Zen Garden, Country Style

 

The fruit of fall

For days they held me prisoner to their fragrance and fragile beauty. The apple blossoms seemed neverending.  Friday morning the sunrise revealed their brilliance through the light frost from the night before.



I thought they would last forever.



White and pink against the blue.  And the frenzied humming of busy bees.



Night came. The sun rose and brought with it a light rain.  As the rain fell, so also the petals.



First one, then another, and then another cascaded to the ground below.



Perfumed clusters of white lay silent..



They shed their beauty upon mud, metal, asphalt, grass.  Whatever lay beneath.



A profusion of surrender.



Lending their fragrance to all they touched.



Soon it will all be over, just a memory of spring.



A memory that will live on in the sweet, red fruit of fall.

Lilacs for Laurel

It was the time of blooms when she came to us. Her name had been waiting for her, victorious one, long before she was born. As she was placed in her Daddy's arms, her cries subsided into quiet contentment.

Her big brother, born in the heat of summer 22 months before, tightly held his blanket and sucked his thumb as he gazed in wonder at her newness.



She would become a lover of kittens, Strawberry Shortcake and the New Kids on the Block. And then, almost overnight, she herself bloomed.



Has it really been 30 years since that day we first held you?



You will always be our victorious one, our beautiful little girl, our joy, our beloved, spreading everywhere His fragrance.



Happy Birthday, Laurel.

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him." 2 Corinthians 2:14

A dream of Texas in the Spring

Up here in the Frozen North, winter is a defiant child who refuses to go to bed. We had experienced a wonderful 2 weeks of spring weather and a glorious Easter profuse with blossom burdened flowering trees and bushes. And then. . .



Saturday I shivered as the cold rain drizzled, and pulled the covers over my eyes as the snow flurries appeared followed by tiny hailstones.

And then I dreamed. A dream of Texas in the Spring.



Yes, Texas heat in the height of summer can be as tough and unrelenting as the Rangers and cowboys who made the state famous, but in the Spring...

In the Spring we have mild, cool days and beautiful bluebonnets,



indian blanket, paintbrush,



winecups, primrose, prairie verbena.



All in unimaginable profusion.



And the perfume that hangs on the air IS the air. Each Spring, the beauty of the bluebonnets lifts its siren call to young and old, "come, rest, enjoy."

I smile thinking of Texas in the Spring and awake to the visitation of Jack Frost on the windshield, his icy calling card spread out on the lawns and fields. It will vanish with the rising of the noonday sun.

But in Texas, in Texas the bluebonnets fill every creature with awe.



Even the cows.

This is where I want to live

This is where I want to live.

In a robin egg blue house nestled in the bloom of spring.



With songbirds singing at the cream colored windows and rainbow explosions at my feet.



The air is filled with exotic perfumes of cherry,



and Japanese magnolia,



and daffodil.



A soft carpet of green covers the ground and the skies are endless blue and cotton white.



It's a place where warm, orange sunsets bathe the horizon,



roads are lined with flowering trees

and forest ponds are magical.



There is no winter here,



nor weeds, nor allergies.

This is where I want to live.

I almost missed it

I almost missed it.  My mind was focused on the numbing routine of leaving for work and returning home, and I almost missed it. And so, when I finally found camera in hand and light in the sky, I was relieved to see it still there.



Each of the last 19 springs it has been there.  The snowdrops.  The first bloom of spring.  To the side of my neighbor's steps, a few years after her steps have gone, they live on.



They rise from warmed earth and dead leaves, drawing their color from melting snow and emerging life. They make me smile.



Fragile drops of green and white make me smile. And know for certain that "now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun."



And these tiny blooms.

Definitely the Patent Leathers

As a child she would sift the newspapers for the comic pages and hunker down in front of the radio to hear an announcer read the funnies. It was her favorite part of Sundays, along with her Daddy's from scratch pancakes with lots of margarine and syrup, and a milk chaser.



That love of colored images held her imagination into her elementary school years. She could now read the words herself, and she envied the neighbor boy, an only child, whose parents were wealthy enough to afford a subscription to the Walt Disney comic books. She would lovingly read the volumes at his house and think how privileged he was.



One strip in particular caught her eye, "The Adventures of Mary Jane and Sniffles." Mary Jane had long blond hair, and wore a red and white smock accessorized by shiny, buckled, black patent leathers. The black patent leathers may have been another character's, but for certain, Sniffles was her little mouse friend. Mary Jane would utter the incantation, "Magic words of poof poof piffles, make me just as small as Sniffles." and be transformed instantly to a mouse size version of herself. Various events of peril and hilarity naturally ensued, all ending with Mary Jane resuming her normal stature.

Whether it was the shoes, the blond hair, or the outlandish adventures that drew her to that particular comic, she did not know, until one fateful evening, sixty or so years later, as she prepared dinner with her signature finishing touch...cheese.

"Cheese, glorious cheese, " she sang to herself, her mouth watering in anticipation of the creamy dairy goodness. And then her mind was flooded with memories--the shoes, the hair, the MOUSE!. She was startled by the sudden rush of images so long ago forgotten.

And then she pondered.

Why this fascination with cheese? Had she identified at an impressionable age with a rodent? The relationship of the tiny mouse with the beautiful golden girl in the shiny, black, patent leathers certainly knew complications. It was interspecie, cross cultural, bizarre. Did the comic writers intend to foister the belief that to be a mouse was better than to be a little human?

Too many questions, the cheese was getting cold. "No", she spoke aloud to herself, "it was the blond hair...the red dress..."

Definitely the patent leathers. Definitely.

In the Shadow of Mordor

In the shadow of Mordor, there is a wall between two houses.  In the middle of the wall is a door.  For a time it has been shut and barred against the cold.  Frozen in winter chill.  Admitting no one.



But the time is changing. 



A river of blue runs through the clouds.  The faint green smell of growing things hangs in the morning mist like a dream before waking. The earth heaves with the rhythms of temperature and light..



And life.



Hush! Can you hear?  The turn of brass, the sigh of hinge.  Could it be the door opens...



hesitantly, ever so slightly?



Could it be Spring lies just beyond?