I have sunlight in the morning 

in shades of gold and red,

And the songbirds serenade me

before I'm out of bed

I have flowers in my garden

fit for a queen's bouquet

And I know that God has blessed me

before I kneel to pray.

I have food for my table 

and some that I can share.

God's goodness and His mercy

follow me everywhere.

I have a family to love me

and friends to see me through,

But best of all, God's promise...

All this, and heaven too!

~Clay Harrison

I've had this poem tucked between the pages of my Bible for years and years.  Although many things have changed in my life, this poem was true when I first read it, and it is still true today.  

My tiny postage stamp sized garden has already given us peas, radishes, tons and tons of salad greens, strawberries, and loads of broccoli (which I spent one sunny morning harvesting, blanching, and freezing--enough to last us the whole summer). We just planted some seeds and seedlings for a summer harvest:  tomatoes, green beans, two kinds of cucumbers, banana peppers, and zucchini. It's a very small garden with a small number of plants, but it's easy for me to manage, and it produces an amazing amount of food.

But, of course, if I could grow only one thing it would be roses. 🌹  (Although, I could be a very happy girl with just some sunflower and zinnia seeds, too.)

I haven't posted much about the piggies lately. Honey and Blossom are big girls now. They love to play outside in the dappled shade of the trees and eat watermelon. The other day a big bunny came by and said hello while they were out. Do you remember the nest of baby bunnies in my teeny tiny strawberry patch last summer? There are new babies under the bushes in our front yard. We love to watch them come out and nibble the clover. Everywhere in the neighborhood there are rabbits hopping and munching. It's like heaven for me.

Here's a little video of the piggies munching a big lettuce leaf from the garden:

For breakfast today I made blueberry corn cakes. This is a recipe from Susan Branch's newest book, Martha's Vineyard, Isle of Dreams. This may be my favoritest book ever. It is so beautiful, the story of her life so captivating, and it is filled to bursting with Susan's sweet watercolor illustrations, photographs, vintage postcards, inspiring quotes, and simple, delicious recipes. 

 Here's how to make blueberry corn cakes:

Add 1 egg and a 1/2 cup of milk to a package of Jiffy corn muffin mix. Stir until just combined. Gently fold in 1 cup of blueberries. Spoon batter onto greased skillet and sprinkle corn cake with cinnamon. Fry slowly and flip when edges are golden. Serve with lots of butter and warm maple syrup. Makes 8 pancake size corn cakes.

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I went for a walk the other day just after it rained. Everything was cool and green and fragrant and growing, and the birds were each singing their own spring song, and somehow it all blended together beautifully into a rare, perfect, magical moment. Most of the forsythia (and magnolia) blossoms were ruined by snow in early April, but I came upon a lovely golden drift on my walk. And, I saw a neat stone cottage trimmed with lavender paint (I would like to live in a house like that someday). And a hill of pines filled with whispering spirits.

In my prayer book this weekend, the readings were all about love. I was struck anew by the vast difference between God's love and our human notions of love. Perhaps love is not something we can do--not a verb, as we are so fond of thinking. Perhaps Love is Home, "a House with many rooms", "a glorious City", a place to dwell. "In him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28). 

"Evil has not an existence of itself. Its business is destruction. And like physical malignancy, destroying good is its work and scope. Evil is everything that God is not. It is everything that God has not created; evil is distortion to the point of deception...without reality in itself, but rather the absence of that reality which is the good...It can never have any expression of itself except for some form of untruthfulness...

The first lie that the world tells us is that it is a lasting city . . .Once we subscribe, even in small measure, to this deception, all things assume a disproportion. If the world is our lasting city, ipso facto and instanter, our values are changed." ~ Mother Mary Francis (†2006)

Back at home, I watched the birds and brought the piglets outside to play in the sunshine.

Honey loves strawberries. She gets the juice all over her chin, and Blossom helps her tidy-up.

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Prayer and a morning cuddle with the piggies. : )  They're getting bigger! Each day they eat a big bundle of timothy hay and two dishes of fruit and vegetables. We've discovered that Blossom (on the right) really likes kale, violets (flowers, leaves, and stems),  and seeds. Honey adores tomatoes, strawberries and blueberries. They also eat cucumber, green beans, romaine, and spinach. Blossom is bold and energetic, while Honey is shy and placid. They love each other dearly, and call loudly to one another when they are separated, but when they are happy they make an adorable cooing sound.

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I just finished a really good novel by a new author. Letters to the Lost, by Iona Grey.  I saw the book on the new fiction table at my local bookshop and picked it up. I'm so glad I did. It is a beautifully told, masterfully crafted story with wonderful characters that shifts seamlessly between the present day and World War II England. I highly recommend this one.

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A short while ago I learned about St. Dymphna and the very special town of Geel in Belgium. Have you heard of it? For over seven hundred years the people of Geel have taken the mentally ill into their homes, cared for them and made them a part of their families. In the late 1930s there were about 4,000 boarders living among a native population of 16,000 people.

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"Remember when manual labor used to be considered good, honest work? That was before the neo-libs sold us on the scam of higher education and then raised the tuition rates." --a quote from my twenty-three  year old son, whose friend was recently shamed by another young man for being a "college dropout and working at UPS".

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"I never discuss anything except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss. Nothing of importance can be separated entirely from its social effect, which is politics, or from its ultimate value, which is religion." --a quote by G. K. Chesterton.

And, in that spirit, here is an interesting post on Garvan Hill that includes an interview with Camille Paglia. She speaks fast and doesn't have the most fluent speech pattern which makes her difficult to follow, but her message is worth a ponder. Especially in light of the rising suicide rate in the United States.

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Wishing you a lovely weekend. : )