staying dry

 We had rain all day again; so much that I ordered the groceries for delivery. 

Puddles everywhere.

But we were cozy in the house, and I made broccoli soup. Which is so easy, so little effort, and while it's cooking, there's the onion, garlic and chicken broth aromas, which are very salutary when you've recovering from a headache. That, and tuna sandwiches were a perfectly fine supper.

I made the casing for the skirt today, and I've got to thread the elastic through it to see if I like the fullness. If it's too much, I'll have to re-do one of the side seams to make it narrower. Which is a relative term, since it's going to be as gathered as will look well. It's a very drapey and thin-ish rayon fabric, so it shouldn't be bulky even with a lot of gathers. We'll see how it looks.

I make small granola batches on the stovetop, which are very fast to do. The other day I was about to put away the rolled oats, when the container dropped and oats went all over the floor - I probably spilled two cups or more! Without a second thought, I scooped them off the floor and put them back in the box. Please don't imagine my floor is clean; I just could not bear to lose those oats, so I put the idea of any grossness right out of my mind instantly. But I also told myself that maybe I should make a batch every day for a while, basically to keep my eye on any unwanted somethings in the container, rather than be wondering if any crawlies are in the box. To use it up sooner than later seemed a good idea. So I made another batch today; it takes fifteen minutes or less from start to finish. And I didn't find anything unusual in the oats, so far. 

Well, Holy Week is upon us. There is a little piece in Magnificat today about Elizabeth Jennings, the poet. She struggled with mental illness, but her poetry and her faith kept her going.

Teach me how you love and have to die
 And I will try                                         
  Somehow to forget myself and give        
   Life and joy so dead things start to life   
    Let me show now an untrammeled joy     
     Gold without alloy.                                    

Something to remember for this week, I think.                           

cold and dry

 I was cooking one day, came into my room briefly, and realized I could hear a mockingbird not very far off. He was in our neighbor's apple tree! 

It's been cold the past few days - like we expect March to be - and my friend has been silent. Of course! He thought it was April, and it wasn't!

We got a new clothes dryer delivered today; I hope it will be half as good as the old one, which I hated to see go. But it was getting loud - the motor. We bought a very stripped-down model. No smart dryer for us, thanks. I have no problem telling it what to do. 

a pot full of vegetables

 It seems every year that I could never have a pot big enough to contain the corned beef, the potatoes, carrots and big cabbage wedges on St. Patrick's Day. I resent the potatoes, basically just a starch and taking up space better used by the vegetables, but what to do? 

Today I had the idea to cook the potatoes with their skins in another pot, and just mash them up, with lots of butter. Everybody would like that, and there'd be more room for the vegetables. This worked beautifully! I had cooked the meat yesterday, so I just increased the liquid and used that for the veg. I'll have to make a note of this.

We sang Be Thou My Vision at mass, and I felt very Irish singing this very obviously Irish melody.

Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word;
I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord.

Amen

a winner

I had a package of six skinless, boneless chicken thighs, so I seasoned them well and baked them. We were going to have them like that with some veg, but I kept thinking of the cassoulet, knowing I could improve on the meal if I just had a little more time. My brother was game, so I went ahead with the recipe. There was still some pepperoni (and I'm convinced that sausage is very important to this dish), and it came out so good. I'm going to make this any time I have only enough meat for one meal, because this stretches it out to two.

a squeaky din

 A few weeks ago, we'd run into scores of blackbirds flying over the main road around eight a.m. I would bring my camera, but it didn't always happen.

This morning I heard the noise outside, and there they were out my window, in the neighbors' yards. I love hearing their squeaky conversations.

it must be spring

 Oh the day was absolutely dreamy!  Late morning as I was opening the east-facing windows, I realized the bird singing far in the distance was a mockingbird; they never sing in March. But they don't know months; they only know air temperatures. And possibly they also get Spring Fever. 

Speaking of spring fever, I was able to set up my little greenhouse.

I can put in the shelves another day, and the plastic cover when it cools off. An if we have a snowstorm - I'll take my chances.

There was a recipe in the March British Country Living for an Irish soda bread with some cheddar in it which caught my eye. I grated some whiskey-laced cheese from Trader Joe's that I bought just for this purpose, the St. Patrick's Day dinner on Sunday.

It also called for bacon, but the corned beef will be quite salty enough, so I decided on some raisins. A good decision!

How yummy it is. But when I make it again I'll have to figure out a better baking temperature. It was quite high, but the outside was getting burnt while the inside was still gummy; I turned it down a couple of times and had to guess. But it worked and now it's in the freezer. I'll cook the corned beef on Saturday, and cook the vegetables in the liquid on Sunday, as I won't have time to do the whole thing then. 

I have a better photo of my rayon skirt fabric -

I'm just going to cut two rectangles, but I have to figure out how much fullness I want in the gathered waist.

Another poem by Christina Rossetti:

SISTER MAUDE

Who told my mother of my shame,
Who told my father of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
Who lurked to spy and peer.

Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world
And worthy of a queen's embrace.

You might have spared his soul, sister,
Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
He'd never have looked at you.*

My father may sleep in Paradise,
My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
Either early or late.

My father may wear a golden gown,
My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
Perhaps they'd let us in:
But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,
Bide you with death and sin.

*I did get a charge out of that.

blooming

 The so-called Christmas cactus at the library.

 A woman actually asked me one day how I was caring for it. I had nothing to tell her. I water it a couple of times a week - it's in a good spot! I don't know.

"to use this day well"

 We were out much of the day - there was a wind advisory. Well, it's March, isn't it? Oh, the wind. But when the strong winds come after a load of rain, surely it must help to dry things out. And it must be blowing in the warm air that's coming tomorrow: fifty eight, it's supposed to be! 

Along the road we noticed how high the river was - we were going to the shore to visit cousins - and next door to their place, the neighbor had what looked like a lake in the back yard.

I guess they are that much lower than my cousin's, but we saw several properties with ponds in their yards; that's how much rain we've had around here. 

I knew we might be out for a while, so I mixed up some pastry dough yesterday, and this morning was able to bake a pie crust. This made it easy to whip up a quiche when we got home. One doesn't always feel like doing these things ahead, but it would have been another half hour if I'd left it for later.

The cats, meanwhile, had to forgo lunch and I wonder what they thought about that. I suppose they just waited till we came, maybe knowing it was a longer while than usual, and just accepting it. But cats live in the present, don't they? So I may be concerned for nothing.

"...Better to live one day at a time. This is a hard task, often, for we tend to keep going to the past and trying to live it over again or looking ahead and uselessly trying to forecast tomorrow and next week and next year. But somebody has said all the time we really have is the NOW. We have today.

To use this day well, that is about the sum of it."

                                              -  Gladys Taber

living in a wilderness

 "The world, for Saint John (1 Jn 2:15), is not creation as God made it. It is what the 'Prince of this world' and the sinners who follow him have made it. It is no longer the dwelling-place of the children of God and his sanctuary, but the wilderness left by his absence, where everything is organized with a view to sin.

We have to decide first of all between the prince of this world and Christ. Humanity has gone astray by following the promptings of pride and of pleasure-seeking egotism. The new Christian is first of all someone who wants to break with this error and to follow the Son of Man, who came not to be served but to serve and give his life."

                                                             -  Fr. Louis Bouyer, from Magnificat, March 2024

a day's work

 Well, I finished Howards End; I’m relieved. Of course, it is well written. Of course, it’s a good story. But I didn’t *like* it. This may be due to imperfections in my attitude or understanding, but there it is; I’m glad to finish it.

Robins have been around.

I've been thinking of a drapey, spring skirt; I bought a rayon print in a nice strong but muted turquoise with - for lack of a better term - animal print stripes. Which sounds weird, but the colors are brown, sort of a gold, off-white and dark red. I have a brown sweater, and probably other things I can wear with it and I think an elastic waist is the simplest course.

The color is washed out in this picture, but there's something about brown and turquoise, or robin's egg blue - it speaks to me of spring. And two yards cost me fourteen dollars from denverfabrics.com. I need to figure out how wide I want the casing to be, and what size rectangles for the front and back pieces.

We were supposed to go see the new film about Mother Cabrini with some folks from church, but I've got a slight intestinal thing. I thought I'd better stay home. Three of my co-workers have had terrible bugs run through their families in the last three weeks, and how do I know if I'm a carrier? Anyway, I washed the bathroom floor and cleaned the kitchen counters, which was satisfying, and I felt better for staying home. 

When I go to the basement to bring up something, I'm usually juggling the stuff or I use a plastic bag. But there was a sturdy basket hanging down there which I suddenly remembered. I cleaned it up, and now it serves as a very handy and far more pleasant way of carrying things up from my shopping trips downstairs.

So we, when this day's work is o'er,
And shades of night return once more,
Our path of trial safely trod,
Shall give the glory to our God.

fighting words

 Another day which turned out better and warmer than expected, or predicted. My thermometer read sixty eight!! We are going to be spoiled.

I was reading in the first chapter of St. Mark's gospel this morning. Verse 1:  "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
I have Bishop Barrons' Word on Fire gospels, with loads of commentary from the past two thousand years - a lot of it is his.  He said something about this verse which I never heard before: "The opening line of Mark's Gospel.....can sound anodyne and harmlessly pious to us, but in the first century, those were fighting words.

Mark's Greek term, euangelion, which we render as 'good news', was a word that was typically used to describe an imperial victory. When the emperor won a battle or quelled a rebellion, he sent evangelists ahead with the good news.

Do you see how subversive Mark's words were? He was writing from Rome, from the belly of the beast, from the heart of the empire whose leaders had killed his friends Peter and Paul just a few years before, and he was declaring that the true victory didn't have a thing to do with Caesar, but rather with someone whom Caesar had put to death and whom God raised up.

And just to rub it in, he refers to this resurrected Lord as 'Son of God.' Ever since the time of Augustus, 'Son of God' was a title claimed by the Roman emperor."

second Sunday of Lent

 Oh, what a day - bright sun and sixty degrees out! I opened windows while cooking. I wore my sandals all day.

A Prodigal Son

Does that lamp still burn in my Father's house,
Which he kindled the night I went away?
I turned once beneath the cedar boughs,
And marked it gleam with a golden ray;
Did he think to light me home some day?

Hungry here with the crunching swine,
Hungry harvest have I to reap;
In a dream I count my Father's kine,
I hear the tinkling bells of his sheep,
I watch his lambs that browse and leap.

There is plenty of bread at home,
His servants have bread enough and to spare;
The purple wine-fat froths with foam,
Oil and spices make sweet the air,
While I perish hungry and bare,

Rich and blessed those servants, rather
Than I who see not my Father's face!
I will arise and go to my Father: -
"Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace,
Grant me, Father, a servant's place."

-  Christina Rossetti

March planning

 There was a wind advisory from three pm, but it didn’t seem like much until an hour ago, with the rain battering my window; now it’s quieter. I wonder if my idea to set up the portable greenhouse on Saturday is too over-eagerness for what is often a wild month. I haven’t started any seeds but having it set up would be useful.

I used to be able to keep seedlings in the house, but I know somebody will find them and chew them (not Annie!), so I’d like to be able to put them right outside as soon as they sprout.

Thank God she sleeps sometimes.

cassoulet, at last!

 Oh, what a day. We are to have three days of temps in the fifties, but cloudy. Well, today wasn't; we had mostly sun! Windows open, birds singing. So hopeful and springlike!

I like to buy meat on sale, of course. But sometimes the manager's specials don't amount to much; I got a one-pound package of Angus stew beef for six dollars but there wasn't another. So, I browned it, thinking of what an insipid stew it would make. What other protein could I put in? And then I thought of cassoulet - something I never made but always wondered about. I did some research, then found a vegetarian version  I used that as a starting point. 

After browning the beef, I cut up a leek and a red onion. I put in a good handful of "baby" carrots and sliced two celery stalks in thick pieces. I sauteed this with half a teaspoon of salt and one quarter of pepper, for fifteen minutes. I then added three cans of cannellini (drained and rinsed), a bay leaf, some parsley, lots of thyme, a (smaller) can of diced tomatoes, quart of water with some soup base - some garlic, some chicken - and the meat. Also, since cassoulet usually has some sausage in it, I had a little bag of sliced pepperoni, so I put in lots after cutting the slices into half moons. This cooked for half an hour.

I suppose the deliciousness of it came from the pepperoni, but whatever - I used what I had and would have made do without it. I am really pleased at this idea, since I don't tend to think of the beans when I want more protein. I think of them as carbs and don't want to eat lots, but this recipe is a keeper and I'll add cannellini to the new shopping list.

transfigurations

 "When we encounter Jesus Christ, we encounter ourselves - ourselves, that is, not as we are but as we are to become. Jesus, in revealing his own glory, reveals also the glory that is to be ours,,,,

The apostles, privileged to witness the Transfiguration, certainly knew our Lord better as a result. The human veil over his divinity was for a moment lifted, and they beheld his heavenly splendor....Saint Augustine says that the transfigured Christ reveals what his body is to become. We are to be transfigured as well. The purpose of everything in our faith - of all doctrines and sacraments - is to change us from one degree of glory to another....We are to hear the words of the Father applied to ourselves: This is my beloved Son....The entire Christian life is to train our ears to hear these words and our hearts to accept them."

                                                             -  Fr. Paul Scalia, from Magnificat, February 2024

Fra Angelico

"Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them."

                                                                - Mark 9:2-3

blooming

 It was cold today, mid-thirties and breezy, but the sun was bright and there's something in the air - spring! The birds are singing a lot more now. It's so welcome. 

The Christmas cactus at the library is blooming again! 

Does that mean it's spring?

"Son, Remember"

 I laid beside thy gate, am Lazarus;
See me or see me not, I still am there,
Hungry and thirsty, sore and sick and bare,
Dog-comforted and crumbs-solicitous:
Daintily clothed, with dainties for thy fare:
Thus a world's wonder thou art quit of care,
And be I seen or not seen I am thus.
One day a worm for thee, a worm for me:
With my worm angel songs and trumpet burst
And plenitude an end of all desire:
But what for thee, alas! but what for thee?
Fire and an unextinguishable thirst,
Thirst in an unextinguishable fire.

- Christina Rossetti

building up and repairing

 When you are fasting, i.e., eating much less than usual, you find you have more time to do other things! Not to mention that I have more energy; I'm becoming more aware of a sluggish digestion, and it's just better to have less. And I never have been one to stuff myself, so - well, it's very interesting. 

When I was sick, I ordered some groceries and I got a load of bananas, thinking fruit might agree with me. Of course, one can never eat all the bananas, so today I made up a batch of double chocolate banana bread, and now it's in the freezer, waiting for Easter, or later. 

My red and green Christmas rosary, of which I'm very fond, has painted beads, not colored glass, and they've been peeling. I found matching nail polishes and am slowly touching them up. I do no more than one a day, because I don't like the smell of the polish in the house. 

So it will take a little while. 

This, from an article in Plough magazine:

"When you build a thing, you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it."

                                                   -  Christopher Alexander

It sounds like God's work.

just get a cat

Some people online are wondering if God has a sense of humor. These folks just need to spend some time with a cat.

true life

 “The God of the philosophers lives in the mind that knows him, receives life by the fact that he is known, lives as long as he is known, and dies when he is denied. But the true God gives life to the mind that is known by him.

Therefore Jesus said, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob… is a God not of the dead, but of the living. So true is it that the Lord is the ‘Living God’ that all those whose God he is will live forever, because he is their God. 

Such was the argument that Jesus gave to the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. If God was the ‘God of Abraham’ then Abraham must rise from the dead: no one who has the living God for his Lord can stay dead. He is our God only if we belong entirely to him. To belong entirely to life is to have passed from death to life.”

                                                               -  Thomas Merton

more time for reading

 

It was so pretty this morning.  Snow falling lightly, and it’s been doing that every night lately - just to cover. I’ve been sick, so in between trying to keep up with laundry and supper things, I have plenty of time to read. 

I'm fully absorbed in reading The Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge. I was thinking of reading it again this year, and then Sarah Clarkson picked it for the next Patreon book, for next month. So I was going to wait till March to pick it up, but here I was, with a couple of non-fiction books, but who can read only that all the time, and especially when sick?

It has happened to me more than once when sick -  reading a story that drew me in so completely and spoke to me in a way that I might not have appreciated at a different time. I read this once before, but I hardly remember any of the detail. I almost feel I should turn around and start it again after I'm done with this go-round. Maybe I will! If a book speaks to you to that extent, then maybe more time should be spent with it, to absorb whatever it is you are supposed to learn from it.

But I've also got St. Bernard's On Consideration:

Do you ask what piety is? It is leaving time for consideration.

I need to consider what it is that draws me to this Goudge novel.

"we are going to see how God loved us"

 "Preparation for Lent begins with desire. We exist to desire God. As Saint Augustine says, "My heart is restless until it rests in thee." In this is the preparation for Lent: touching a desire for God that is deep down in the heart. Desire is like a flame, it starts small and it grows. Lent should fan our desire for God into a bonfire....Each one of us can enter into his own heart and look for that desire for God. It might be a little flame barely visible, or it might already be a bonfire in us. Be that as it may, we are going to see how God loved us. This is what Lent is all about. Like Zacchaeus we are going to climb a big tree of faith so as to watch that no word of those last weeks of Christ's life passes in one ear and out the other. His every act, his every word, must be enclosed in our desire, for if we are to fulfill our desire to see him when the door of death opens (and even before, for the kingdom of God begins now) we have to imitate him whom we are going to look at. This will require that we empty ourselves of many things, since the kind of fiery desire we must have takes a lot of space. It is not just a little kindling that we are going to ignite, but huge dry wood. We must desire to empty every corner of ourselves of everything but this person called Jesus Christ, God and man, who died and rose so that we might see the face of his Father and meet the Triune God, the goal of all who have been born.

How does one get this great desire? The answer is always the same: prayer, fasting, and mortification. But prayer can be very simple. God, I believe; help my unbelief. In that prayer God will send faith, and faith is the match that kindles desire....[We] begin fasting not only from food, but from whatever leads us to run away from the new life God offers. It is in his strength, and his strength alone, that we are going to make this forthcoming Lent a time of deep and thorough cleansing. It is in him and through him that we will put our house in order so that we might go forth from it to put his order into the world. Above all, we must be open to the gifts of God, to the charity, the love with which the Father loves each of us."

                                                                   -  Catherine de Hueck Doherty

a big dose of snow magic

 Well, it's done snowing; we got roughly a foot. It was supposed to continue till seven o'clock this evening, but things have turned east. That part of the magic is over. 

Most of these photos were taken around seven this morning. It was so enchanting I kept going from window to window, noticing the dancing snowflakes,

the wet snow sticking to all the shrubbery around.

The contrast of color here and there against the mostly white landscape

and just the general fluffiness of it all. I have seen it a hundred times, but never tire of it when it comes again.

sort of a fishbowl effect here - I like it!

under glass

My boss buys bouquets for our birthdays, but when I bring mine home, after a day or two my eyes burn, I feel it in my breathing. So I thought I'd better tell her. The next time she bought two little Christmas or crab cactuses. They sat on my desk so pretty, and then hours later I wondered why my eyes were burning. I moved them to a far windowsill. 

This last birthday, she gave me a terrarium. It's the easiest thing in the world! No flowers, no fragrance. I can feel the humidity when I remove the glass cover, and when it seems less humid in there I just spray in some water. So far, so good!

true hearts

 O God, who teach us that you abide
in hearts that are just and true,
grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace
as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.

               - Magnificat, February, 2024

it might as well be spring

It is entirely spring-like today; I saw a neighbor pruning his grape vines earlier. Why not? Although I know nothing of grapevines. It's going to snow on Tuesday.

About a week ago, a chunk of our wooden back-door stoop broke off; well, the house is sixty three years old. My brother planned to fix it, but it's winter. But then it got warm! And today, when he gets out of work earlier than on weekdays, he is working on it. The cats are closed in the spare room, where I'm sure Annie feels safe from all the noise, and Daisy feels overwhelmingly curious, and maybe a little scared, but not enough to quell the curiosity.

I finished the RFK Jr. book - it was excellent. I like him. May God keep him alive. I was reading Towers in the Mist, but it's one of Goudge's historical ones, and I can't seem to get in the mood for it, so I've put it aside. I'm still going through Christina Rossetti's poems.

And somebody dropped off the cat stories at the library this week. That's more my cup of tea at the moment.

just a complaint

 I don't know what this looks like to you, but it's a new book that's coming apart at the spine. 

One of my jobs at the library is to repair books, and in the past few months I'm seeing new books - some brand new - just falling apart, way before their time. It isn't rough treatment by the patrons; they are poorly made. 

bright was the day

 It's the feast of St. Agatha. "She was martyred in Catania, Sicily, most likely during the persecution of Decius in 251." from Magnificat, February 2024. 

From a hymn: Bright shall the day of Saint Agatha rise. And it was bright this morning! We around here are excited about this because we've had so many rainy and cloudy days in recent weeks. The day of the fabulous sunset was the first sunny one in ages. I think overcast days have their beauty, but when there are so many -  well, we are enjoying the sun for now.

bright spectacle

 There was a spectacular sunset and I almost missed it. I just happened to go to the front of the house for something, and wow! 

The camera never seems as enthusiastic about sunsets as me. It was more brilliant than this. Believe me!

my sympathies

 I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't live where there are snowfalls.

 I think it’s so cute when cats turn in their paws like this.