I watched one afternoon in October to see my neighbor’s chainsaw whir and whine and whistle clean through the trunk of his tree, and I felt the wrongness of it, as he stood on a ladder to dismantle it limb-by-limb. “I was putting off knowing it. All that day there had been a crashing in … Continue reading Upon the Death of a Bradford Pear
In The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett wrote of a woman named Mrs. Almira Todd, who lived in a clapboard house on the coast of Maine---a gardener and a landlady and "an ardent lover of herbs, both wild and tame." They grew out from her gray-shingled walls and up her steep gables, … Continue reading Scent on a Spring Breeze
A True Story from Home To me, Mrs. Olave Thurston was the lady in my grandpa’s stories---as if she was another Ma Ingalls or Miss Rumphius. When we ate chicken for dinner, Papa would tell how Mrs. Thurston raised, butchered, and boiled her own. When spring came and I cut fresh flowers for the table, … Continue reading Gravestone Flowers
May you wake to the sun that wakes the bees in their boxes and by which you can see your work and spot the queen laying her eggs in golden wombs of light. May you hear the hum of all twenty-nine colonies and may it harmonize with the song of the robins and the breeze … Continue reading For the Beekeeper
"And on the banks... there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing." ~ Ezekiel 47:12 Visiting the … Continue reading Honeybees & a Wildflower Market
Whenever Papa Larry tells of the lavender farm he and Nanny visited up in Maine, I stop to listen, because I can almost smell the sweetness of flowers and sea. And then he'll reminisce to when they met the Lupine Lady herself--- Mrs. Barabara Cooney, who wrote the book Miss Rumphius. This past Christmas, Joel … Continue reading Acres of Lupines
"There is, and there continues to be, a resurrection." ~ Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality Things that made me happy in April: Purple clover Freshly stacked wood and a yellow wheelbarrow Orange juice in a jar How Andrew Peterson puts words to spring, like: "The hills remember green again" My Tuesday morning routine: coffee, write, check … Continue reading Resurrection & Sweet Alyssum Sprouts
A New Creation Poem Remember that at one time you were a howling wilderness, the haunt of hyenas who cackled among the thistles under a ghost moon. But now in Christ Jesus you are a fresh spring, cooling the rocks and watering the hills that roll under a young sun.
We stood at my grandma Karen’s grave on Palm Sunday, the wind matting the grass and making all the fake grave flowers tremble. Dad brought a bundle of daffodils from Papa Larry’s garden, and as he tucked them in the granite vase, I said I hoped they wouldn’t blow away. But it’s early April and … Continue reading Grave Flowers
"A blackbird, singing undisturbed on the outskirts of the wood, showed that there was nothing alarming there, and in the other direction, along the brook, all was plain to be seen, empty and quiet. The warren was at peace.” ~ Richard Adams, Watership Down Good things in March: Spring robin on the front stoop Reading … Continue reading Honey, Waffles, & Ducklings
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