Category Archives: quotes

Week Full of Big Events

church, my garden, other gardens, quotes, ,

The kitchen was gutted on my Big Birthday, leaving us to camp in a corner of the living room with an electric skillet and microwave that more than once have overloaded the power strip, so I have learned to take turns, at least until Sergio and Jorge and Edgar finish the electrical work and turn all the circuits back on.

Paper plates are the most uncivilized and literally distasteful thing about this week; I never use them even when we camp in the wilderness, so why should I have to in my own house? Must retrieve some real plates from a box for tonight, so the food will taste right again.

As we were dealing with rain and illness, the weeds were taking over the yard. Still, ranunculus do grow tall, and these showed above the robust sea of green. One Big Event this week was the pulling of all the weeds in this bed, accomplish by moi.

Today is a wonderful commemoration of a resurrectional event, when Christ raised Lazarus, so we have Lazarus Saturday, with celebrations. After the Liturgy, there is a clean-up effort to get the property and buildings all beautified for Holy Week and Pascha, but I didn’t go, because I did my such prep work at church yesterday.

After shopping for plants and dirt, I planted all new plants in nine containers, ranging in size from half-wine barrels to smaller clay pots. That might not have taken five hours if I didn’t have to start by emptying three of them, heavy with old dirt, into my wheelbarrow, which I labored to drive what seemed a quarter mile to the dump pile. Then I loaded up some compost from the other side of the pile to put in the bottom of the containers. I went the long way around buildings if it helped me to avoid steps–I didn’t like trying to do wheelies.

The huge bags of Supersoil I’d bought to top-off the containers were almost too weighty for an old woman. But I had heaved and dragged all four of them into my car earlier, and I managed again, to get them into the wheelbarrow, then out of the barrow on to the ground so I could grab double-handfuls of the rich stuff and nestle it around all the little flowers. The picture shows the three old medium-sized wooden containers that I’d moved from one area to another. Though the weather was perfect for gardening, it was too bright for good photography.

After weeding some, and cleaning up all the mess, I was surprised at how sore and tired I was. I went home in time to clean up and recover a bit, and return for Matins of Lazarus Saturday. The church had been decorated, while I was decorating the gardens, and was full of calla lilies, with palm fronds on the chandelier.

Today Mr. Glad and I worked at home, and I tackled the back yard. The mass of weeds is ten times that of the front yard, but I rested at one point by this table, looked at the “trees” instead of the looming “forest,” and thanked God for the strength to work, and for the spring flowers. This pot of nemesia that one friend gave me, I’d like to put in a pot so it can spill over the sides.

The children and husband and friends were so good to me for my birthday. One interesting gift I received was an olive tree, hand delivered from Oregon by my son and decorated with drawings by the grandchildren.

I’m going to buy a big pot to put it in, and remember that “I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.”
(Psalm 52:8)

 

 

North Coast Beauty

nature, quotes, travel, wildflowers,

To celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary, B. and I spent a whole day on an outing to coastal places.

We stopped at this spot by the Navarro River and wondered at the water color.

It was chilly under the ramrod-tall redwoods there, but on the whole, the day was unseasonably warm for the coast, and we thanked God for that extra gift. After a long drive through spectacular landscapes we reached the little artsy town of Mendocino. First we ate lunch, which provided respite for the visual senses, while we indulged our taste buds.

There’s lots of nice driftwood on display in the town –see the faces?

One of the first shops we visited was full of kaleidoscopes that were amazing works of art and engineering, some priced at well over $1000. Looking through just one kaleidoscope gives the aesthetic mind a lot to ponder.

In other art galleries we feasted our eyes and fingers on wooden bowls and buffets, ceramic platters and sculptures, quilts, and paintings of the landscapes that are beloved by us after living in Northern California for most of our adulthood.

To think of all the craftsmen making these lovely things, it made me glad. I snapped this hand-carved wooden Noah’s ark in one window…

…mostly because I loved the sea otters,
in a characteristic pose with little “abalone” shells on their chests.

We wanted to go out on the bluffs to look at the flat ocean, because by then we were experiencing Art Beauty Overload.

Maybe it is because we aren’t used to protracted active examination of the visually sublime. I usually have lots of work to do and break it up by occasional joy in one flower or tree.

 

Any one of these objects might be more satisfying if you could sit and hold it a while, or put it on your wall to befriend slowly. The whirlwind tour of so much creativity makes for too much to actually “take in.”

Outside again, I did have work to do, trying to get good pictures of the world around me, adding my own sub-creative endeavors to my Father’s.

Anatole France said that “Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.”

Studying is a kind of work, and I already know more about the plant world than the art world, providing some foundation for further study and making it easier on my brain to examine the flora of Mendocino than the things in galleries.

Mustard trees like these above could easily hold birds, as mentioned in the Gospels. Their “trunks” are sturdy enough to survive the blustery winters out there above the surf, and in the spring they scatter their yellow cheer all over the rough brownness.

Surely the dark bushy stuff can’t be broom….wish I could get closer to look better. It would be a lot shorter and denser than what we see inland. But so many plants on the coast do seem to squat down close to the ground to brace themselves against the wind.

Lupine plants are spread all over the fields, not blooming yet. I think they will be blue when they come out. The giant yellow lupines we often see on the coast stand three feet tall. They haven’t flowered yet, either, but on our way out we passed large patches of purple lupines along the road–a medium-sized variety.

 

A little iris nestled into the tangle.

We took the long way home, which included hours of driving along the cliffs, with repeated vistas of cattle grazing below a backdrop of dark forests and clear blue sky, and redwood stake fences running along the highway intermingled with stands of spreading cypress trees.

These sights became familiar enough after a while that they were comforting and not so overwhelming. Look at the steers–they are doing their work, so they can bear the view without it tiring them out.

During part of the car trip, we listened to a whole disk of George Gershwin, which was another relaxed intake of beauty and appreciation of artistry, this time through the ear gate. At home, I never give my full attention to the music that might be playing, because I have too much else to think about. Sometimes we were in silence, just enjoying the sights. And for some hours B. played many of his iPod songs that I like, and we even sang along together with tunes that have accompanied us through our married years.

It was a splendid day!

Tree Friends on the Way

nature, quotes, travel, trees, , , , , ,

The trees kept calling to me to stop and take their pictures yesterday, turning what should have been a five-hour drive into six hours. I think it’s just been too long since I took a walk in the forest, and when I saw some old friends, it wasn’t possible just to give a glance and continue on my way.

The buckeye first caught my eye; it’s a tree I dislike at other times. In the late summer, when the world is full of lush greenery and flowers, its leaves turn brown and spoil the landscape. But when humans are saying, “I’m ready for Spring,” and it’s still February, the buckeye, or horse chestnut, puts on its party clothes way ahead of time and is, for a while, the prettiest one.

The California Bay Tree is dear to my heart. Until I moved to Northern California I didn’t know anything of it, though I had probably at least heard of bay leaves for cooking. Since then I’ve seen what may be the biggest bay tree on earth, and I’ve stuck many a spray of leaves into my flour buckets to keep out bugs. In Oregon they call this tree the Oregon Myrtle, and some people know it as Pepperwood. The usual leaves you buy in a jar for cooking are milder and come from a different tree altogether–though the California “bay” leaves that I can gather on my walks  have been good enough for this culinary make-doer.

Here’s another picture of the bay with a live oak backdrop. Which live oak? I couldn’t tell you. Once I decided I would learn about all the oak trees in our area so I could know what I was looking at, and I brought home a stack of botanical books from the library. I quickly discovered that if I took on that project I wouldn’t have time to look at any other trees, much less cook meals or do laundry. My daughter told me it was a live oak–otherwise I’d have left out this picture.

This bay tree has full flowers on it…which makes me wonder if some are male and some female; but the Wikipedia article on this species doesn’t say anything about that.
The handsome Pacific Madrone trees, which I’ve always known just as Madrones, it turns out are related to the Strawberry Tree in my own back yard, as they are both arbutus.

I have to give two photos to fully show the beauty of the leaves and smooth orangey branches.

 

I emerged from the forest into the broad Central Valley of California, to the lovely display of barely pink almond blossoms. These are younger trees than the ones I photographed last month, but in the same neighborhood.

And the clouds, and the blue sky! Going north on the interstate, with the wide flatlands spreading out on either side of me, the ceiling was huge and broad. Dark clouds piled up like stair-stepping plateaus, and then disappeared behind me. I so wanted to catch their drama with my camera, and I’m ashamed to say I’d probably have tried while zooming along the freeway, but by then my windshield was too buggy.

I had to find a likely exit, where there would be a nice view, and a place to park. The first public rest area had a tall chain link fence all around it and not a very good look at the sky, but even the scraggly eucalyptus seemed lovely to me that day.

The almond trees gave way to old olive orchards, and I do love olive trees, so I stopped at another rest area that had been plopped into the middle of an orchard. I wandered around for quite a while, admiring these old stalwarts. Olive trees can live thousands of years, but these are probably just over a hundred years old.

There is so much to be said about trees. Right now it’s probably enough to quote Psalm 1, which says of the man who delights in God:

He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water, 
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

Lord, water me with Your mercy and make me like my tree friends.

 

Lights and a Birthday

church, history, quotes

Today marks a year that I have been blogging, and that seems like an opportunity to tell the origin of my blog’s name. I only now looked on Wikipedia for the vesperal hymn “O Gladsome Light,” which when I hear or sing it always imparts something of the reality of the Trinity of which it tells. When I first thought of writing a blog, there was no other name that ever came to mind, even though I feared it might be presumptuous, to put it mildly, to take that title for my own.

But just as we Christians are to be “little Christs,” so I see that all the gifts I write about come from Him, and anything good that comes from me is a lesser light emanating from God. So I post a candle picture in thanks to Him. I like the little dot at the bottom, a lesser, mirrored light. My tiny candle, or reflection of a candle.

As we are reminded in the first chapter of James: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

O Gladsome Light of the holy glory
Of the Immortal, heavenly, holy, blessed Father,
O Jesus Christ….