1389. Oh, the summer night, has a smile of light, and she sits on a sapphire throne. ~Bryan Procter

This was the way the whole world once measured time
This is when the light would wholly return to warm the earth
This is where the past would become undone
and the spinning earth would mark a new beginning
Let’s go back in time, to when it all began
To the breaking of bright new dawns
Where after winter’s grasp let go
moments bright with fire, enlivened the sun’s pyre
Oh, radiant sun, stretch the day, shorten night
Return earth’s attenuated darkness into fullness of light
~Edited and adapted lines from a poem
by Carrie Richards

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” ~Genesis 8:22  ✝

777. Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting. ~Line spoken by the White Rabbit in ALICE AND WONDERLAND

Summer makes a
silence after spring.
~Vita Sackville-West

Screen shot 2015-06-20 at 7.42.48 AM

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, and with its coming begins the worst of another long, hot Texas summer. Thus the silence after spring hereabouts is markedly pronounced as the heat all but stifles the breath out of anything that talks, hums, or buzzes including and especially “moi.” That’s why when I have to be outside to care for and attempt to keep my garden’s “babies” alive, the heat presses hard enough against my lips that what utterances I can muster are mostly profane mutterings. So not only am I thankful to be leaving for Paris next week but also that we’ll be spending 16 days in far more pleasant climes.

…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:18  ✝

**Image taken and posted by Mike Bizeau at: http://naturehasnoboss.com/2015/06/18/wabbit/

400. If you can’t take the heat, don’t tickle the dragon. ~Author Unknown

Everywhere were peace and stillness,
as though all the elements were obeying
a sacred law of calm and silence
imposed by the blazing heat.
~Sadegh Hedayat

Image

Can you read between the lines in the photo?
The flower that mimics the sun declares
The summer solstice is soon to be here.
And as the sun ascends her ordained throne
She’ll open the door for the surly beast of heat
That metes out wretched misery till the north wind
Comes to blow the dragon back from whens’t he came.

Typically here in Texas it’s the arrival of the solstice that “tickles the dragon.” Then he begins day after sweltering day to show us little to no mercy; sometimes the fire breathing beast even stays well into September and October. And as “the sun, like a golden knife…steadily pares away at the edges of shade” and we feel the “ache of the street’s burn” we who live here flee “with a grimace of heat” upon our faces from one air conditioned space to another. And oh how I thank the Holy One for those air-conditioned spaces! Rachel Caine put it this way, “God, it was hot! Forget about frying an egg on the sidewalk; this kind of heat would fry an egg inside the chicken.”

Hear my cry for mercy as I call to You for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place. ~Psalm 28:2  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.