The Woods and Home Again

We don't go to the mountains often, but just this year we will have gone three times before July even arrives!  When we arrived in Vail we were greeted with spring blooms!  Ours are long gone, here in the Mile High City!

 
A big extreme sport game festival was just winding up.  Fancy a kayak ride?

 The waters were rough in most of the spots along the river!

 Picnic?  Or just a rest?  The woods are life-giving, don't you think so?

 Green mountains!  Just right.

 When someone gives me a gift card, it burns a hole in my pocket.  I drove to the nursery pretty soon after arriving home.  Aw!  The geraniums!  Expensive, but it's free to take photos.

 Rose are blooming all over our neighborhood.  Tea roses smell so clean and clear.  This is a grocery store rose that we put in five years ago or so.  Lovely!
This morning I planted an herb garden by the back door.  The soil was so dry, but now I'll keep it moist.  I planted lavender, hysop, lemon balm, and basil.  That's probably a funny combination, but it smells good already!

Granny has two little girls arriving in about an hour.  It's cool today, so we'll play in the Wendy house and dig in the dirt.  

I went to a new book club yesterday.  It was interesting and the ladies are nice.  The book wasn't as conducive to soul-talk as it could have been, but that's okay (The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz). The friend who invited me asked me what my plans are now that I am home full-time.  This isn't a rare question, but I did find myself replying, "I don't think I'm going to be super productive."  Ha!  What does productive even mean?  I like this quote from Josephine Moffett Benton's The Pace of a Hen:

Those monasteries which have had the most lasting influence were usually patterned after the order of Saint Benedict, where equal emphasis was laid on work, study, and prayer.  "In its greatest representatives, the rhythm of adoration  and work is seen in an accentuated form.  These people seldom or never answer to the popular idea of idle contemplatives," Evelyn Underhill says.  "They do not withdraw from the stream of natural life and effort, but plunge into it more deeply, seek its heart.  They have powers of expression and creation, and use them to the full."


There you have it.  Perfect.