The warm days of drying clothes out on the line are coming to an end, but I wanted to pay tribute to the deep contentment that can be found in daily work and the interface between home and the outdoors, with a quote I ran across at MaryJane's Farm: "...the powerful religion of ordinary life, a spirituality of freshly mopped floors...and clothes blowing on the line." ~Adair ...
Words to Live by
Pollinating
"Earth is a flower and it's pollinating." ~Neil Young ...
Give Me the Banjo
"Give me the banjo...When you want genuine music -- music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, -- when you want all this, just ...
The Three Sisters
Here stand The Three Sisters on a sunny spring day. Having grown up at the feet of the Olympic Mountains, I am still getting to know the Central Oregon Cascades as my home range. I was curious about the story behind the three sisters, so I did a little research. European settlers in the area gave them the names Faith (North Sister), Hope (Middle Sister), and Charity (South Sister), but their ...
The River’s Edge
Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left. ~Paul Cezanne ...
May-Day
May-Day By Ralph Waldo Emerson (This is a lengthy poem, but it's Emerson at his finest, and well worth the read!) Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Teaching Barren moors to smile, Painting pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. The air is full of whistlings bland; What was that I heard Out of ...
Lilacs
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I ...
First Crocus
Down in my solitude under the snow, Where nothing cheering can reach me; Here, without light to see how to grow, I’ll trust to nature to teach me. I will not despair–nor be idle, nor frown, Locked in so gloomy a dwelling; My leaves shall run up, and my roots shall run down, While the bud in my bosom is swelling. Soon as the frost will get out of my bed, From this cold dungeon to free ...
The Woodcutter’s Song
Wood heat is a wonderful thing in the wintertime, so wonderful that folks like us are more than happy to do all the work associated with it. If you are reading this and wondering what benefits could possibly make cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, weekly woodbox replenishing and daily fire building worth all the effort, I would say that it's a lot like the feeling you get from growing your own ...
Sahalie and Koosah
Falls Over the stone lip the creek leaps out as one divides in spray and streamers, lets it all go. Above, back there, the snowfields rocked between granite ribs turn spongy in the summer sun water slips out under mucky shallow flows enmeshed with roots of flower and moss and heather seeps through swampy meadows gathers to shimmer sandy shiny flats then soars off ...