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