This week we bid goodbye to summer. I confess I’m not sorry to see it go. This series of days between June and September has been unusually hot, long, and dry. Oregon summers typically aren’t like that, so enduring this non-ending chain of boiling afternoons and humid evenings has taxed all of us. I’m hoping […]
Flowers
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Flowers Understand
The clematis bloomed this week. We’d anticipated its coming as we watched the buds swell round and full, like a bowl full of yeast dough that is about to rise over the top. Our spring has been warmer and drier than usual, so the conditions were perfect for the clematis to thrive. In recent years […]
Love–Not on store shelves
Reposted from February 2014 In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a work of which I am an ardent fan, Elizabeth Bennett wonders who first discovered the efficacy of destroying affection with verse. She declares that poetry must indeed kill love. In surprise, the oft maligned hero Fitzwilliam Darcy replies, “I have been used to consider poetry as […]
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A Friendly Gathering
One of the joys of having a retired husband is seeing my honey-do list fulfilled. He likes keeping busy and I’m just the girl to help make that happen. Part of our together time has been devoted to making our patio a gathering place for others. For years the area went unused because a large […]
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The Need for Nurture
Today I fed my summer flowers. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But more than two dozen pots and planting beds sit in various locations on my patio and the task of keeping them nurtured is not a job for the faint of heart. If you’re not a gardener feeding a plant means I mixed water with […]
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Find Your Happy Place
Where are you most happy? Is there a special chair in your house? A swing in the back yard? A window seat? You know. That place where you can find solace? A spot where you stop to think? Somewhere you ponder? My happy place is my patio, working among my flowers. My husband has expanded […]
Autumn Declares God’s Glory
Has autumn’s magical wand swept through your yard yet this year? This past week seems to have brought out the seasonal changing-of-the-guard here where I live. Gold, orange, and red have replaced the green in many of the trees signaling the approach of winter and the intent of the flora around us to sleep. My […]
Like Writers, Snails Exist
When I was a leader for my church’s Awana club, I had the privilege of teaching during their evening closing time. One year the director chose to use a compilation of stories that compared the attributes of various creatures with the role they played in God’s kingdom. When my turn came to share, I drew […]
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When You Offend Another
This week I made a terrible mistake. The days had been crowded with critiques for my writing group, copy edits that were due to my publisher, a one-day writing conference, and in the midst of it, a reminder that I needed to send out a newsletter to my readers to comply with the new GDPR […]
Happy? Valentine’s Day
Reposted from an earlier entry February 2015– Today, while waiting at an intersection near the university where I live, I studied the faces of the people in the crosswalk. A handful jogged by on their way to the popular running path our city boasts. Others were students, backpacks in place, hurrying to their next class. One […]