Category: Walks

Wednesday Wonders 🌾🌻🧡🍂💛🤎🐌🦗🕷️🕸️

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Rain coming! Smells heavenly!

Listening 🍂 ~ I have many things I want to listen to, especially from the Living Education Retreat. I’m looking forward to finding an uninterrupted moment so I can take notes! Looks like a wealth of knowledge here! I also want to try a recommendation from a friend, The Story Girl Podcast. I’m loving the audiobook of Firebird by Kathy Tyers. It reminds me of Star Wars, I’m liking the characters. We’ve been listening to this as a “call” to our morning time and we all agree it’s so invigorating and beautiful! 🤩

We own the Winter and Autumn collections in this series and really love them!

Watching 🍂 ~ I’m trying to limit Booktube to the weekends. My children recently watched The Sheep Detectives and said it was really good! I hope to try it this weekend?! Honestly, my brain space/power is SO low with all the outside things started!

Reading 🍂 ~ I just finished Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahara and it was a compelling police procedural mystery. A little grittier content wise, but I loved the writing. I liked the characters a lot even if a bit more overtly morally gray than I like. I’m slowly plugging away at The Virginian with my buddy reader and am loving it! Very well written and funny! I’m reading a couple chapters each morning of The Brothers Karamazov, and wow. 🤯 I’m also enjoying the second in a sci-fi series, Arabella and the Battle of Venus. We finished The Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden in my other group. Wow. 😮 It was dark, gritty food for thought. Not a favorite!

Noticing 🍂 ~ September is lovely, still summer-ish, yet shifting to autumn. The younger four kiddos and I went on a wonderful nature walk this week. 🤎💛🧡 It was so fun seeing old ‘friends’ again and noticing new treasure.

What are you listening to, watching, reading, noticing this week? 🥰 ~

•leave it all•

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I replied, “But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose. Yet I leave it all in the LORD’s hand; I will trust God for my reward.”

Isaiah 49:4, NLT

~

Make Room 🏡 {Day 63}

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I could stare at our skies forever around here.
Getting out some different coffee mugs for summer!
See you next spring!
Eclectic birthday gifts! 🥰♥️
Kids were so happy!
Smells heavenly!

Better is a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting-and conflict.

Proverbs 17:1~

Simplicity makes room for relationship. ♥️🌿 Relationships with God, others, and everything real around us. It’s ok to love home, slow routines, and regular boring rhythms. I’ve been thinking about how on an extended social media break I start to slow down, revel in my mundane tasks, realize I don’t have to keep up with anything other than getting meals on the table and washing laundry occasionally. I can have long times with my coffee steaming into the early morn, Bible flipped open, hummingbirds approaching. I can listen and chat and make Rice Krispies treats with my little boys. I can read or not read, wear my favorite comfy flannel from a thrift store with no need for more. I can walk with my music and the wind. It’s so refreshing. It doesn’t need to become more than it is, some-holier-than-thou move, but lets me step out of the stream of a vague unease of missing out, the guilt and fear of not keeping up. ‘They’ want you to feel that way. So that you need them or whatever it is they’re selling. It’s unbelievably freeing to step back and let it swirl by. It makes me want to pray more about how I use social media and maybe stepping away from forms of it that aren’t bringing me joy and enhancing this quieter, contemplative pace.

~ 🌿♥️

Hello, Luna + Quote for reflection 💚 {Day 60}

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Is it possible to live forgiven and not carry great loads of guilt, to participate in the salvation of the world? Is it possible to love and grow into a relationship with another person in which we are enriched and enhanced and built up? Is it possible to bless and be blessed? To give others the best that is in us and not the worst? To receive from others their best and not their worst? Yes. It is. As everyday realities, these births are wonders, whether as a new baby in the world or as a new creature in Christ. We are launched by acts of love and promise into ways of seeing and being. Our first birth thrusts us kicking and squalling into the light of day. Our second birth places us laughing and worshiping in the light of God. Like Issac. Laughter. Amen.

Eugene H. Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, p. 27 ~

Monday Ponderings: Daisies 💛🤍💛🤍 {Day 56}

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I love daisies.

You told me.

They’re so friendly. Don’t you think daisies are the friendliest flower?

~ “You’ve Got Mail”, Joe and Kathleen

I went on a daisy walk…

Maybe this will become a June birthday month tradition…

It was SO hot, but I absolutely loved it. My body doesn’t love cold anymore, and the sky, clouds, fragrance of the air was sublime.

Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

~Matthew 6:26-34, NLT

~

Favorite Blogs and Booktube Channels to check out! {Day 22} 📽️📚

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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:

Adrienne Morris

Beating the Bounds

Merhling Muse

Words & Herbs

Poetry (among other gems):

Beautiful Messy Life

Dreams from A Pilgrimage

Kourtney Garrison

Leaf and Twig

Tea & Paper

writing in north norfolk

Essays/Articles:

Enthusiastically, Dawn

Dr. Lizzie Rogers

The Marginalian

Home/Domestic/Family:

Fancied Freedom

Gathering Light

Good to Be Home

Haven Hedgerow

Heavens to Betty

Melissa Wiley

Rabbit Patch Diary

Renaissance

Reading/Homeschool:

Sage Parnassus

The Book Worm Chronicles

Woldenburn

Booktube Absolute Favorites:

Kate Howe

Chantel Reads All Day

Miriam Elizabeth Reads

Gloria Z Thompson

Cozy Cottage Chapters

Happy reading/watching! This would be a perfect place to dive into on your next rainy day! So thankful for creativity and words! 🌲♥️😍

Wednesday Wonders {Day 21}

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•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.

Waiting on this next installment of Alex Rider teen spy for MI6! 😅
First one was intriguing!
New series I found that I’m trying!
The first was very violent, BUT I really liked Elias, one of the the main characters and so I’m continuing this series!

•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. 🐴

Bloodroot
Holding on for dear life 😂😅

What have you been listening to, reading, watching, noticing? I’d really love to hear! ♥️🌲🥰

Poems & Paths 🌿{Day 17}

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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. 🌲♥️

Sunday Snippets {Day 12}

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“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

Green! 🌱🌿🍃

Rabbit 🐇 trails ~ {Day 11}

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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!😍♥️

Little spores puffed off of these red bits when I ran my fingers over them! 😃♥️
Worlds with the world

Our friends said this is Hepatica
Woodpecker evidence!

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! ♥️😍