birds and butterflies, cats and Chesterton

I really need to bring a camera when I go into the garden; there was a catbird complaining about something in a nearby bush, and I thought it would have made a cute little film. When I looked around to see who he was upset with, there was one of Diane's fluffy yellow cats - Leo, or Leon - I can't tell them apart. Then as I watered, some sprayed over the zinnias and a monarch butterfly rose up. I need to at least have the thing nearby, in case.

My camera seems to have a smear on the lens, or something. It's old - I need a new point and shoot.

 I've got hold of Maisie Ward's biography of G. K. Chesterton - it's great.

"My great ambition is to give a party at which everybody should meet everybody else and like them very much."

AN INVITATION

Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
requests the pleasure
Of humanity's company
to tea on Dec. 25th 1896.
Humanity Esq., The Earth, Cosmos E.

"G.K. liked everybody very much, and everything very much. He liked even the things most of us dislike. He liked to get wet. He liked to be tired. After that one short period of struggle he liked to call himself 'always perfectly happy'. And therefore he wanted to say, 'Thank you'."

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing,
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

EVENSONG

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?