Clematis and Rue

In a desire to make life less complicated,

I'm using my phone to take more pictures.

Remember, R.H. has been my cameraman most of the time.

He gets better quality but I know what I want in the frame.

And the poor man is often pooped after a day at work.

The last thing he needs is a list of things I want photographed.

I clipped one spray of clematis.

It was all I could reach without a ladder.

I don't climb ladders anymore.

Oscar Wilde wrote this about clematis:

"In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis,

and year after year the green night of its leaves

will hold its purple stars."

That's lovely but his The Picture of Dorian Gray

sounds far too depressing for me to enjoy.

I also clipped a few sprigs of rue,

an astringent herb

that reminds me of a book I love,

Elizabeth Goudge's Pilgrim's Inn, 

the middle book in Goudge's trilogy

of the Eliot family.

In Pilgrim's Inn, the Eliot family moves to an old inn

called The Herb of Grace, referring to rue,

Herb of Grace O' Sunday is its old fashioned name.

Doesn't this herb remind us of Rue

from An Old-Fashioned World?

Here's another vase I arranged in my bedroom,

some pretty pink astilbe.

And Nora is perfect with the pink astilbe,

don't you think?

I'm seeking a less complicated world.

Taking pictures with my phone is one change.

There will be more.

Everything doesn't have to be perfect, does it?

Beautify

I wish you could have known him.

My father was born to a farmer.

He was produce buyer, garden center owner,

nurseryman, and gardener.

The youngest of 7 children,

he helped his mother in her vegetable & flower garden

while his older brothers worked on the farm.

Daddy survived cancer for 16 years,

coping with the effects of the radiation

that saved his life but stole much of his

ability to speak clearly.

Through it all he worked, and then

came home and worked in his garden.

He even began a new job in his 70s.

He contracted for fields of red cabbage,

red cabbage for a natural red food coloring

for the Japanese market.

You know the red food coloring we use here 

when we make Red Velvet Cake?

It's not very good for you.

Not long ago I found Daddy's business card

from his red cabbage days.

I turned it over and found this:

"Job in workplace is a challenge.

This is a challenge to me.

Beautify--

Survive--

Care for Dewena."

Dewena is my mother;

I was named for her.

This message from my father explained much.

Beauty was important to him,

caring for his wife was important to him.

He was determined to survive.

He saw it all as a challenge. 

Daddy left us for his heavenly home 14 years ago.

We miss him so much,

but he's now with his beloved Mama and Papa,

and his sisters and brothers.

Winnie, Arthur, Etta,

Leon and Devon, Roy,

and Howard.

They were all extraordinary.

I wish you could have known them.

An Unfamiliar Room

"Entering the new year

is like going into a big and almost

unfamiliar room."

Faith Baldwin

Evening Star

"Having tried to travel light,

I hope I haven't brought the brittle,

broken disappointments with me--

they can cut like glass--

or the faded shopworn things

that should have been thrown out long since."

Faith Baldwin

"But some old things, the good ones,

without which the new-year room

would be very empty,

are the qualities,

emotions,

and attachments we have cherished;

these fit into the room

like a hand in a glove."

Faith Baldwin

"Love and loyalty--

a quality rarer than one thinks--

gratitude,

remembered without embarrassment,

and joy recalled,

without mourning."

Faith Baldwin

"No new room becomes one into which we

can fit with ease

and live with security

if it lacks these."

Faith Baldwin

"It is easier said than done,

this moving only the good memories

into the new room,

compelling oneself to discard the unhappy ones.

But I find as the years go past

and I move from one year's room into another,

that I manage to take less with me

of the things I do not need

and should never have kept."

Faith Baldwin

Shall we travel light

into the unfamiliar room of

2015?

No Need To Hurry

"Writing in the midst of a busy season--and what season isn't busy?--I think about the increasing tensions and pressures in our world, and in our bodies, minds, and spirits. It seems to me that never has our haste, hurry, and impatience been as marked as it is now. I sometimes feel that we are like sheep rushing headlong off the edge of a cliff into some bottomless abyss."

Faith Baldwin in 1956's Face Toward the Spring

"Nature is never in a hurry. She stages storms, floods, hurricanes--and sometimes we feel she is acting according to a sudden whim…But in reality, beyond the small deviations, the cycle is much the same: a slow, steady growth, a slipping from season into season in an orderly way."

"I know that I must slow down, for reasons having nothing whatever to do with physical health. Of course such a slowdown is an aid to an overworked heart or a soaring blood pressure. It is also a help against rapid aging. But I think of it as a spiritual remedy."

"I believe that everyone must learn to discipline his own drive. It is like having a team of horses--either you drive them--or they drive you. If you give them their heads, you find yourself with runaways on your hands--and runaways can carry you to disaster."

"There is no need to hurry. We have Eternity."

[All quotes above by Faith Baldwin in her 1956 Face Toward the Spring.

All photos by Dewena who is trying to learn from Faith Baldwin.]

Surrounded By Hills

Here at Valley View we are surrounded by hills.

This post is just to take you in all directions

around our house to show the soft

Autumn colors.

Down the driveway…

To the East are hills…

To the North are hills…

To the South are hills…

Really steep hills towering over our house…

The woods are full of woodpeckers

that rat-a-tat-tat…

The colors are gentle yellows here in Autumn…

We cross the back bridge to the West…

And climb to Armstrong's Hill named for a

groundhog with a white face…

Big cedars cluster together

and add green all year long….

Then there's the long climb to the waterfall…

R.H. turns around,
but for a Walk to Our Waterfall click here.

Time to head home.

The Autumn oranges are inside.

"Beauty was not abstract;
it was in a concerto by Bach,
and came to humans through the delicate organs of the ear;
it was the sight of a naked body
or the New England hills in autumn,
and came to humans through the fastidious
complexities of the eye;
it was in water after thirst,
laughter after loneliness,
embrace after absence.
Messages came to the human spirit through the body."

Nancy Thayer in Body & Souls

Beauty or Glamour?

"The majesty of beauty is its gracious wholesomeness."

"It has become the habit of our times

to mistake glamour for beauty."

This concern is expressed trenchantly 

by Robert C. Morgan:

'Beauty is not glamour.

'Most of what the media…

the fashion world…

Hollywood…

the art world has to offer is glamour.

'Glamour, like the art world itself,

is a highly fickle and 

commercially driven enterprise

that contributes to…the "humdrum".

'It appears and disappears…

'No one ever catches up to glamour.'"

John O'Donohue in

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

The World In Which You Live

"See it now;

the world in which you live,

the world around you.

You don't have to travel to do it…

beauty is where you find it."

Faith Baldwin

Little Things

"Little things console us

because little things afflict us."

Blaise Pascal

Beauty for the Soul

"There is an established--

though increasingly forgotten--

philosophy that suggests beauty and art

are as essential to human beings as food and water;

that they uplift the soul and help us

to find inner meaning in our lives."

Sarah Blake in June 2002

The English Home

April Freeze & Edna St. Vincent Millay

An April freeze forecast

had me busy cutting flowers for the house.

The poet's flower above made me think

of lovely verses by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand

Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!"

"Second Fig" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I always hesitate to cut flowers as they fade so quickly

but the Sir Winston Churchill buds above

will most likely freeze to mush outside.

Brought inside, this most fragrant of all the Narcissus

in our garden will perfume the rooms intensely. 

"My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--

It gives a lovely light."

"First Fig" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

And just because these lines are lovely also:

"And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, 

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a basketful of gold."

"Recuerdo" by Edna St. Vincent Millay