around forty years? Maybe thirty five. It's a cotton-poly and I don't love it, but it's my guinea pig for this project. I thought I'd make the bias binding rather than using the bought one, and this cotton lawn has the same green in it - a bit lighter - so I've been researching all the simple ways of cutting bias strips. This is a method I hadn't seen before. There are many methods! Anyway, I'm hoping I can tweak this to suit me and then have a few on hand for summer. I feel like I have a new way of approaching my sewing plans. 

going ahead

 "We must be slaves of either time or health; we cannot dispose of either as we will! If we thought of acting only when all the conditions were favorable, we would pass our lives in doing nothing; or at least we would get out of life very little of what it can give us.

Go ahead! That is a phrase I like so much. Even if everything is far from perfect, we must learn to say it. And things will go ahead, since joy does not come from without or from circumstances. Its principal source is within us. That is why faith is such a sure source of happiness, even now. The faithful who keep themselves in a state of grace, or who see that they return to it without delay whenever necessary, possess in their souls God who is infinite Goodness. And it is his presence that keeps them in peace. Troubles and disturbing events will always cause suffering; it is a law of life, and we cannot alter it.

We shall never banish suffering in our life, but we can forbid it entrance to our soul, or at any rate to the higher part of the soul. We are there, as it were, on a mountain, and we regard our troubles as the dweller upon the mountain contemplates the storm sweeping over the plain. But we do not reach that height all at once; we have to arrive at it by stages. The thousand and one petty annoyances that each day brings are our training. We must calmly watch them come and go. To want to avoid them all is impossible; to allow them to upset us is a weakness. There will always be some cloud on the horizon of our lives. But do not let any of these things stop you, or even affect you. In short: God ahead!

                          
                                                -   Dom Augustin Guillerand, from Magnificat, May 2025

acts of faith

May twenty second, and this is as warm as it got. We've been living in a dream world with summer-like temperatures, to the point where it seemed foolish to not plant some things in the garden. It's been steadily ten degrees warmer than normal, the ground was warmed up - why wait? But tomatoes are not hardy and night temperatures going down lately into the forties; my brother covered them up a couple of days ago with plastic.

And here we are this week, with three days in a row supposed to be in the fifties, except today, with rain all day, it never got even that high.

"Planting is an act of faith."

-  Gladys Taber

staying in place

 "In the mosaic that is the Church, each one of us is a living tile. While we know that each of us has value only as part of the whole, we are also aware that if one of us is missing the mosaic is incomplete.

Not all the tiles of this mosaic are the same, of course....We all have a specific task to be carried out right where we are, an individual mission to remain faithful to. Thus, as tiles in the Church's mosaic, we must remain in the place assigned to us. Carrying out our specific duty, we give of ourselves, and this is also the best way to find true communion with our neighbors. Just like in a living body, this reciprocal giving and receiving increases the unity in the splendid mosaic that is the Church.

So let us remember that we are living tiles of the Church, all linked to one another, and each one participating in the whole. If a particular tile is missing, everyone lacks something, and all suffer the consequences. So we all need to accomplish our task faithfully, which means doing God's will moment by moment."

                                                    -   Chiara Lubich, from Magnificat, May 2025

spring enjoyments

 

We're going to read A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery, on the Literary Life podcast, and Angelina is explaining where her stories are coming from. This is interesting, and helpful, because her work seems depressing to me, but it isn't supposed to be. So, I should be able to read it without being brought low, so to speak. 

I realized the other day that it was May, and that means window-washing season. Except I so love to do it on days where it's breeze, dry and cool(ish), and it's not. It's like summer most of the time. But I've got to do it anyway, and I wash the bathroom window yesterday. Then I made a new curtain.

I have to figure out a valance, since I used all this gingham for the lower window. It isn't this dark; it's more of a slightly lime, summery shade, and I have a piece of cotton jersey which could be a valance, if I can figure out the shape, since it's a large scrap. 

We're back to having regular bouts of rain, which makes garden prep kind of iffy. But I've been starting some seeds inside, and have a watermelon sprout, and a few Bachelor's Buttons, too. 

Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them.

                              Romans 12:6

dark and unfathomable mysteries

 As soon as the new pope was elected and he chose the name Leo XIV, I looked up Pope Leo XIII. I ordered a biography of him and two things he wrote. I knew the new pope might not necessarily be identifying with that particular Leo, but I didn't want to waste any time in trying to understand who he is. 

One thing I never expected - to be the same age as a pope. 

Anyway, he wrote an encyclical in response to the rise of socialism, which was in its youth back then. Now it seems to be everywhere. 

"The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death. Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery."

                                              -  Rerum Novarum - On Capital and Labor, 1891,  Pope Leo XIII 

be joyful

 A Happy Mother's Day to all mothers in the U.S. I hope cat mothers are included in this holiday.

Be Joyful, Mary

Be joyful, Mary, heav'nly Queen,
Gaude, Maria!
Your Son who died was living seen, Alleluia
Laetare, O Maria!

The Son you bore by heaven's grace,
Gaude, Maria!
Did all our guilt and sin efface, Alleluia
Laetare, O Maria!

The Lord has risen from the dead,
Gaude, Maria!
He rose with might, as he had said, Alleluia
Laetare, O Maria!

rain and sun, bless the Lord

 Oh, the rain we've been having. And yesterday it was so cool and damp I actually shut all the windows and turned the heat back up. But I didn't hear it come on, so I used the oven twice, ironed, and made a thick soup for my supper, all the help to warm up the place

Later, the sun came out!

The trees are well past blooming, but now the azalea 

and the bridal wreath, are having their turns.

My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair,
And I must off to sleepsin-by, and not forget my prayer.

But slumber hold me tightly till I waken in the dawn,
And hear the thrushes singing in the lilacs round the lawn.

RLS

The American Robin is of the thrush family, but we don't have lilacs in our lawn.

getting outside in between the raindrops

 It's pouring out now, and is supposed to continue tomorrow. But it was beautiful out earlier and I took advantage of it - I pulled up weeds in the two raised beds I'm going to use and dumped a bag or topsoil in one of them. This bed has been the repository of all kinds of raw kitchen scraps and sticks for the past year, and I usually have not bothered to chop up very much of it. So, you'll never guess what I found out there - 

This was growing out of a turnip.

Amazing. And I guess the seeds are in here 

I have never entertained the idea of growing turnips, but I should look at these and see if there are seeds in there. Don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth!

I plopped it in the hobnail "basket" on the table, and you-know-who was unable to contain her curiosity.

It was very mucky outside, around the raised beds; my brother rototilled the pathway around the beds but inside the fencing, but if the weather doesn't get drier, I don't know how he'll manage. His approach to gardening is different from mine. I spend the money to enrich the soil - yes, it's an expense and that's why I am focusing on them, one at a time. His philosophy is that a summer garden should save money, and so you want to spend as little as possible. He knows what he's doing and has gardened many more years than I have, but I want to improve the soil, not just grow things. We will also have to try to keep our rabbit friends out, but that will be trial and error. 

There is a particular rabbit who I often see out my bedroom window, eating his grass or just resting amongst the forsythia hedge. It seems that every year there is one I can watch out there, but it can't be the same each time, since I don't think wild rabbits have a long life, being a prey animal. But there's always one who enjoys this patch and I'm happy to see him out there.

I like this photo.

He has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.

- Robert Louis Stevenson, from The Dumb Soldier

I've happened upon Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, with illustrations by Tasha Tudor. 

Delightful beyond anything, a match made in heaven. 

returning things

 I saw two rainbows today, and almost by chance. We went to the supermarket as it was getting dark, with a thunderstorm looming. It didn't come to fruition, but as I was putting away the groceries I just happened to see the first one out a window, nice and clear. 

After supper I was reading and turned to look outside for no reason, and there was another, and in a different spot than usual. They always appear in the back yard, but this was over to the side.

The catbirds are back. Or, one is. I don't know how many return every spring. Anyway, I'm happy to hear their warblings and mewings.

With skirmish and capricious passagings,
and murmurs musical and swift jug jug

-  from Coleridge's The Nightingale

"The May Magnificat"

 May is Mary's month, and I

Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature's motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this:
Spring's universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfed cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—

This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

                -  Gerard Manley Hopkins

oriole in my neighbor's apple tree

grave-robbing

 "St. John's narrative of the Resurrection opens on the morning of the first day of the week. It is still dark - just the way it was at the beginning of time before God said, 'Let there be light (Gen. 1:3). But a light is about to shine, and a new creation is about to appear.

The stone had been rolled away. That stone, blocking entrance to the tomb of Jesus, stands for the finality of death. When someone we love dies, it is as though a great stone is rolled across them, permanently blocking our access to them. And this is why we weep at death - not just in grief but in a kind of existential frustration.

But the stone had been rolled away. Undoubtedly, Mary Magdalene thought a grave robber had been at work. The wonderful Johannine irony is that the greatest of grave robbers had indeed been at work. The Lord said to the prophet Ezechiel, 'I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves' (Ezek. 37:12)  What was dreamed about, what endured as a hope against hope, has become a reality. God has opened the grave of his Son."

                                                             -   Bishop Robert Barron: a meditation on John 20:1-9

new life on the plum tree

Every time I see a rabbit outside, I wonder if it's the one we rescued from the cat last summer. Did he even survive? 

rather splotchy markings

Death and Satan rule no longer

found on pinterest

but if you find that hard to believe - here

Happy Easter!