Soft Weekend

 When I went to Walmart to buy those donuts, I noticed Lowly!  I hadn't seen him before. Isn't he cute?  I think it is very literary of Walmart to provide a ride in Lowly Worm's apple, don't you?

 This is Jenny's nice cat named George.  Isn't he beautiful?  I love his softness and his unique stripes.  He was having a sun bath.

 Jenny made me a sunny salad for lunch.  It was delicious.  The asparagus tasted like Easter.

 Plum Cake napped and Sam and I talked.  I love her little self.  Do you see where Granny gave her a big smooch?

 The hyacinths are still so gorgeous and fragrant.  

 Apples, lemons and a tangelo shine so bright!

 A week later the tulips are a lighter shade of pink.  The green of their stems and the smell of their faces = bliss.

 Some of the online used book stores have affordable copies of Elizabeth Goudge. I am reading The City of Bells.  Here are a few beautiful passages:

"Grandmother was small and withered and gave the impression of having shed everything in her passage through life except the essence of herself, and that sharp, decided, wholesome essence.  Her twinkling black eyes were like a bird's, and as sharp as needles, and her little parchment-colored face was wrinkled into a thousand lines of humor and decision and common-sensible strong-mindedness.  Her iron-gray hair was arranged in corkscrew curls, the fashion of a past age, and on her head was a cap with purple bows.  Her gray dress was of great age and made of alpaca so stiff that it could surely stand by itself, and her hands were mittened. She was eighty years old but neither age nor bereavement nor hard work had in the least dimmed her vitality or stemmed the flow of her fluent, emphatic talk."

The grandfather gives this advice to his war-wounded grandson:
"Stay here and do nothing," he advised him.  "Stay a year if you like.  What does it matter?  It's often necessary in life to do nothing, but so few people do it nicely.  And as for peace, there's plenty of it in this house and in this town.  They are so weighted with age that they have, as it were, fallen below the surface of time, like a buried city below the sea . . . Fall with them . . . Dear me, I must go and say evensong or I shall be late for dinner, and that distresses your dear grandmother."

I enjoy Elizabeth Goudge because I MUST take her writing slow.  There is no rushing.  I need a lot of quiet to read her writing style.  That's a good thing.

 I'll need quiet to read Mary Oliver's guide to poetry, too.  Yippee!

 I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and I was amazed at how crowded it was.  There were men, women, and children shopping for creative materials.  Isn't that encouraging?  This is the nicest tray of watercolors I've ever had.  I like to outline with Sharpie pen.

My polka dot scarf is gracing the ironing basket.  SO pretty.
I think I'll paint this afternoon when the sun shines through my little den's window.
I'll take a warm walk because tomorrow the temperature is going to dip and more snow will come.
Oh, I DO love weekends.
I hope your weekend has been full of smooth sailing, too.
God be with you.