Category Archives: nature

When it rains it pours.

friends, my garden, nature,

We got rain in the night, and we’re getting a little today. A little rain, and that’s not the pouring I refer to.

It’s our Glad life that has become a little too much for us of late — or so it would seem, but we haven’t left anyone in the lurch yet. We had a blessed and happy visit from Mr. and Mrs. Bread, alongside difficult and sad situations to bear up under with other friends. That kind of thing always feels like too much.

The dirty dishes have been left to sit on the counter (in the lurch?) longer than I like, and it hasn’t done any permanent damage that I can see.

The Johnny Jump-Ups appear to have been nibbled by snails, but as I breeze by I don’t want to take time to hunt under rocks for them.

My kitchen didn’t produce any bread — the disorder was beyond the point where I could be creative that way — so thank God I was on the communion bread team at church yesterday and could happily knead and cut and stamp and let the senses of both my body and soul fill with warm and satisfying smells. Even the dough smelled good and soothing. In the photo I am the reflection in the oven door.

And even before the rain, the freesias started blooming, almost too brightly for my camera’s limited settings. We did go for a quick walk around the neighborhood, and I saw that even the most rundown ugly house with junk scattered about has been blessed with a gorgeous tree all in blossom, sitting as though dropped from heaven in the middle of the front yard.

I’ve been too busy for thoughtful writing sessions, but the pictures I snapped reassure me that the seasons are going around normally still. You know Who we have to thank for that.

The tulips are still making progress up through the now-softening soil, and Sweet Alyssum is growing the perfect blanket to spread below the blooms that are on the way.

Mr. Glad and I are going on a tiny trip this week, leaving behind the clutter of our forever unfinished business, and there will be time and mind-space enough for me to collect some more images and thoughts of Spring and Life. I think I just wanted to send this note that I am here and God is still at work.

Bodega and Stories of Horror

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This week we tripped over to the coast with Mr. and Mrs. C. A walk along the shore north of the town of Bodega Bay was first on the leisurely agenda. Schoolhouse Beach was closed, so we drove a little farther north to Portuguese Beach. It’s steep where the waves break on the sand, and signs warn you not to turn your back to the surf or to go on the down side of the slope, where an undertow can get you in its grip.

The View Landward

We strolled the length of the beach and back, admiring the view landward and seaward, and then sat on a log. Mr. and Mrs. C didn’t have their frisky Yellow Lab with them, but we’ve seen how she loves to romp in the water at Lake Tahoe or at nearby Salmon Creek Lagoon.

As we were climbing back up the cliff to the car, we met a couple coming down with four dogs, no matter that pets are not allowed on that beach. A tall great dane, two medium dogs with long hair, a tiny dog, and their owner carrying colorful beach ball.

Drowning at Portuguese Beach in 2011

We stopped at the top for a while and watched the Dane canter around joyfully. The mid-sized dogs pushed the beach ball into the waves and along the ocean’s edge — all right at that steep part that is so dangerous. Mrs. C. commented about how many people go into the ocean to rescue their dogs; the people often drown, but if they only had known that dogs almost always manage to get back on their own….

When I was researching for this post I discovered a news story and photo depicting a case of that very thing: a dog owner having drowned when she went after her dog and got caught in the surf. That time the dog did drown also, and it was at just this time of year. These accidents, though not always involving dogs, happen so often on the Northern California coast that the multiplied effect has turned them into horror stories for me.


“Birds” children running downhill from schoolhouse.

A bit inland from Bodega Bay, we came to the town of Bodega. Confusing, isn’t it? Both are famous for the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds” being filmed here in the early 1960’s.

I saw it in my teens, and can still recall sitting on the living room floor, self-consciously and silently terrified. Ever since then, when I see crows looking down from telephone wires, I know from the experience of that movie that they have a sinister intent.

The schoolhouse today, a private residence.

Hitchcock mixed up scenes from the two towns for the film, and we checked out two of the landmarks that remain in Bodega: the schoolhouse and the church, which stand very close to one another on a hill. Within the last year we Glads and the C. couple watched “The Birds” together. It wasn’t as scary as I remembered, but I still don’t like it. I do like the buildings in Bodega.

On our way back from the beach we first stopped at a historic watering hole in the town; the Casino’s bar was built a hundred years ago by the bartender’s great-uncle. His grandmother still manages the place, opening the doors and closing up every day even in her 80’s.

The dining room (the sign said “Dinning Room”) was most appealing to me. It was fresh and clean and empty that afternoon, tables, chairs and floor of bare weathered wood as old as the bar. A dozen or more deer and elk heads decorated the walls around. I drank an Ace Peary Hard Cider, brewed locally.

After our refreshment we walked along a muddy little track through the grass along the bank above the road, to see the church and the school.

The church is St. Teresa of Avila. Services have been held there weekly since its dedication in 1861. From the church you can look down on the little artsy town of Bodega, as in the photo below.

When we had set out from our house that morning, I decided not to bother with a camera. Then of course I regretted it many times! I was lucky to find all of these pictures on the Web.

I’m happy to say there was nothing horrific about our meandering day. That’s a good thing about enjoying the present moment: one doesn’t have to be subject to artists’ imaginations, to old news articles, or to one’s own memories of bad things. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,” and as there wasn’t any of that sort of thing on our outing, it provided sufficient R&R for my weary soul. Thanks be to God!

Town of Bodega

A sleeping place is blessed.

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When our rector went to a nearby cemetery to bless a section designated for new gravesites, I was eager to go along and be among those praying and singing. A small group of us gathered at noon after a morning of rain. The light changed often as the clouds came between us and the thin autumn sunshine. The trees cast shadows in the middle of the day, and I never took off my fleece jacket.

Not long into the service three words, “quickly flowing life,” pressed on my mind, referring to our earthly existence. It seemed the perfect time of year for this opportunity to turn our minds to death and corruption; I could see the vineyard across the street all in gold, and apples had fallen from trees all around the awning that had been set up for us.

Strangely enough, my husband was in another town not far away, attending the funeral of a Christian man. His body was put into the grave at about the time we were hearing the Gospel reading, about how Joseph of Arimathea took Christ’s dead body and cared for it. Here is the account from the Gospel of John:

After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and when at death our souls are separated from our bodies it is right that they be laid in the earth to await the resurrection. Fr. Alexander Schmemann (in an article that is worth reading in its entirety) makes clear what is Christian faith as regards this event:

…it is with faith or unbelief, not simply in the “immortality of the soul,” but precisely in the Resurrection of Christ and in our “universal resurrection” at the end of time that all of Christianity “stands or falls,” as they say. If Christ did not rise, then the Gospel is the most horrible fraud of all. But if Christ did rise, then not only do all our pre-Christian representations and beliefs in the “immortality of the soul” change radically, but they simply fall away.

…..

He alone arose from the dead, but He has destroyed our death, destroying its dominion, its despair, its finality. Christ does not promise us Nirvana or some sort of misty life beyond the grave, but the resurrection of life, a new heaven and a new earth, the joy of the universal resurrection. “The dead shall arise, and those in the tombs will sing for joy…” Christ is risen, and life abides, life lives… That is the meaning; that is the unending joy of this truly central and fundamental confirmation of the Symbol of Faith: “And the third day, He rose again according to the Scriptures.”

The soul won’t be separated from the body forever, but for a time the body will be as asleep, while we anticipate our rising, when we will sing with joy at the final defeat of death. Until then, this spot on the earth would be as good as any for waiting.

When the service was over, we were invited to pick as many apples as we wanted from the trees, which I think were Golden Delicious. It didn’t take me long to finish my apple. The service was less than an hour. In a couple of months there won’t be any leaves left on the vines or the apple trees, and the years of each of us are quickly flowing.

Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

[We had no idea of it at the time, but not three years after I wrote this post, my husband joined the ranks of those waiting here for that rising.]

What is is change.

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Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change.  -Edwin Teale

I went out into the misty autumn morning to find fine threads laced in and out among flower petals and fence rails.

The only sun was in the form of letters labeling the Sunsugar tomato.
Unless you count the few remaining mini-globes of golden fruit.

But in the midst of leaves turning brown, under skies cast over with grey, the last flowers were even more obvious in their brilliance. So I gave them the attention they wanted.

A few Cécile Brunner roses had come out, a few miniature roses….

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But the salvia blooms are in the thousands. The party they seem to be celebrating has clearly just begun.