Hello Friends, welcome to the chilly, drippy days of spring on the farm.
Spring is so new and hopeful that even on gray days, I can’t help but smile as I watch the changes coming on.
I cut some early forsythia branches a couple weeks ago to bloom on our table. You can see out the window here that the snow was yet on the ground then.
This picture was taken today, a bouquet of unusually thin pussy willows, and a store-bought bouquet of yellow tulips from a sweet friend, the African violets are blooming as well.
I’m sorry these tulips look a bit spent, but their cheery color still brings me a smile.
I know its chilly out, Penny, but let’s go about exploring on this rainy spring day.
C’mon, it’ll be fun!
She looks a bit shy about leaving the porch here, doesn’t she?
Here we go!
The purple crocuses aren’t open today, but they still show their pretty blue shafts.
The daffodils are poking their way up through the aged elm leaves under which they have been hiding all winter long.
Water, water everywhere makes for some squishy, squashy, sloppy walking.
But how pretty are the patterns the raindrops make in this puddle.
We invited some rainy-day toy-friends to come out and play in the puddles with us.
The snowdrops aren’t open today, but here is how they looked last week in the soft sunshine.
And the crocuses bursting with blue happiness.
I am reading a book I love, Hannah Hurnard’s “Hinds’ Feet on High Places”.
Here is a special quote from page 58,
“They came to a place where a rushing stream poured itself across the path they were following and went cascading down the other side. It was running so swiftly and singing so loudly that it seemed to fill the valley around them with its laughing voice.
As the Shepherd lifted Much-Afraid across the slippery, wet stones she said to him, “I do wish I knew what it is that all running water sings.
Sometimes in the silence of the night I lie in bed and listen to the voice of the little stream which runs past our cottage garden. It sounds so happy and so eager, and as though it were repeating to itself over and over again some very lovely, secret message. I think all running water seems to be singing the same song, either loud and clear, or soft and low. I do wish I knew what the waters were saying. It is quite different from the voice of the sea and of salt waters, but I never can understand it. It is an unknown tongue. Tell me, Shepherd, do you know what all the waters sing as they hurry on their way?”
The Shepherd smiled again, and they stood silently for a few moments by the little torrent, which seemed to shout even more loudly and exultantly as though it knew they had paused to listen. Suddenly, as Much-Afraid stood beside the Shepherd it seemed as though her ears and her understanding were open, and bit by bit, the water-language became clear. It is, of course, impossible to write it in water-language, but this is the best I can do to translate it. Of course, it is a very poor effort, for though a water song perhaps may be set to music, words are quite a different matter. But it went something like this:
The Water Song
Come, oh come! let us away –
Lower, lower every day,
Oh, what joy it is to race
Down to find the lowest place
This the dearest law we know-
“It is happy to go low.”
Sweetest urge and sweetest will,
“Let us go down lower still.”
Hear the summons night and day
Calling us to come away.
From the heights we leap and flow
To the valleys down below.
Always answering to the call,
To the lowest place of all.
Sweetest urge and sweetest pain,
To go low and rise again.
[The Shepherd said] ” … It is only up on the High Places of Love that anyone can receive the power to pour themselves down in an utter abandonment of self-giving.”
… It seemed too, that the wild flowers were also singing the same sort of song, only in yet another language, a color language, which, like the water tongue, could only be understood by the heart and not by the mind. They seemed to have a little chorus all their own which thousands upon thousands of them were singing in different color notes.
“This is the law by which we live-
It is so sweet to give and give.”
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