A lovely walk with friends down by the creek, dotted with fleeting spring ephemerals at every turn. The trees are leafing out and the sky was as blue as it gets.
star chickweed
violet
common whitetail dragonfly
People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last — forever, we say — things that we don’t have to wash, things that we don’t have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things. ~ Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)
violet wood-sorrel
Virginia spring beauty
And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #466)
wild azalea
We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless. ~ Alan Watts (The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety)
bluets
Bolin Creek
green-and-gold (thanks to Nina for the identification)
bluets, anchored in moss, clinging to the creek bank
The green-and-golds and the violet wood-sorrels were new wildflowers for me.
Poetry – but what is poetry anyway? More than one rickety answer has tumbled since that question first was raised. But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that like a redemptive handrail. ~ Wisława Szymborska (Some People Like Poetry)
“Shelter along the Appalachian Trail” by Carol M. Highsmith
The forest behind my house is already becoming something new, I notice, as I walk trails that used to be shady. With so many fallen giants, the floor now lies under open sky. I count sprouting acorns by the dozens, arching their necks and reaching for a new bonanza of sunlight. I have so many hopes for this place I love. Mostly that we’ll rise like these seedlings from our scoured landscape, blessed with the kindness we’ve shared with our neighbors and the will to extend our care to those who follow behind us on these paths. ~ Barbara Kingsolver (Southern Living, May 2025, “The Heart of Appalachia”)
On September 27 last year Hurricane Helene tore through Appalachia, affecting the community in Virginia where author Barbara Kingsolver lives. It also devastated 29 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, which are part of the same geographic region. (The county where we live is in the Piedmont region.) For some reason I never mentioned this disaster on this blog last year, probably because I couldn’t process what I was learning about it in real time.
Our grandchildren had no school that day so we had planned to take them to the Carolina Tiger Rescue. The day before, the weather forecasters warned of torrential rain for our area but the tour is by reservation only and the website said it would happen rain or shine. So we were prepared and bought rain ponchos for the four of us. But that morning the Rescue cancelled the tour and we stayed home. I’m glad we didn’t risk getting caught in a flash flood on the roads. It rained a lot and we had two tornado warnings during the day, which sent us to hunker down in the bathroom, but thankfully we weren’t hit. The disruption to our lives was nothing compared to what was happening to our neighbors only a few hours away.
A year earlier in October, we had stayed for a weekend getaway in the beautiful town of Black Mountain. We had a wonderful time walking through the town, visiting Mount Mitchell, hiking the Balsam Nature Trail in the state park, and driving along the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. Little did we know Black Mountain would experience catastrophic flooding from the storm. Roads and bridges were damaged or washed away. The pictures we saw on the news were shocking and sobering. But since then the stories being shared of kind people helping one another have been heartwarming. I hope we can plan another visit some day.
However, the severely limited federal response under the current administration has been disturbing. According to our governor:
In addition to the $13.5 billion that I am requesting of Congress in new appropriations, North Carolina has yet to receive billions of dollars that Congress worked together on a bipartisan basis to appropriate last December. Just as I asked in February, I am urging federal agencies to take action to unlock those funds so we can put them to work as soon as possible where they are desperately needed.
We are grateful for every dollar that brings us a step closer to recovery, yet current federal financial support is not enough. In total, federal support amounts to approximately 9% of the total damage western North Carolina suffered. Many of the largest, most devastating storms, like Katrina, Maria, and Sandy, saw upwards of 70% of damage covered by federal funding, and from available historical data, the federal government has typically covered between 40 and 50 percent of costs caused by major hurricanes. The people of North Carolina deserve a fair shake, just like the residents of other states and territories.
~ Gov. Josh Stein (Hurricane Helene Recovery, September 15, 2025, Federal Funding Request)
The times are disgusting enough, surely, for those who long for peace and truth. But self-disgust also is an injury: the coming of bodily uncertainty with age and wear, forgetfulness of things that ought to be remembered, remembrance of things best forgot. Forgive this fragmentary life. ~ Wendell Berry (This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems)
5.29.16 ~ Virtu Art Festival Wilcox Park, Westerly, Rhode Island
Every day my cell phone sends me a random selection of pictures it has taken in the past. When this whimsical photo of a lion popped up I wondered where on earth it came from! Turns out it was taken nine years ago at an art festival we used to love to go to, even though I honestly don’t remember this particular piece.
Some people have a way of arranging everything about them, so the objects take on not only their own meaning, and a relation to the other things displayed with them, but something more besides — an indefinable aura that belongs as much to their invisible owner as to the objects themselves. ~ Diana Gabaldon (Voyager)
I am one of those people who carefully curates all the meaningful objects I’ve collected over the years. And a good many of these mementos have come from artists with booths at the Virtu Art Festival in Westerly, Rhode Island. A close up photograph of a barred owl on a snowy evergreen, infused onto a sheet of aluminum… A uniquely shaped turned wood vase with a tall spire-shaped lid… A glazed earthenware pot with a little bunny head on the rim on one side, and a little bunched-up bunny tail on the other side… I didn’t buy every year we went, but if I fell in love with something I was more than willing to break the budget to bring it home.
I do miss those days! All my most precious keepsakes survived the drastic downsizing we did to move down here, and they have been arranged anew, still, perhaps going forward it’s a good thing that I’ll no longer be tempted to add even more “objects” to my home.
In the human order creativity is neither a rational, deductive process nor an irrational wandering of the undisciplined mind but the emergence of beauty as mysteriously as the blossoming of a field of daisies out of the dark Earth. ~ Thomas Berry (The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Century)
The clearing rests in song and shade. It is a creature made By old light held in soil and leaf, By human joy and grief, By human work, Fidelity of sight and stroke, By rain, by water on The parent stone. ~ Wendell Berry (This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems)
It seems like it’s been raining and dreary for the past couple of weeks — we even turned the heat on a couple of times. But we’ve been seeing a lot of interesting creatures outside our windows, like this baby bunny I caught with my camera. One morning I saw two opossums scrounging around in the leaf litter for food, and another time I saw a coyote trotting across the back yard.
One day when returning from grocery shopping we were very excited to find four fledgling Carolina wrens trying out their wings on the wax myrtle branches in our front yard. And those darling Carolina chickadees who nested in our birdhouse had some little ones, too. They flit about so quickly I can’t count them but there are at least three and I got to see a parent feeding one of them.
And one delightful afternoon Kat and I designed a dragon garden to fill in the unused birdbath in the front yard. 💜
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)
