A Host of Golden Daffodils

The Little Things

Sunday was a special day all round -- beginning with pancakes for everyone! Claui, Justin, and Josie along with Uncle Ethan who was here for a quick visit. I wish I had gotten pictures, especially of Josie twirling and rough housing with her daddy on the sofa, then falling down and saying Wow! - while cutting her eyes at Ethan to make sure he was appreciating the show. (He was -- he said Wow! too.)

After the gang left, I took advantage of the warm, clear day to get outside, pull some weeds, and clear some space for future planting of some deer-resistant pretties. (Does anyone have any suggestions?)

I had to get up close to spot this little grape hyacinth amid the weeds -- may it multiply!

A few early wasps and bees are out and I saw one tiny blue butterfly -- which disappeared before I could grab my camera.

The minute pretty purple blooms of invasive Creeping Charlie. I harden my heart and out it goes!

And the mottled foliage of a trillium.

A Confederate violet -- technically a weed but I made an executive decision and left it.

What a day! Pancakes, family, and digging in the dirt! And a big bucket of spring green for the chickens to enjoy.

Invocation by Jeanne Lohmann

Photo by Lynn Parsons

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,
to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,
to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.
Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing
solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides 
and does not come easy to speech. The pebbles 
we hold in our mouths help us to practice song,
and we sing to the sea. May the things of this world
be preserved to us, their beautiful secret
vocabularies. We are dreaming it over and new,
the language of our tribe, music we hear
we can only acknowledge. May the naming powers
be granted. Our words are feathers that fly
on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.

I encountered this poem in Parker J. Palmer's On the Brink of Everything -- of which, more on another day.

From Ten Years Ago--A Good Chicken

Living Water

Josie is a Pancake-Eating Girl

Her mama told me that the next morning, when she asked Josie what she wanted for breakfast, Josie suggested they come up here and have some more pancakes. 

Yesterday . . .

Time To Be In Earnest

I'm a long time fan of the late P. D. James and her admirable mysteries. When a friend lent me James's 'fragment of an autobiography', I leapt in.

It is, indeed, a fragment -- it's a record of her seventy-seventh year --places visited, events attended, honors won, people met -- interspersed with looks backward at her life and reflections on aging. (The title comes from Dr. Samuel Johnson's assertion that at seventy-seven, it's time to be in earnest about one's life. I shall keep that in mind as I frivol away the rest of my seventy-sixth year.)

 

There is some excellent advice for would-be writers: ". . . read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing, and to see how writers have achieved their results. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided. 

"Practise writing in whatever form; the craft is learned by practicing it, not by talking about it . . .

"Increase your vocabulary; the raw material of the writer is words and the more we have available and can use effectively and with confidence the better.

"Welcome experience. This means going through life with all senses open: observing, feeling, relating to other people. Nothing that happens to a writer need ever be lost."

Speaking of good writing, here's a lovely paragraph from the book that resonates now, at the vernal equinox as the daffodils and crocuses bloom and the weeping cherry is veiled in palest pink to welcome Spring:

"I stood for a moment in complete silence broken only by the note of a single bird and the susurration of the breeze in the wayside grasses. It was one of those moments of happiness and contentment which give reality to death since, however long we have to live, there are never enough springs."

Eventide -- Robert's View

Josie and the New Stuff