“What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.”
The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”
~Mark 9:23-24, NLT
Sunday Snippets {Day 12}
Category: Mothering
Rabbit 🐇 trails ~ {Day 11}
Links 🔗
Interesting short essay about Dante’s use of water in The Divine Comedy ~
Listen to this beautiful piece while reading Dante article!
Hidden track song that I’m thinking about ~
My daughter sent me this beautiful version of a favorite ~
We went to a favorite nature haunt and I finally saw the flower of the skunk cabbage!😍♥️
How was your week? We are just itching for it to warm up a bit more, but overall a good week! We had homeschool co op, my tulips/daffodils are peeking up their heads and looking 👀 around suspiciously, a local play that two children are involved with, and one of my children is being baptized! ♥️😍
Walking & Words🚶🏽♀️📜 {Day 10}
“Marilla!” Anne sat down on Marilla’s gingham lap, took Marilla’s lined face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Marilla’s eyes. “I’m not a bit changed-not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me-back here-is just the same. It won’t make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life.”
~ Anne of Green Gables
😭😭😭 thinking about my Anne getting MARRIED. 😭😭😭 My oldest son is doing a lot and making decisions, too!! Change and them growing up is in my heart. Hard, but beautiful. ♥️🙏🏻
If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin
Into his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.
~ Emily Dickinson
We are enjoying Dickinson again in our co op currently! She is one of my most favorite poets and I think this above poem IS my favorite by her. 🥲♥️ The prayer over my life. Here is a beautiful print of it for your home.
When Marilla had eaten her lunch Anne persuaded her to go to bed. Then Anne went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly things had changed since she sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend-as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.”
~Anne of Green Gables, emphasis mine
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us-don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
~Emily Dickinson
Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh flowers on Matthew’s grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place, with its poplars whose rustle was like a low, friendly speech, and its whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight-“a haunt of ancient peace.” There was a freshness in the air as if a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west was a glory of soft, mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it thrilled Anne’s heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.
~Anne of Green Gables
Wednesday Wonders ♥️🌲{Day 8}
Good morning! ☀️ Resurrecting my Wednesday Wonders series…I recently answered these questions here, but they are always changing, so indulge me again?! 😄♥️🌷
•listening to•♥️🌲~ I’m finally getting to the sequel in L.M. Montgomery’s Silver Bush duology, using this audiobook recording of it that is fantastic! I’m LOVING Mistress Pat even more than the first. Patricia is growing up and feeling the growing pains of possibly having to leave Silver Bush and everything changing! I identify with change being hard! 🥲I also want to listen more to this Josh Garrels release!
•reading•♥️🌲~ My mood shifted yesterday 😅 and I started rooting around for things to read. 😂📚 I think I’m leaning towards cozy classics, charming characters, and delicious nature descriptions. Of course, I first picked up, my gal, Maud Montgomery! Hence, Mistress Pat! A memory I have is rereading the whole Anne Series when I was pregnant with my first. Her name is Ann-E 🥹♥️😅 and she getting married later this year! Maybe I’ll reread the series this year in honor!? 😭😍
•watching•♥️🌲~ I’m slowly rereading all the greats with my younger set. The Wind in the Willows is one of the current ones. It’s such a great book for spring! I was craving the claymation? film version and so enjoyed watching it. The peaceful atmosphere (except Toad 🐸😂) was just as I remembered it.
•noticing•♥️🌲~ Our Black Willow trees sustained a lot of damage in a recent ice storm, but I salvaged a few branches with buds for the table. The robins have been so cheery even though it’s been rainy and cold. I’m waiting not so patiently for warmth and usually by the end of April, the Barn Swallows are back! 😍♥️
What about you? ♥️🌲 What are you listening to, reading, watching, and noticing TODAY?! ☀️🌷💜🌿🍃
Favorite First Quarter Reads: 📚2026📚 {Day 7}
🍃Just remembering here my favorite reads of January, February, and March. I love looking back and also sharing in hopes you might find one you love!🍃
•The Road Past Altamont by Gabrielle Roy, translated by Joyce Marshall ~ Canadian writer connects four stories loosely on mother and daughter relationships, growing older, time, and deep longing all cloaked in gorgeous, sparse writing.
•The Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw ~ a wonderful quest fantasy story surrounding Aedan and his friends. This has amazing friendship, leadership, and character growth.
•This is Happiness by Niall Williams ~ A small Irish village on the cusp of change. You grow to love and care for the characters and see yourself in them. This is such a human story and the author understands small village life! This was so beautiful at times it makes you ache.
•The Will of Many by James Islington ~ I absolutely loved the main character, Vis, and how much he values the memory and lessons of his father. The battle between doing what’s right and surviving in a system built on greed and corruption. So many wonderful characters and ideas to consider in this epic fantasy.
•Through Rushing Water by Catherine Richmond ~ Gorgeous historical fiction about an ex-Russian nobility immigrant who gets sent to the American West as a school teacher to a Native tribe. This will pull at your heart strings. Richmond did a fantastic job of not sugar coating this time period.
•The Star That Always Stays by Anna Rose Johnson ~ This had a slow start, but a wonderful blended family story set in Michigan on the cusp of WWII. I loved the literature threads, the conversation about Indigenous mixed-race tensions, and the gentle faith themes woven throughout. Solid middle grade read!
•Followed by Frost by Charlie N. Holmberg ~ This feels a bit Disney-Frozen-ish , but don’t let that stop you from this quiet, deceptively deeper story. Slow start and very creepy villain, but what a wonderful story of selflessness and how servanthood ultimately defeats loneliness.
•The Secret of Honeycake by Kimberly Newton Fusco ~ This is such a heartfelt story around two sisters dealing with death and chronic illness. This is a slow-as-molasses middle grade story, but I ate up every delicious word. So beautifully written with friendships, growth, domestic details, and LIFE.
•Persuasion by Jane Austen ~ I’ve read this so many times but have to mention it here because I was so delighted all over again. The humanity and magnifying glass that Austen does is so perfect. I especially loved Mrs. Smith of Westgate Buildings 😅 this time through.
•The Robe by LloydC. Douglas ~ A wonderful historical fiction set around the time of Christ. I posted a bit more about it here! Highly recommend!
•The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo ~ This was so sweet and lovely! It follows little Marta around the hotel where her mother works as a maid after the disappearance of her father. This is full of the lovely noticing, longing, thoughts on life, memories, parents, and meaning from a child’s perspective. The illustrations made this absolutely shine!
📚🌷How about you? Any stand out reads at the beginning of the year? I’d love to hear! 🌷📚
Monday Ponderings {Day 6}
“The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace. “
~ Mother Teresa
Thinking and praying on this as a week of homeschooling, wedding planning, cooking, and extras stretches before me. 🪴🌷🌿🍃🌲What’s on your heart? 💜
”There’s green in that wood yet. Look at it.” 🌿 Happy Resurrection! 🌿 {Day 5}
“That one?” she said. “Is that one quite alive-quite?” Dickson curved his wide smiling mouth.
“It’s as wick as you or me,” he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that “wick” meant “alive” or “lively.”
“I’m so glad it’s wick!” she cried out in her whisper. “I want them all to be wick. Let us go around the garden and count how many wick ones there are.”
~ The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, illustrated by Tasha Tudor
I’m so glad there’s green, life, and hope YET! Spring is here! Thank You, Jesus!
🌿🌱🌲🌳🪴🍃🌷☀️
Quote to Remember 🩵
I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you’ve been given. At moments you’re aware of it balanced on your tongue, but not what comes next. Something like that. I can now say that another version of that happens in old age, when it occurs to you that since you’ve lived this long you must have learned something, so you open your eyes before dawn and think: What is it that I’ve learned, what is it I want to say?
Niall Williams, This Is Happiness, p. 13-14
Currently 🍂🍂🍂
…let your compassion come to us quickly, for we have become very weak.
Excerpt from Psalm 79:8, CSB
I love finding random journaling prompts on Pinterest and really enjoy looking back at lists I’ve made!
Currently: 🍂
Reading…
My main focus this month is dipping into my massive stack of Victorian literature (one Victorian inspired in that stack!)for an online event called Victober! Community reading of literature published in the UK during Queen Victoria’s reign {1837-1901}. I set aside many other things to be apart of this lovely reading focus. It’s honestly become a highlight of my year for the last few years! I’m reading poetry from Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Oscar Wilde, and George MacDonald. I’ve dipped into Queen Victoria’s childhood diaries a teeny bit, too. I’m slowly rereading Our Mutual Friend. My favorites have been the drama in Charlotte Mary Yonge’s The Three Brides (Kindle) about three newlywed SIL’s thrown together under their new invalid widowed MIL, Shirley by Charlotte Bronte, and Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy with the audiobook read by Alan Rickman.
I’m supposed to be reading Niall Williams’ This Is Happiness with my IRL friends, but got distracted by the Victorians! 🤣
I’m also dipping into various things for study and to keep up the homeschooling co op classes I’m facilitating, mom’s group, a writing commitment and our own homeschool. The opening chapter of The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis was fascinating and so lovely.
Watching…
I’m on a bit of a social media purge so missing my Booktube watching, 🤣 but I did watch “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone” with two of my older kids. It’s the only one of the movies I truly love.
Playing…
I honestly love my journaling. They bring me SO much joy. 🤩
Trying…
I’m ‘trying’ to find balance?! with all our outside activities, homeschooling, cultivation of relationships, and taking care of myself. It’s not working well 😅🥲, but one has to have something to keep aiming for even if they miss continually. 🙃
Looking forward to…
Continuing Victober and hopefully watching the BBC miniseries of “Our Mutual Friend” this month?! and next probably. It’s long!
Dreading…
Hmmm, deadlines are necessary evils, but they can be stressful for me. Leadership is stretching for me. Unfinished household projects. The great clothing change-out. The usual. 😅
Obsessing Over…
All things Victorian! I made these recently! It was difficult, but so fun! I’ve loved noticing one of my favorite autumn things…glancing in the rear view mirror and seeing the leaves swirl up, dance, come ‘alive’!
Learning…
So much through facilitating our co op highschoolers through The Divine Comedy and realizing that worry can be pride, I’m saying I know more than God. 😬🫣😅🙏🏻
Drinking…
I’ve been making half pumpkin spice flavored coffee with regular dark blend and it’s so great! I drink it black and it’s just a hint of pumpkin flavor. I don’t loooove flavored coffees, but this is gooood. 🎃
Loving…
My hubby and I took a 4 day trip north in celebration of our 23rd anniversary which was in September. We enjoyed history and nature together!
Hating (or rather Broken Up About)…
All the relational tensions, loved ones going through illnesses, marital pain, financial stress and just the general feeling of the absence of love 💕 permeating the air. 😞🙏🏻♥️Oh, Lord, come!
Starting…
Revamping my prayer time again! Needed something fresh! Journaling and alternating spots I’m reading in the Bible. Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms. Currently added a Proverbs of the Day! Love finding the one that matches the day of the month! ❤️🙏🏻
Thinking…
About our life’s work?! and about the resurrection of my poetry scribblings and collage art, what I need to sacrifice to make it happen. Thinking about the movie “ Dead Poets Society”, which I watched for the first time a couple months ago. 🥲
Feeling…
Not sure. 🤔 Overwhelmed a bit 😵💫😉😬😅, but also inspired by the gorgeous autumn weather and all the lovely knowledge and life ripe for the picking. It’s right here for the taking.☺️♥️
Praying for…
My heart to be knit closer than ever to my Jesus and a listening heart to be wide open for others and for all the beauty here and now in this moment. For all the suffering near to me and far from me. 😞♥️🙏🏻
How about you? What’s currently beating in your heart? Let me know your answers to these! ♥️🍂Happiest October! 🎃 🦇 🕷️ 🕸️ 🍁
✏️Heartfelt Home Education 📚|| Check-In September 2025 (among other things) 🧮🦋
September begins and now already ends…🙃🤪
It’s a strange feeling to be glad for their wings, but sad that my older children’s faces aren’t peering at me as I read aloud. Bittersweet. Three down, four to savor! 🥲
Our year has begun well, kind of on “a wing and a prayer sort of way”, but with a gentle hopefulness.🌾
I think one of our favorite moments so far have been continuing a reread through the Little House Series (we are waiting on the audiobook for These Happy Golden Years), puzzles, and traveling to the site of Little House in the Big Woods for a Laura Ingalls Wilder Festival. A bit touristy, but lovely all the same. Now we’ve been getting into the tv series from the public library and it’s bringing back my childhood nostalgia of rushing home from my little private school for an episode with snack. 🥹♥️
We’ve also enjoyed jumping into our Charlotte Mason co op with both feet and just soaking in all the riches the other mothers have prepared for us! Shakespeare (King Henry V), folk song/hymn, Composer (John Williams!), Picture Study (Camille Pissarro!), Clay Modeling, Swedish Drill, Microbiology, and my favorite, Nature Study (we are using a lovely book called Sundial on the Seasons by Hal Borland). I’m helping with Highschool Literature (The Divine Comedy! – stretching me, let me tell you!), Poetry (Alfred Lord Tennyson), and the younger students Geography co leading with another mom.
What richness! What a gift!
My personal goals and projects were going SO well in June & July, but I fell off the habit wagon 😅 in August after SO many family things. I’m struggling to keep up on health, writing, pen pals, crafting goals & stuff. Anyone else? I have some outside obligations that I’m prioritizing (maybe TOO many?) and I’m struggling with very little mojo to keep up my personal things. I end up reading 📖 😅ALOT and watching people talk about reading. 🙃I ❤️🔥 Booktube! Any help on how to tackle getting back into these life giving things WHILE homeschooling? 🤪🫣😵💫😍
What did you love about your toe-dipping into the ‘25-‘26 home educational year? We have sooo many lovely books and things on the docket and I’m struck by the immense blessings at me and my children’s fingertips. Who knows what will be in all the pages, behind the door to the natural world, and in the relationships we will form? ❤️🔥🌿I wait prayerfully and with great anticipation. ♥️🌿
~
Coffee & Ink: ~be small, drive slow~
tucked myself into the smallest corner of Dunkin’
cast, humble, kneel, prostrate
be a dewdrop
drive slow
savor flipping sweaters at Goodwill
thank the lady for noticing my butterfly tote
be a dust mote
drive slow
eyes close, commend my spirit to God
swirl the ice of my latte, sip
be a bubble
drive slow
smile about ridiculous puns written on paper plate to hubby
touch, smile wide, look up, look down, listen deeply
be a crumb
drive slow
keep scribbling with dull, cheap Amazon pencil
quiet and calm yourself
be a salt grain
drive slow
the dipped not drenched sumac
the crumble-y, yeast-y clouds
be a kernel
drive slow
mind your own business and butterflies
hum along with the hummingbirds
be a bean
drive slow
keep wishing on the still-here-swallows
wave goodbye and good luck to the geese
be a seed
drive slow
no place to go
know your God-go, Spirit-stay
be a pebble
drive slow
A.M.Pine 🌲♥️
Consider: Resurrection 🌼
Do you ever feel stuck? I was recently struck by how stuck I am, this overwhelming sense of not living in the joy and resurrection power of the Lord Jesus. I was actually listening to an audiobook, about the fictional and unflappable Mrs. Pollifax. In the first of this novel series, the widowed, aging Mrs. Pollifax, questions her worth and what she is doing with her life. Her solution is to go and do something she has always been interested in. Join the CIA! 😂 I was struck to the quick about my wallowing, woe-is-me attitudes. Where is the resurrection power being lived out in me? Why am I hiding? Why am I cowering? Worrying? Trying to control my circumstances?
His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
2 Peter 1:3, CSB
These verses in 2 Peter and Wendell Berry’s poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, challenges me to live fully and wholly. To live like there is something beyond myself and my woes. 🪴🪴🪴
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love somebody who does not deserve it.
-Wendell Berry 🌿
I don’t want to be worry-driven, short-fused, and impatient. I want to ‘dwell in possibility’, living simply, patiently with others, myself, and the Lord. I want to rest in my daily ‘round and find my delight again in listening, learning, deeply loving. No need for fretting, guilty-thought trains, or shoulda-woulda-coulda junk. Pay attention. Walk and work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Live with an ‘expectant attention’ (mishmash from Charlotte Mason, Amy Carmichael, and Scripture) and practice living resurrection.
A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.
John 10:10 CSB 🌷
Ask questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
~Wendell Berry ☕️
Laughter is immeasurable.Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
~Wendell Berry 🪺
I’m determined in my heart 💜 to choose again (and again and again) Jesus’ joy and resurrection power. Just making conscious choices that I know help me pay attention and relax into the Lord. Prioritizing my quiet time. Going outside. Holding online things very lightly, getting dressed in comfortable clothing I love, doing a little summer mom learning project with a IRL friend, taking good care of myself and my family, finishing little projects I love, and doing small, short trips. Not giving into overconsumption in any area of my life – frantic reading, buying random stuff, food, media, but a soaking in the Life-Giving Abundance of Jesus!
You reveal the path of life to me;
in your presence is abundant joy;
at your right hand are eternal pleasures.Psalm 16:11 CSB
•heart, resurrect•
not hard, just
a deep death, rise again
chip corroded life-rust
if not now, when?
broken, now bloody birth
owner determines worth
who’s are you?
name, not what you do
down you lie
heart, flat you die
rise soul, into air
barn-swallowed by His care
A.M. Pine 🌲♥️
A.M. Pine - Hearth Ridge Reflections 