Palm Rescue

"There is a sickness
Which puts some of us in distemper, but
I cannot name the disease; and it is caught
Of you that yet are well."
--Camillo's veiled warning to Polixenes; William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, 1.2--

I truly believe that winter is not just a season for some people. It characterizes their entire "play" upon this "stage" of life. One bad thing after another creates a habit of bitterness, which builds a pattern of despair, which produces a crop of self-righteousness, which rages against anything that clings--or lays a claim, even if undeserved--to righteousness. I almost fell for the trap. The palms rescued me.

Dappled Beauty--My New Season Has Begun

Today I began attending massage school in Pensacola. The other students and their reasons for enrolling in the school are as varied as the markings on this Peruvian lily. This is the third year it has graced the flower bed on the south side of the lanai. It only blooms here for a few weeks, but its speckled presence makes an otherwise dull spot in the bed shine for a while.

Please, hold your applause. I just finished swimming, and I need my binkie! Micah, my other Peruvian lily, his parents, and Grandma Martha came over yesterday for a cookout and swim in our pool. I wish that my dad could have lived to meet Micah. He would have loved his expressive and precocious personality.

This gardenia, a groundcovering variety with variegated leaves, bathes the pool area with its divine scent when the sun warms its delicate blossoms.

These freckle-faced pansies apparently have an iron constitution despite their name. They have been ignored for months while I've been away but continue to bloom on the north side of the lanai.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins--1844-1889

On the Face of It

Putting a friendly face on the dangers along the way: Signs to show you the way and keep you in line.





When I looked up the word "face" in the dictionary, I found no fewer than 45 definitions of it. It seems that face is almost indefinable. And I kind of like that a word can be so elusive, so ripe with possibilities. Faced with another beautiful Sunday, May 4, hubby and I took to the trails of southern Illinois once more to see and capture another aspect of areas already familiar to us: Ferne Clyffe and Devil's Kitchen.



I love the artistic rather than conventional representation of the Rocky Bluff Trail on this map.



These trees in Ferne Clyffe will find a way to reach the light, even if it means crawling on their bellies and looking ridiculous!



Here you see a tree actually growing upside down, precariously propped against a rock, gathering nourishment and moisture from the porous sandstone. It somehow manages to sustain its own life and that of the ferns growing among its hairy roots. If you look closely beneath the "hairpiece," you can find a face in the rock peering out at you.




This rock seems to be surprised to see us.



So what if I'm lopsided? I'll sing anyway.



Here is a friendly (dare I say goofy?) face along the path. Maybe it's embarrassed about its complexion. I can remember feeling that way as a teenager.



Here we are, the two of us, face to face with another difficult but defining season in our life together. We'll weather it somehow. We always do.