The house remembered her whole life. It had always been the same…it had never changed…not really. Only little surface changes. How she loved it! She loved it in morning rose and sunset amber, and best of all in the darkness of night, when it loomed palely through the gloom and was all her own. This beauty was hers…all hers. Life could never be empty at Silver Bush. Somebody had pitied her once…”so out of this world.” Pat laughed. Out of the world? Nay, she was in the world here…her world. “ I dwell among my own people.” Wise Shulamite!
There is just something about September🌾🍂🍁 that has gotten under my skin and deep down into my soul. The golden tinge, the lazy, drift-y woodsmoke through the warm sun’s slant, the cool, autumn-touched mornings, and the swirl of leaves 🍂 behind my van as I go a toolin’ down the road. Sigh. I declare September as my ‘new year’, the sitting among fluttering Queen Anne’s Lace with the Chicory and Golden Rod as my only resolution. Oh, glorious September, don’t go with your woody smell of freshly sharpened pencils, favorite cardigans pulled out, and bold Zinnias flaring out of gardens. The cicadas screaming buzz, green speckled grasshoppers, and that deep, dark secretive cricket singing from behind the refrigerator. There is an end of summertime, early autumn 🍂 rustle and crunch to everything, cornstalks, leaves, and a rattle and roll to the landscape. It is SO unbelievably beautiful and I’m thankful for new seasons and new, fresh beginnings.
Never put the key to your Happiness in somebody else’s pocket.
I’m really trying to get into focused prayer and devotions. I have a well established devotional time, but it has been very distracted and disjointed. I’m loving the second half of Ezekiel! It’s an intense book, but oh, there’s some richness and encouragement, too.
Again He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! Thus says the LORD GOD to these bones: “ Surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.
Ezekiel 37:4-5, NKJV
I bought this charming pumpkin, her name is Hazel. 😅♥️🕸️🕷️🎃
Physical:
I’ve really struggled and I know it’s because my good habits were not well established again after letting them fall by the wayside. Homeschooling began and it has been a battle for me in getting enough well, everything. 😕😔 Sleep, water, walks, and healthy, nourishing meals. Pray for me to slowly integrate these back in as our homeschool days are evening out now.
Mental:
Honestly, with school beginning, I’ve felt myself feeling “crazy” and even though homeschooling is going well, it’s just that added “on- ness” that I know contributes. We have extra outside obligations, also, and I know that adds to this feeling. I’m recognizing I need to adjust some of my summer habits and be very choosy about what I’m giving mental space to and also remembering to judge my feelings by Truth. Taking my thoughts captive! My sister sent me this quote to think on:
The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not be able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for His Almighty Power. Nothing is too small for His love.
Corrie ten Boom
Emotional:
I’ve been *trying* to turn off social media (curse you, Booktube- jk, jk! ) and actually use my hands to make bouquets, write penpals, and lately, create altered composition notebooks. Creating with my hands always helps encourage and calm my emotions. We took a little ‘Tookish’ adventure the other day to a cemetery with gorgeous leaves and had a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie 🍪 snack there, yes, I know that’s sort of weird , but we loved reading the history of people’s lives on the headstones 🪦 and enjoying the autumn atmosphere. We then visited a new-to-us public library and it was fun setting aside my Baggins habits of wanting to hide in my house all the time. 😉😏
Half of a .69 cent composition notebook 📓collaged into a gratitude journal! 😍Another half a composition notebook collaged into an Inspiration notebook! Much easier to cut them this way in half than the other way. My hubby says he’ll help me with a saw next time! 😂 I may do some of these as Christmas gifts. Used Modge Podge over and under it all! So fun and relaxing!
Servanthood: thinking 🤔 on this quote! 😨♥️🙏
Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honor and recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered. If we stoutly refuse to give in to this lust of the flesh, we crucify it. Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance.
Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 130
Verse focus:
I will make them and the places around My hill a blessing. And I will cause showers to come down in their season; they will be showers of blessing. Also the tree of the field will yield its fruit and the earth will yield its increase and they will be secure on their land. ♥️
from Ezekiel 34, NASB
Last, but certainly not least, I’ve been so encouraged and enjoying my reading. I finished Volume 1. of Charlotte Mary Yonge’s delightful family saga, The Pillars of the Home, with my favorite online book people, Victorian literature lovers. Victorian literature is fast becoming a favorite genre! We will continue Volume 2 for Victober! I also SO enjoyed Distilled Genius by Susan Branch, a collection of her illustrations and hand lettered quotes. Branch and I differ in some worldview and lifestyle aspects, but overall, I loooved this collection. I’m currently rereading for the third time, her Martha’s Vineyard: Isle of Dreams, one of my favorite memoirs of all time.
How about you? How are you? 🕸️🍪🕷️📓🪦🍁🍃🍂♥️😄☕️📖📚💌📝🖋️❤️🩹❣️💕💟 Please chat below, I’d love to catch up!
And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.
I love reading seasonally or at least I get in certain reading moods as the seasons ease into the next. 😄🍁🍂🌾🍃🍄🐿️🌻♥️ 📚Here are five reads that I recommend that feel September-ish…
1. From the Heart of the Home: Autumn by Susan Branch {this is a delightful collection of joyful reflections, illustrations, quotes, and recipes to get you into the fall mood}♥️🌻
2. Pat of the Silverbush by L.M. Montgomery {I’m reading this currently for the first time and it’s lovely and cozy for this time of year}
3. Christy by Catherine Marshall {beautiful story full of hope, growth, faith, and wonderful female friendships}
4. The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry {honestly, I pull this short poetry collection out all times of year, but have been craving it lately}
5. The Grasmere Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth {beautifully simple journal entries from the sister of the poet William Wordsworth. The domesticity and pace of life is just so relaxing to me and the English Lake District setting is perfect}
P.S. William Shakespeare is another I feel drawn towards. What’s your favorite play of his?
Do you have any favorite reads that smell and feel of September? ♥️ Please share!
Listening… Johnny Cash – there’s a bit of truth for life I can pull out of this classic. Thinking on it. The things IN my heart are what come out.
Reading… Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. I’m interested in the history, but the portrayal of Joan is hard to swallow. So saintly she’s a bit bland? 😅 The writing is very flowery which I normally kind of like, but not loving it here. I’m going to see how much I can do by the end of this week and possibly attend Zoom discussion. Has anyone else read this?
“Thank God, I can keep the shadows of my life out of my work,” she wrote. “I would not wish to darken any other life – I want instead to be a messenger of optimism and sunshine.”
Quote from L.M. Montgomery in Liz Rosenberg’s biography House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery
♥️Oh, Maud, you ARE a continual source of optimism and sunshine to THIS woman. 🍃
Sunlight flooded the ancient schoolroom, and chalk dust danced in the slanting rays. The massive brass inkstand on my desk gleamed like gold, and little rainbows glanced from the glass over the photograph of our Queen centrally placed on the rear wall, in the most honored position.
Betsy and Tacy’s replica bench from Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy Tacy Series. Mankato, MN ♥️📖
I’ve been thinking about the stories that inspire me and of course, the writer’s behind those stories. I was so excited to recently visit Mankato, Minnesota (Deep Valley in the stories!) and stop at many of the places mentioned in Maud Hart Lovelace’s semi-autobiographical series of children’s stories. Oh, the delicious delight and wonder of seeing the places Betsy (Maud) and her friend Tacy (Frances) haunted and thinking on how Maud captured the specific, odd, charming details that make her stories ring true. It made me think of all the other authors that write these types of stories and how much they inspire me!
One of these lovely kindred souls being Carol Ryrie Brink, an American author, with lovely family stories that warm my heart, so far my favorite being Winter Cottage, a story set in the Great Depression era in Wisconsin, a widower and his children making the best of very hard circumstances. Family Grandstand being a cherished read aloud in our family of an university professor, writer mother, and three kids in a rambling house with a turret and all their adventures. I’ve finally began the sequel, Family Sabbatical with some Booktube friends and the first chapter was SO delightful. Brink, of course, is most famous for her story inspired by her grandmother’s life, Caddie Woodlawn.
An English author that I’ve recently been stalking and been so inspired by is Noel Streitfeild. I first heard of her from one of my favorite films “You’ve Got Mail” in which Kathleen Kelly talks about “the shoe books”. Come to think of it now, Kathleen also talks of Betsy Tacy books in her bookshop and sells some to Joe Fox’s aunt! 😉😄♥️ Streitfeild is wonderful at putting children and families into unique, slightly strange settings and situations. I absolutely was riveted by her story The Magic Summer, about children dumped on an eccentric aunt in the barren Scottish? countryside. Family Shoes (The Bell Family) was delightful as the children tried to help their poor vicar father and mother with money in hilarious ways. There are so many more to explore and I’m currently loving Apple Bough (Traveling Shoes).
Elizabeth Enright is one that I started reading with my older children years ago with her delightful book The Saturdays, but I was reintroduced to her this past summer by my favorite Booktuber, Kate Howe, who also revived my interest in Maud Hart Lovelace. I adored Gone-Away Lake and can’t wait to read the sequel. The nature writing interwoven into this book won my heart.
And of course, one cannot talk about inspiration without mentioning my lovely and favorite Canadian author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. The magic of nature, the spiritual edge hovering over life, and quirky characters are just a few reasons I love this writer SO much. Yes, her stories can be a bit formulaic, but oh, the delicious details she packs into them. The Anne series, The Blue Castle, Jane of Lantern Hill, and Emily Climbs are my favorites at the moment, maybe if all time? I was so blessed to travel to P.E.I. for my 15th anniversary with my husband to soak up some island inspiration.
Laura Ingalls Wilder also comes to mind. I’m currently rereading through her famous series with my younger children and Almanzo’s story in Farmer Boy is just as compelling as it was the first time I read it. The hard, brutal life that early Americans lived is so inspiring for our modern lives. The family dynamics are so intriguing to us. I still want to retrace the Ingall’s path out west which we did as a smaller family years ago. We loved especially wading in Plum Creek. 🥰🌿
Gothic-y-feeling, trickling waterfall near Maud Hart Lovelace’s home.
No list of inspiring women writer’s would be complete with another favorite, the English writer, Elizabeth Goudge. Her magical writing in legend and lore of place, her deep, interesting, nuanced characters, her pulling back the veil between spiritual and reality, make her SO beloved. She definitely is a bit more of a dense writer, you have to work hard at her stories, especially beginnings, but persevere, because oh my, you will be richly rewarded. I’ve read most of her backlist, currently my favorites are A City of Bells, Pilgrim’s Inn, Dean’s Watch, and maybe Gentian Hill is creeping up there, too. Her children’s story, Little White Horse is delightful, too.
Train station where Betsy (Maud) traveled to Milwaukee to see her friend!
And of course, Miss Jane Austen, is a must have for this list. Her books are such an interesting study of character and the inner works of Regency era English families. Romance takes over the films, but the books are something else entirely. My favorites are Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey. Although, I reread Mansfield Park this summer and so enjoyed it!
How about you? What authors highly inspire your work? Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list for me, Bradbury, Tolkien, Lewis, and others come to mind, but one of my favorite things to read and write is family and children ! And I think these ladies get it oh, so right! Have you done literary travel? Any inspiring places you recommend or you want to visit? I’ve also been to England, but would love to go back, especially to Oxford. Please chat with me in the comments! 📖♥️🖊📚
“Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these.”
Ansel Adams, p.37 Ansel Adams: An Autobiography, emphasis mine
