Tag Archives: Wind

1418. And all at once, Summer collapsed into Fall ~Oscar Wilde

by

12

Summer lingering in spasms,
She must abdicate with grace.
This is changing of the seasons.
Fall is slipping into place.
~Excerpt from a poem
by Joyce JohnsonScreen Shot 2017-11-08 at 7.52.45 PM.pngScreen Shot 2017-11-08 at 8.26.32 PM.pngScreen Shot 2017-11-08 at 7.53.43 PM.png
the air is different today
the wind sings with a new tone
sighing of changes
coming
the harvest gathered
a flower, a nut
some mead, and bread
a candle and a prayer
returning the fruits
in thanksgiving
to the grove
and receiving
it’s blessing again
~RhawkScreen Shot 2017-11-08 at 7.55.38 PM.png

He(God) changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. ~Daniel 2:21  ✝

**Photos taken yesterday by Natalie

1373. Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise! ~Wallace Stevens

by

12

The early mist had vanished
and the fields lay like a
silver shield under the sun.
~Edith Wharton

Screen Shot 2017-04-26 at 4.11.12 PM.png

As night’s shades were lifted up, off, and away
the new day dawned with a late April gusting
northward wind that ruffled the leaves on trees,
on burgeoning plants, and flowery petals alike.
So too were there clouds that moved overhead
like fleeing chariots trying to make a hasty run
from threatening legions of vile adversarial foes.
Thus the days’s opus began in a kind of exigent
solemnity, and adding to the drama fell a fine mist
but so briefly t’wasn’t enough to assuage dry soil.
By noon the sun’s gilded rays began to break in
through the cloud cover, and then at long last the
bearer of warmth and light laid claim to the entirety
of the spacious skies above, in exclusivity for itself.

-Natalie Scarberry

…the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. ~Psalm 103:16  ✝

**Clematis image taken by Natalie in her yard

1361. The spring is coming by many a sign… ~Excerpted line from a poem by John Clare

by

15

I have said that there was
great pleasure in watching
the ways in which different plants
come through the ground,
and February and March are
the months in which that
can best be seen.
~Henry N. Ellacombe

Screen Shot 2017-03-04 at 5.08.12 PM.png

March! March! March!
They are coming In troops to the tune of the wind.
Redheaded woodpeckers drumming,
Gold – crested thrushes behind;
Sparrows in brown jackets, hopping
Past every gateway and door;
Finches, with crimson caps, stopping
Just where they stopped before.

Screen Shot 2017-03-04 at 5.10.29 PM.png

March! March! March! They are slipping
Into their places at last. . .
Literature white lily buds, dripping
Under the showers that fall fast;
Buttercups, violets, roses;
Tulip and bluebell and pink;
Daffodils and saucer magnolias
Throng upon throng of sweet posies
Bending the dewdrops to drink.

Screen Shot 2017-03-04 at 5.22.15 PM.png

March! March! March! They will hurry
Forth at the wild bugle sound,
Blossoms and birds in a flurry,
Fluttering all over the ground.
Shake out your flags, birch and willow!
Shake out your red tassels, larch!
Grass blades, up from your earth – pillow.
Hear who is calling you. . . March.
~Edited and adapted poem
by Lucy Larcom

Screen Shot 2017-03-04 at 5.11.48 PM.png

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. ~Song of Songs 2:12 ✝

Screen Shot 2017-03-04 at 7.55.26 PM.png

**All photos taken by Natalie except the one of the House Finch.

1338. The joyful heart sees and reads the world with a sense of freedom and graciousness. John O’Donohue

by

11

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.04.38 PM.png

As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 6.58.02 PM.png

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.13.48 PM.png

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 6.59.56 PM.png

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.01.39 PM.png

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.19.36 PM.png

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god. ~John O’Donohue

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.27.35 PM.png

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. ~Psalm 100:2  ✝

**All photos found on Pinterest;
special effects on the last two were done by me on iPiccy

1331. I live someplace where snow is rare, you know? It’s rareness makes it so special. ~Edited quote by Stephanie Perkins

by

34

Snow is diamonds for a faery’s feet;
Blithely and bonnily she trips along,
Her lips a-carol with a merry song,
And in her eyes the meaning…
Life is sweet!
~Poem by Ruby Archer

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 8.06.58 PM.png

A 20% chance! Just 20%, that was all we had, and since that is almost next to nothing, we never expected to see snow here today. But snow it did for just a little while. It wasn’t a heavy snow, but it was enough to work its magic in places.

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 5.55.41 PM.png

The first fall of snow is not only
an event, it is a magical event.
~ J. B. Priestley

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 5.54.05 PM.png

A few feathery flakes are scattered
widely through the air, and hover downward
with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth,
now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 8.06.43 PM.png

Snow flurries began to fall and
they swirled around people’s legs
like
like house cats…It was magical.
~Sarah Addison Allen

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 8.00.49 PM.png

The wind crooned softly 
as it
dusted the snow 
against the window…
~Soheir Khashoggi

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 6.04.22 PM.png

Snow…blots and softens the top of
every object like ice on a plum pudding.
~Mark Haddon

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 7.57.26 PM.png

Snow was the most beautiful thing
Amitola had ever seen. It fell so gracefully
and drizzled like a cold whisper.
~Edited quote by Aishabella Sheikh

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 7.58.52 PM.png

Snow is falling outside and
all is peaceful and still. In such
moments it is possible to believe
that the world can still be good.
~Richard Paul Evans

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 8.07.16 PM.png

Snowflakes fall from high.
Flurries lift and twirl below.
The world has turned white.
~Richelle E. Goodrich

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 6.04.48 PM.png

Will had loved the snow,
the cleanness of it, the quiet,
the sense of peace it brought…
~Sandra Dallas

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 6.01.31 PM.png

I love snow…especially snow that happens
when you least expect it and it just sprinkles…
It feels like a secret. ~Edited quote
by Kate Messner

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 8.02.33 PM.png

Two things, love and snow, make
the world look fresh again…
~Edited quote by ~Charles Finch

Screen Shot 2017-01-06 at 8.04.08 PM.png

Winter invites white;
white invites silence;
silence invites peace.
You see, there is so
much peace in snow!
~Edited quote
by Mehmet Murat ildan

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater… ~Isaiah 55:10  ✝

**All photos taken in her yard by Natalie

1328. It is an old story, this irresistible and ceaseless onflow of life and time… ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

by

8

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
~William Blake

Screen Shot 2017-01-03 at 7.11.50 PM.png

Dead and brown is all that once was verdant and full of life. And again today a north wind blew to scatter more of autumn’s splendrous, leafy remains. Willy nilly the leaves whirled about and over the ground as if they were happy children chasing one another. Though a smattering of leaves yet dons a tree or two, for the most part the yard is a graveyard of clattering skeletons, desiccated leaves and withered flowers, bare soil and beige sod. Too, the beating heart of Creation’s life has grown ever so faint, but nonetheless it is discernible to the listening, longing ear. All the while beneath the surface, there’s an entirely different story evolving. For it is there that miraculous, even magical, proceedings are taking place and moving to the rhythm of winter’s muted heartbeat. And as they advance, they gather strength from their sacred sources, mother nature and Father God. So carry on tiny embryos of earth’s womb; I shall wait patiently and not lose heart nor faith while surrounded by this death and decay for I trust and know you will rise in the Spring and once more thrill me beyond the ability to speak so that only squeals of joy will fill the space herein between heaven and earth.

How can those who do not garden,
who have no lot in the great fraternity
of those who watch the changing year
as it affects the earth and its growth,
how can they keep warm their hearts in winter?
~Francis King

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

**Photos taken by Natalie; collage by Natalie

1325. Time is the fire in which we burn. ~Delmore Schwartz

by

7

Days are stringed instruments and
every one strikes a different note.
~Kenneth Alexander

Screen Shot 2016-12-31 at 7.21.54 PM.png

[W]hen you are nine years old, what you remember seems forever; for you remember everything and everything is important and stands big and full and fills up Time and is so solid that you can walk around and around it like a tree and look at it. You are aware that time passes, that there is a movement in time, but that is not what Time is. Time is not a movement, a flowing, a wind then, but it is, rather, a kind of climate in which things are, and when a thing happens it begins to live and keeps on living and stands solid in Time like the tree that you can walk around. And if there is a movement, the movement is not Time itself, any more than a breeze is climate, and all the breeze does is to shake a little the leaves on the tree which is alive and solid. ~Robert Penn Warren

It is an old story, this irresistible and
ceaseless onflow of life and time…
~Hamilton Wright Mabie

Screen Shot 2016-12-31 at 7.05.01 PM.png

Each thread of the tapestry woven by time is precious, since all the faces that have disappeared from the earth are projected on it by our memory. But even without any face projected there, and without any of my dead reappearing there, it still keeps in my eyes the splendor of being a season of time, mankind’s time, the time in which our destiny will have been experienced and inscribed, among millions of others. ~François Mauriac

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,   a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8  ✝

**Image via Pinterest; collage at top by Natalie

1309. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

by

6

So I like best of all autumn,
because its tone is mellower,
its colors are richer,
and it is tinged with a little sorrow.
~Lin Yutang

Screen Shot 2016-11-28 at 7.39.22 PM.png

If I had to pick a recent, appropriate emblem for deep November, it would be the mellow richness of this rose. Though a wild west wind has blown today, the day I found it, dawn had broken under a heavy fog, and when the mist lifted, this rose and everything else in the garden was left completely soaked. It was as if the heavens had rained down a multitude of tears and tinged the landscape with more than the little autumn sorrow of which Yutang speaks. I for one have to wonder if, with daybreak coming later and later and darkness falling earlier and earlier, a garden knows that the year has almost completed another turn around the sun. If so and because the longing to be, to exist as an expression of the Divine Presence, can be seen in all Creation, that longing is not easily given up.

As this year draws to its end
we give thanks for the gifts it has brought
and how they came inlaid within,
where neither time nor tide
could touch them, and we also thanks
for the days when the veil lifted
and the soul could see delight;
when a quiver caressed the heart
in the sheer exuberance of being here.
-Excerpted and edited lines
by John O’Donohoe

When we take time to look beyond the trials of life, we see God’s blessings and realize that daily we continue to be given endowments of grace from the Host of the universe. From unmistakable “quivers that caress the heart” we know that we are not alone. We know that we belong to God and recognize a longing within us to touch Him. We know that He sits at the heart of life, and from there works at bringing to fruition that which He inlaid in us from the beginning. We know too that He is beside us in every moment and that our sadness is His sadness, our joy His joy, our loss His loss, our victory His victory.

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim His name; make known among the nations what He has done. ~1 Chronicles 16:8  ✝

1288. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!! We did it…

by

9

‘tis almost mid-autumn and the last day of this month!
And as of today we’ve set a record here for having
the warmest October ever! The wind yet blows from
the south so I’m still wearing tank tops and shorts!
Yay! Yippie! Hooray! NOT!!! Where oh where
is our cool autumn for goodness sakes!

Screen Shot 2016-10-31 at 4.12.36 PM.png

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air–
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat–
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
~Hilda Doolittle

And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. ~Luke 12:55  ✝

1283. A secret freedom opens through a crevice you can barely see. ~Rumi

by

14

Every morning, when we wake up,
we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live.
What a precious gift! We have the capacity
to live in a way that these twenty-four hours
will bring peace, joy, and happiness
to ourselves and others.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Screen Shot 2016-10-25 at 4.57.29 PM.png

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of the ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.
~Excerpt from a blessing
by John O’Donohue

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ~2 Corinthians 3:17  ✝

**Image taken by Natalie; special effects done on iPiccy