Tag Archives: G.K. Chesterton

The day that the LORD has made.

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Sweet peas in September!

Do you know a chorus or hymn to those words in my title?

This is the day that the Lord has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.

We used to sing it in the Bible churches that my family attended back in the day, and now I sing it in the Orthodox Church, in a different setting. Many times recently I’ve had cause to meditate about the significance of both the fact and the exhortation in those lines from the Psalter. Often I wonder, as does G.K. Chesterton,

Here ends another day,
during which I have had eyes, ears, hands
and the great world around me.
Tomorrow begins another day.
Why am I allowed two?

I could not possibly list all the things I am thankful for every day. But I can occasionally write a blog post about a few of them, which I am doing this afternoon…

It’s Sunday, so fresh on my heart is the most extravagant and Life-giving thing: that I was a recipient of the Holy Mysteries of the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of Christ. I was not kept at home by illness, nor was my attention distracted from the service by pain — right there are two of those Things That Didn’t Happen that are always infinite in number for any of us. If we are feeling grumpy, thinking on those non-events, the ones we wouldn’t have desired, can help move the mind in a positive direction to things that actually exist.

If my garden is full of unsightly areas, and posing problems for me to solve, I can go for hours or days without worrying about them, because I am so thankful to have a garden of any sort.  I feel like saying to God, “I have a gorgeous fig tree! How can it be possible that I also have a lemon tree, a begonia, and a fountain??”

Time Management is a term I do not like. Long ago, I used to think a lot about my days in terms of T.M., and it wasn’t happy thinking. It was Happier thinking when I was sitting on the couch with several children around me, reading A Child’s Garden of Verses, or Winnie the Pooh, or The Jungle Book.

Anise Swallowtail

Another Happy kind of thinking is when I walk around the garden considering all the wildlife out there. Currently we have caterpillars feasting on the plants, including two Anise Swallowtails in the parsley patch. On the milkweed, Monarch Caterpillar #2 has entered the pupa stage, and Caterpillar #3 is still munching. This is a pollinator gardener’s joy  ❤  and I hope that there are dozens more caterpillars that I haven’t noticed, that are reaping the bounty and thanking God with me. …even if they are Cabbage Whites, which like to eat everything — though I haven’t seen many of those around this year.

Monarch chrysalis

The problem that Time Management poses is, “How can I get everything done?” But I now know that I can’t. Whenever I’m doing one thing, like typing here, and/or exulting in the caterpillars and flowers, I’m not doing dozens of other things, which threaten to Never Get Done.

There is some kind of Russian proverb that I remember roughly as, “If I don’t die today, I can do Those Things later. If I do die today, it won’t matter that I didn’t do them.” 

Even King David could not do everything he wanted. He wanted to build a temple, and God even told him that was a Good Idea, but that it wasn’t for him. It seems like the vast majority of Good Ideas I’ve had throughout my life have not or will not come to fruition, so they will remain in the Theoretical category. I want to focus on the Real things that I am participating in right now.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered, if I hadn’t got a delivery of firewood this month. I feel a little silly about it, because I still have wood left from the last two late-summer deliveries. I will definitely be prepared, if the power fails. After Bea and I stacked it, at one end of the rows that were left over, it seems that I must have well over a cord, and maybe I won’t have to buy wood next year. The newer, golden logs are on the left, and the oldest, grayest ones on the right. It looks like rolling hills of cordwood; that wasn’t planned.

Last week I drove my friend Mrs. C to the coast, where we ate clam chowder overlooking the mouth of the Russian River, in the town of Jenner-by-the-Sea. I had been mentally dragging my feet about spending the time, but once I got out the door the day unfolded perfectly. It was the Day That the LORD had made, after all. If I had stayed home, I may have cleaned the bathroom (probably not), but I would not have been able to watch a hundred pelicans swirling, swooping, and doing belly flops on the river. Even the fog was not unpleasant; I had forgotten that it would not be a cold fog out there. Inland it had been quite rainy, but by the river we were able to sit outside, where blackbirds joined us at our table and welcomed any crumbs we offered.

The recent rain was a very welcome change from the chill winds we’d been having, that made me fear for an early departure of summer. Once the clouds moved in, the temperatures rose. I will be able to relax again, and hope for more figs ripening.

Several butternut squashes are ripening on the plants that have spread into the driveway. This one peeking out (above) is one of the largest. The rudbeckia at that corner of the driveway has been blooming for months and months and I have been amazed at it all summer. But it is winding down…

Just before the rain, I had bought a flat full of plants for that challenging area by my front door. These are all species that can thrive in Part Shade. I will hope to plant them this week or next; ajuga, violas, cranesbill, dwarf plumbago, and more.

A late calendula.

My leafy green seeds have sprouted, indoors and out. I harvested a pile of that basil that had been calling to me, and made pesto. There’s been a lot of Happy Thinking-Thanking through the days in Gretchen’s Garden. It helps that more than any other month, I love September.

Not the earthquake, but the earth.

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The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world. Somehow we must love the world without being worldly.

-G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

Camille Pissarro, Woman Digging

Let me be taken in.

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Oh, but I do love this thought from G.K. Chesterton, which I shared five years ago today, so maybe that is long enough ago that it will be fresh for some of you, as it is for me. WordPress has started doing this thing to keep us on the site longer, where they show us a list of titles of our past blog posts, what we have posted on this day in years past, with links to click through and read. It is sometimes surprising, and/or pleasingly nostalgic, to fall into these little traps, though I think G.K. would say, “Those are not the sort of traps I was thinking of!” 

“His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough to be made a fool of. He will make himself happy in the traps that have been laid for him; he will roll in their nets and sleep. All doors will fly open to him who has a mildness more defiant than mere courage… [He] will always be ‘taken in.’ To be taken in everywhere is to see the inside of everything. It is the hospitality of circumstance. With torches and trumpets, like a guest, the greenhorn is taken in by Life. And the sceptic is cast out by it.”

G.K. Chesterton, in Charles Dickens

July 2025

Carpets fresh and clean.

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The most encouraging news of the day is, the sun is shining, and the garden is growing. There is already a little Delicata squash on one of the two plants I started from seed in March.

I hired a man to clean about half of my wall-to-wall carpets. Last night and this morning I pushed and hauled furniture around so that I could thoroughly vacuum all the places beforehand. “Kyle” came this morning and was a very conscientious worker with a good deal of experience, and also lots of information for me about the various fibers he’d be cleaning, and how carpets wear, and how stains are removed. He told me that he usually vacuums himself, and was reluctant to skip that step. He asked if I had a good vacuum…? I do, but I let him do that part everywhere again with his machine, for his peace of mind.

Hall carpet just after installation.

I am so happy to have this job done. I don’t have pets, and all the grandchildren have been trained by their parents to remove their shoes in the house, so my rugs get along without frequent shampooing (this is an understatement which I won’t elaborate on); but I had reasons for deciding that this was the time.

While this thorough maintenance was happening over the course of several hours, I cooked up a pot of split pea soup; I roasted eggplant, toasted walnuts and made a batch of quinoa. The flannel bedsheets went into the washer and were replaced with the summer type, and I checked off several other tasks around the house, some of which have been delayed a couple of weeks, and some for months. It’s uncanny how every time I whittle down my to-do list, a few more things break or come due for maintenance.

Checking off the carpet cleaning, which should have been done years ago, felt really good. But — there was a little problem, which immediately added another task to my list. A solution that Kyle used, on a spot barely visible before, reacted with something I evidently used sometime in the past, and left a bleach mark in the middle of my hall. I usually only use water on spots, because they are most often just garden dirt, and I have no memory what it was I put there. Anyway, I will be contacting someone who can patch it, and I’ll have to take a piece from the back of a closet in order to match it. It will probably look fine, and anyway, people are not taking time to notice the carpet when they are walking down the hall. It will give me the pleasure of checking one more thing off the list — yay!

This Sunday we Orthodox will celebrate Pentecost, and I am getting excited thinking about the day. We decorate with greenery of all kinds; in our temple it’s often whole trees that are brought in for the feast, and in some parishes around the world they cover the floor with grass and wildflowers.

Pentecost in Poland

The thought of decorating the church floor takes me back to my new problem of an ugly spot on my floor. It makes me think about how many times I covered a stain on some garment or bath mat, etc, with embroidered flowers. My mind did immediately go in that direction when I saw the small bleached area in the carpet, wondering (very briefly) if there were a comparable fix that I could accomplish in a homey DIY way. It’s not easy to give up doing those creative things, especially when Chesterton’s words linger in my mind: “Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance… But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the more poetic. Thrift is poetic because it is creative….”

See the golden bee curled up in a ball?

I’m so happy that I can still be creative in the kitchen and garden. That is about all the creativity I have time for anymore! The borage (pictured just above) is blooming and the bees are loving it; they don’t mind having to hang upside down to drink. So many things are blooming, but I will just show you one more, the mock orange. Two bushes were planted on either side of my patio so that their scent would drift across the space where one might sit of a spring evening. Alas, spring evenings aren’t conducive to being outdoors in this neighborhood, neither does this particular mock orange have a strong scent; I have to put my nose right in the flower to detect it. So nothing is lost! And the loveliness of these flowers to the eye is great wealth. Thank you, Lord.