Ten years on

Hard to believe it is ten years since he passed. My Dad would have been 90 today.  Just the other day I came across a book I would have wanted to get him for his birthday.  It is so strange how time goes on.  This morning a huge owl in the tree in our backyard, one we have heard but never imagined to be so magnificent.  A Monday of memory and the grace of small magics and the not so slow turn of our orbits.

Margaret Mahy, Sunday Quotes

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.
Margaret Mahy, one of my favorite writers whose work had great whimsy and a sense of wonder about the world, has passed away.  She wrote for children and young adults, stories and novels and picturebooks and poetry from her home in New Zealand.

Sunday Quote

Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.

- Patti Smith, Just Kids

Setting up a rock garden

There is the giant rock in my back yard, freed at last from overgrown clumpy bushes and mid-sized trees that had taken it over in the last decade.  Now I can see the back of the garden and the whole view is opened up.  Will post a photo when I can figure out the whole Shutterfly to blog photo thing hopefully this weekend.
Meanwhile, cruising the net looking for inspiration.  Some wonderful ideas already percolating from the beautiful photos at the blog
A Round Rock Garden - scroll down for photos of a wee garden visitor.  I would like a lot of lavender, such a gorgeous plant that we have had some success with in containers.  I learn I am in zone 7 ish from this blog on northeastern gardening - Long Island just being across the way from here.  Like the reference list from Wild Ginger Farm - and what an evocative name.  Landscape design here has some good references...I am beginning to realize this is going to be a work in progress for some time.  Looking for ideas for hardy herbs and plants that don't require a lot of pampering.

Sunday Quote

Sundays, quiet islands on the tossing seas of life.

- S.W. Duffield

Sunday Quote

It is a shameful thing to insult a little child.  It has its feelings, it has its small dignity; and since it cannot defend them, it is surely an ignoble act to injure them.

- Mark Twain  (art by JWM)

Send me a bird

Send me a bird, send me its song,
send me a story a lifetime long.

Send me some blue, send me some shine,
send me something I know is mine.

Send me a sign to know I am heard,
send me a reason, send me a bird.

-scm, emily dickinson was right, hope is the thing with feathers.

Happy 4th!

Sunday Quote

You can't give of what you have if you don't know what you've got.

- Elan Morgan, We Can Become Known