Poem for a Monday of wind and sleet
February 20, 2012 § 1 Comment
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As a friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
-William Shakespeare, As You Like It
In all things
February 13, 2012 § Leave a comment
Photo Credit:US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. – Aristotle, Parts of Animals
Sandpiper
February 9, 2012 § 6 Comments
When I was maybe thirteen, we were reading a collection of short stories as a family (we were great readers, together and on our own). I don’t remember the name of the book, but one story told of a woman who had gone to the beach to deal with her grief. She befriends a little girl at the edge of the water, a child with a tendency to find the happy things of the world. The girl has leukemia, or something like that, though the woman doesn’t know this until later on. If I’m remembering correctly, the child dies. But the girl loved sandpipers, and left the woman with a drawing of one and a bidding to be joyful (again, if memory serves me . . . has anyone else read this tale?). The title of the story I do remember: “A Sandpiper to Bring You Joy.” This phrase comes to mind so often for me, at random times, and always when I come across anything to do with sandpipers. I love it, and I don’t know why, except perhaps because of how it involves such a small, natural thing offered for the uplifting of another’s spirit.
Photo Credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service
So. Here you go. A sandpiper to bring you joy.
Thoughts on dirt
January 22, 2012 § Leave a comment
I have just started William Bryant Logan’s book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth and am already getting caught up in a sense of wonder and gratitude. This bodes well! This is the sort of thing we reader-types live for. Here’s an excerpt from the prologue:
How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it? […]
Recently, I have been reading Exodus, wondering about Moses and the burning bush. Moses, it is written, “turns aside to see a wonder,” a bush that burns but is not consumed. Throughout my life, I had thought this a ridiculous passage. Why should God get Moses’ attention by such outlandish means? I mean, why couldn’t He just have boomed, “Hey, Moses!” the way He would later call to the great king, “Hey, Samuel!”
Now I know why. The truth, when really perceived and not simply described, is always a wonder. Moses does not see a technicolor fantasy. He sees the bush as it really is. He sees the bush as all bushes actually are.
There is in biology a formula called, “the equation of burning.” It is one of the fundamental pair of equations by which all organic life subsists. The other one, “the equation of photosynthesis,” describes the way the plants make foods out of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. The equation of burning describes how plants (and animals) unlock the stored sunlight and turn it into the heat energy that fuels their motion, their feeling, their thought, or whatever their living consists of.
All that is living burns. This is the fundamental fact of nature. And Moses saw it with his two eyes, directly. That glimpse of the real world–of the world as it is known to God–is not a world of isolate things, but of processes in concert.
God tells Moses, “Take off your shoes, because the ground where you are standing is holy ground.” He is asking Moses to experience in his own body what the burning bush experiences: a living connection between heaven and earth, the life that stretches out like taffy between our father the sun and our mother the earth. If you do not believe this, take off your shoes and stand in the grass or in the sand or in the dirt.
Rabbit Mountain
January 5, 2012 § 4 Comments
This warm weather is too weird for early January. But if it’s going to be here, then I’m going outside in it. After getting the horses all fed and turned out, I headed home to fetch Tassie for a hike before I got too settled in and too lazy to go back outside. (I love my cozy moments of sipping coffee on the couch.)
We went to Rabbit Mountain instead of our usual hike round the lake, just for something different.
The thing about Rabbit Mountain is that it’s rather odd, and to me, slightly uninviting. You drive in towards a series of small slopes and notice at once how strange the color is all around you. The whole landscape is a kind of pale yellow-green-tan, dry, rough.
I’d be lying if I said I find great beauty here. I don’t. It is arid and exposed, and the sun beats hard. I find myself wishing for streams and the shade of deciduous trees.
Still, the place is interesting in a desolate, old West kind of way. And it makes for a nice hike, the effort of going upward, the breath coming faster, the very healthy-feeling beating of your heart.
And what’s this?
A yellow brick road?
So warm, today, that I had to take off my long-sleeve hoodie and hike in my tank top and jeans – and I wished those jeans were shorts, so badly that I looked down to consider if the holes in the knees were big enough that I might rip the legs off below (they weren’t).
We found a few patches of snow where T was able to cool down. She panted from the weight of her winter coat and working against gravity. She snorted and rolled in and ate the snow for relief.
Down we came with oxygen in our lungs and blood and a few more photographs on the camera.
Another place to have seen, to have traveled across, to add to our collection of notes about the world.
Texture & textiles
December 31, 2011 § 1 Comment
I have been getting all caught up in Dear Genevieve, another room makeover show on HGTV that’s somehow more fun than the rest. Genevieve is so talented and rather enchanting in the way that she works with her clients and team, and I like getting drawn into the creative process of seeing what is and what can be. So I watch it while I am knitting or cooking. And I’m noticing that it affects the way I look at the world around me. Isn’t it fun how sharing perspectives and ideas can do that?
Walking the other day, I found myself noticing all different sorts of texture. Colorado is not, from my perspective, particularly colorful (despite the sign at the Nebraska/Colorado border which reads “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” – comically placed in the dry, tumbleweed, eastern plains part of the state). And this time of year, color is especially scarce. All seems shades of brown and gray, except for the blue sky and sometimes the white snow. So as we walk and I look for what is pleasing to the eye, I am drawn to nature’s textures.
I think – and Genevieve confirms! – that in designing a room texture is key – especially in rooms that use color sparingly. A white room needn’t feel sterile with the right textiles and woods to warm it and soften it. A room that involves lots of browns or dark colors can avoid being heavy or dull with the right surfaces to reflect light and maintain interest.
I love design that is nature-inspired, culture-inspired, and especially that involves reclaimed objects. I love walking through nature thinking about what I could make to reflect it. I love looking at how other people have expressed the landscapes they live in or travel through.
Here are a few of my favorite Etsy shops:
And I’ve just gotten started on Pinterest! Here’s where you can find me:
What kind of design do you like? Does nature inspire you, or do you find inspiration somewhere else? How do you decorate your homes – or dream of decorating them?
Kinds of Honey 