“Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants,
can become windows to the inner life.
The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.”
~ Patricia R. Barrett
~ Image “Bring me to life” by Angi Wallace
Text & image source: The Garden Of Pensiveness https://web.facebook.com/The-Garden-Of-Pensiveness-367268523352486/
**Image found on Pinterest
Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning.
Ladies bathed before noon after their three o’clock naps.
And by nightfall were like soft teacakes
with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum.
The day was twenty-four hours long,
but it seemed longer.
~Excerpted lines from
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
I used to teach TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and it was and is one of my favorite pieces of American literature. I especially loved this passage above as it described the older women of my childhood. Now that spring flowers have gone I’m like those ladies Harper Lee describes in her novel because by day’s end I am frosted with sweat and talc.
Spring flowers are long since gone.
Summer’s bloom hangs limp on every terrace.
The gardener’s feet drag a bit on the dusty
path and the hinge in his back is full of creaks.
~Louise Seymour Jones
Much of summer’s bloom hangs not just limp but some of it is fried to a crisp. As for my feet, they are dragging more than a bit on my dusty paths and “the hinge in his back is” definitely “full of creaks” so much so that it’s begging me daily to stop the torturous activity.
The summer days are fading, as they must
From endless hours to short and fleeting light
The bird’s once bright, immortal tune,
now cries A melancholy aura to the dusk.
~Shannon Georgia Schaubroeck
As night falls, the birds’ tunes are as melancholy as I feel, but my melancholy has nothing to do with lamenting the fading of summer. It has more to do with being weary from the long trek through the burning cathedral with a high pressure dome for a ceiling that is the reality of July and August in Texas. But I can’t say I wouldn’t do it all over again, for the garden feeds my soul and in it I find so many reasons to praise the Lord over and over again.
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear His voice… ~Psalm 95:6-7 ✝
**All images via Pinterest; collage at top created by Natalie
**Image found on Pinterest
**Photo by Mandy Disher; text box via Pinterest
“Dogs are our link to paradise.
They don’t know evil… or discontent.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon
is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.”
~ Milan Kundera
Photo & text credit: Evolver Social Movement https://web.facebook.com/evolversocialmovement/
**Images via Pinterest; collage by Natalie
**Image found on Pinterest
“To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde
“Life. This morning the sun made me adore it.
It had, behind the dripping pine trees,
the oriental brightness,
orange and crimson, of a living being,
a rose and an apple,
in the physical and ideal fusion
of a true and daily paradise.”
― Juan Ramón Jiménez
Photo & texts source: Anna-Maria Szepesi shared Harmony’s photo to the group: Colorful Beautiful Flowers and Other Amazing Pictures Across the World. https://web.facebook.com/Harmony-578149188866564/?hc_ref=PAGES_TIMELINE
Sacred Touches 