Back to the Books

 I shared this photo on facebook, but wanted to show it here too. This was the sky on Tuesday evening as we drove to church. Flat places like Pamlico County may lack mountains, but we have lots of sky!
As promised, I'm digging into Richard Wilbur's poems each day. "Lightness" was today's reading. 

 He's so, so good. I can't imagine having that kind of talent and that kind of poetic discipline. Oh, and that's another bookmark I dabbled.

 I decided to sketch a feather, since my chickens leave hundreds lying around :) I think I need to practice some more.
I put it into my Autumn Journal, next to a passage of Scripture I've been musing and praying over, for some friends going through difficult times.

 I like having various pages in this journal. It'll be fun to read back on them in a decade, don't you think?
So -- a page for our hoped-for tea garden. And a page about what we did on Sunday at church.

I'm back at the prayer shawl group on Thursday mornings - yay!! I've missed that quiet, friendly hour each week with sweet ladies and lots of yarn.

Afterward, I sat by the river and took this photo. I miss the river, I do. But the farm is a very fun replacement. Adam and I strolled around today, looking at what's growing (peas - again! and willow trees!) and we made fun plans for the future. That's one of the sweet activities for couples to do, I think -- just talk about your hopes together.

I've not been enjoying facebook lately. I don't want to give it up altogether because I have so many dear friends there I don't want to lose track of. But it only takes a few people speaking rudely, being unkind or thoughtless, being mean, to nearly ruin my day! So I think I will back off of my interaction there, and spend more time with my blogging friends, who are consistently kind, supportive, and considerate. You ladies are a classy bunch!

So that's what I meant by "back to the books." Off the screen a bit, reading more, studying poetry, journaling, walking the farm, reading the slowly dwindling stack of books on my desk. I do love how books and blogging go quite well together. We love to share what we're reading, don't we? 

Oh! Do you have time for one more thing? If not, that's okay, you can dash away. But this book I'm reading, Touring Through France by Elizabeth Shackleton, is so very fun. She's bubbly and delightful, just the type of writing voice you'd think would belong to an intrepid woman traveler in a car in 1924! Here's a passage I loved, describing a little cottage in rural France (Briton) at that time:

"Here the men had flat black hats tied under their chins with brims rolled at the side and the women were washing on their knees in the dooryard puddles. One with whom we stopped to talk, looking at her flowers growing under the drip of the eaves, asked us into her house. Her one room had one iron-barred window, the door to the front and a way out at the back. The floor was bare earth, hard trodden and clean. Two fire armoires of dark brown oak, waxed and well-kept, stood against the back wall. Their long, gracefully cut escutcheons shone like gold in the room. A high-set oak table, long and narrow, topped with a three-inch oak plank, stood near the window, its top so set as to slide back and forth and allow a hutch below to be reached. Two long-legged benches of oak had rests for the feet and low backs of turned wood. The overhead beams showed and the whitewash was on the back of the unplastered outside stones. The fireplace was several inches above the floor and let out smoke into the room when the door stood open. In one corner a built-in bed looked like those in remote corners of Scotland, with openwork doors which could be drawn shut, thus excluding the bed from the room. A yellow cat, an old dog, and a child hanging by her mother's skirt gave a homey air to it all, a sort of enduring sincerity like the heavy oak table. It was all going to go on for a very long time. On the fire a three-legged iron kettle, the chaudiere, -- our word chowder comes from that -- had something good simmering in it."

The author's photo of women washing clothes in the puddle in front of a cottage

If you're still reading, you are a trooper. I love such vivid, detailed description. This is less than 100 years ago. The oldest lady in our church would have been 7 years old at this time -- but this house has dirt floors, a fireplace for cooking, a single room, no back door - just an 'way out.' And doing laundry in a puddle outside? Isn't it fascinating how much life changes? Mrs. Shackleton thought it would go on and on like this. Another war was around the corner. And then technology would change us all. Perhaps this is another reason I want to go "back to the books"; I love the older lives we find there.

Whatever you're reading, I hope it is just as fun!