My friends! They are here. They made it around the exact same time as the last two or three years. Couldn’t get a photo, but check out this beautiful art of one of the most beautiful birds that captures my heart. ♥️ so grateful!
~
Happy Thursday! I ‘tried’ to group these by main genre topic. ♥️ I’m hoping to add more for reference! A few of these don’t regularly update, but there is a TREASURE TROVE of back posts!
Writing/General Memoir/Nature:
Poetry (among other gems):
Essays/Articles:
Home/Domestic/Family:
Reading/Homeschool:
Booktube Absolute Favorites:
Happy reading/watching! This would be a perfect place to dive into on your next rainy day! So thankful for creativity and words! 🌲♥️😍
•listening• ♥️🌲~
The sound of water trickling (we call the above stream the Withywindle), birds, wind, and I’m getting more audiobook time from walking and driving an hour away for a monthly book club. I have Mistress Pat by L. M. Montgomery and The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears going. The Pears book is an art mystery thriller, it’s a bit info-dumpy, but I love the art fraud case and Rome setting. Two police are helping an art historian unravel the mystery. It’s a series so if I end up liking this one enough, I can go on!
•watching• ♥️🌲 ~ I’m so enjoying checking my daffodils and the tree buds etc for any growth and changes. I did really enjoy this LOVELY journaling YouTube video recently. I was inspired to create my May reading pages. They look 👀 nothing like 😆 some of these gals I watch, but I had fun all the same. I used some kitty washi I had and a Pusheen stamp set we had laying around. I also found some more fun cute reading bingo boards on Pinterest. I find it so satisfying to fill them in here and there.
•reading• ♥️🌲~
I mentioned the two audiobooks I’m enjoying 👆, but currently, I have SO many books on the stack. I think I’m most enjoying spy/thriller/mystery archaeology type adventure stories 😆😂 with a healthy dose of classic, comfort reads. Very strange combo, I know, but I’m definitely eclectic! Below are a few ones I’m throughly enjoying.
•noticing• ♥️🌲~ We have a lot of Bloodroot blooming along the field and road edges. The Robins, Killdeers, and Red-winged Blackbirds have been vocal! I’ve had two Eastern Bluebird sightings which of course fills me with happiness. 😆💙🧡🤍 We saw the male American Goldfinches donning their yellow jackets! 💛🥰 We are testing our observations on the Barn Swallows. They usually are back around my daughter’s birthday and it’s this weekend (17!) so it will be fascinating if we see them! I’ll let you know! I loved seeing my youngest get to ride a horse this past week for the first time. He wasn’t sure but then really enjoyed it. 🐴
What have you been listening to, reading, watching, noticing? I’d really love to hear! ♥️🌲🥰
Merrily Gareth ask’d
‘Have I not earn’d my cake in baking of it?
Let be my name until I make my name!
My deeds will speak: it is but for a day.’
So with a kindly hand on Gareth’s arm
Smiled the great King, and half-unwillingly
Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to him.
Gareth and Lynette, Idylls of the King, Tennyson
‘Damsel,’ Sir Gareth answer’d gently, ‘say
Whate’er ye will, but whatsoe’er ye say,
I leave not till I finish this fair quest,
Or die therefore.’
Gareth and Lynette
I’m slowly getting into my buddy read of Idyll’s of the King and I was struck remembering this lovely picture book version of this part of the poem. The Kitchen Knight retold by Margaret Hodges is lovely, largely due to the illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman!
Happy Monday, friends! Our weekly quest has begun! Go forth boldly and without fear! 🙏🏻♥️😍
He took David from tending the ewes and lambs and made him the shepherd of Jacob’s descendants-God’s own people, Israel.
He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.
Psalm 78:71-72, NLT, emphasis mine
My prayer for today! That I may care for the people around me with a true heart and lead them with skillful hands. 🥲😞🙏🏻♥️
Inspiration:
“Six feet down in the sand
There’s creatures that made a hole
Do speak, I’m begging you, please
There’s beauty outside control (Outside)”
~RM💜
My friend, Sam’s devotional about the Mundanity of God ♥️
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Prayers of a Fool”
Cathedral carvings hidden
Full-time home hearth lovin’ forbidden
Fool, don’t do that again
Takes long, second gone, down drain, amen.
Wash, rinse, sunrise driven
Plant, weed, kiss that bruised knee
Blood, sweat, things that don’t make sense.
Paint, scribble, lock it in a drawer, forgotten.
Cathedral songs stir, long-dead-dusty, silent
Heart strings strum violent
Prayer painting skies violet.
Fool, don’t do that again.
It don’t make sense.
A.M.P. 🌲♥️
If you could chuck your to-do list out the window today, what would you do? 😅😂 I’d find a lovely spot by water, under a tree, or in my cute local coffee shop, grab a latte , and read. I know, surprise, surprise. ☺️😉
Here’s what’s on my stack that I’m currently interested in or really enjoying!
I love keeping house…it’s really a lovely phrase, isn’t it? Keeping it…holding it fast against the world…against all the forces trying to tear it open.
Mistress Pat ♥️🌿
•listening to and reading •♥️🌿~ we are really enjoying our read aloud of Journey to the River Sea. We’ve kind of poked our head into South America, this year while studying Early American history, explorers, etc. We have some Ancient reading going on and early European too. It’s seems to be opening up ideas and interesting discussions and narrations. 😍
•watching and noticing•♥️🌿
One child mentioned within my hearing how The Divine Comedy 🎭 and the podcast The 100 Days of Dante were coming together with other things. My heart cheered inside. 😅♥️ I’ve noticed that Marvel and the Percy Jackson Series have been being connected to Greek/Norse myths we are always enjoying in our Literature. My older kids enjoy some of the Marvel movies and ALL of my kids have appreciated Percy Jackson’s adventure stories.
Tornado 🌪️/ thunderstorm weather in our area! 😱😬
What have you been listening to, reading, watching, and noticing? I’ve been so interested and pleased with our history adventures this year! Thank You, Lord! ♥️😍📚🥰
And now, in my old age, don’t set me aside,
Don’t abandon me when my strength is failing.
…Now that I am old and gray,
do not abandon me, O God.
Let me proclaim your power to this new generation,
your mighty miracles to all who come after me.
~Psalm 71: 9 and 18, NLT
New week! King David uttered my exact feelings and prayers in the Psalms! ♥️🌿🙏🏻
“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
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! ♥️😍
“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
A.M. Pine - Hearth Ridge Reflections 