Mindful Monday

Nature

 that framed us of four elements, 

warring within our breasts for regiment, 

doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Christopher Marlowe

Tamburlaine the Great

Mindful Monday

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?

Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould

myself?

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Chapter 5: Solitude

It Ain't THAT Hard!

Our Newest Resident said something interesting to me today.

During a quiet moment, I asked him how he felt after being here a week.  Was it what he had expected, or was it different?  He said that he was feeling good, and after a while he said that actually he had been mentally prepared for endless back-breaking work and he was surprised that it wasn't that way.

This is a curious thing to me.  This idea that living out here might be really hard.  I've seen and heard it said many a time—in magazines, t.v. shows, and even this past week at a friend's house—that John Denver was wrong.

Mindful Monday

It was one of those March days

when the sun shines hot 

and the wind blows cold:

when it is summer in the light

and winter in the shade.

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations

Shall We Gather?

We had our January farm meeting last night!

What?  You think that's a little late?  Not at all.  It was just in time, if one considers the weather this winter (which anyone living in at least the Eastern US knows was no fun at all), and if one considers that some of the meetings contributors needed to come from two states away; I think it was pretty darn timely.

You might be wondering what stake someone two states away has in a meeting here in the great state of Tennessee.  Well, it's like this . . .

Mindful Monday

Ecstatic bird songs pound

the hollow vastness of the sky

with metallic clinkings—

beating color up into it

at a far edge,—beating it, beating it

with rising , triumphant ardor,—

stirring it into warmth,

quickening in it a spreading change,—

bursting wildly against it as

dividing the horizon, a heavy sun

lifts himself—is lifted—

bit by bit above the edge

of things,—runs free at last

out into the open—! lumbering

glorified in full release upward—

                                      songs cease

William Carlos Williams

Dawn

Our Favorite Game

The day before had been rain.  Nothing but rain all the day long.  Through the night I could hear the rain begin to freeze and the slishing sound of freezing rain filled my dreams.  We woke up to a crystalline world with every branch and leaf coated with a thin layer of clear ice.  Then set in the snow.  In no time at all the grey glassine world was transformed to white.  We spent the morning watching brilliant flakes blow off the roof in eddys and swirls.  Then the call came, "No work tomorrow". Ah, Freedom!  Let's go play!

Mindful Monday

Let it rain,

Let it rain,

Let your love rain down on me.

Eric Clapton

Let it Rain