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We
are here again! Sometimes I feel as though the years rapidly tumble together,
for it seems as though it was just a few days ago that I was making doughnuts
to celebrate the day before Ash Wednesday--Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Fat
Tuesday or whatever your tradition labels it. Last year I posted my recipe for
my doughnuts here.
Tradition says that we should clean out the goodies in our cupboards today,
eating up the fats, sugars, meats, and other rich foods, because tomorrow will
be Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40 days of Lent, a time when we will
contemplate our rebellion and God’s loving response, realizing how frail and
imperfect we are. Lent is the season when we simplify, cut back on our rich
foods, spend time in prayer and fasting, and make an effort to realign
ourselves with our beliefs, standing in humility and awe before a self-sacrificing
and forgiving God.
But
today is a day to embrace the rich things in life—to let our hearts dance, and
laugh, and take pleasure.
Blessings to you all!
When I walk through the pines by my home, I am rarely alone.
I talked about the phases of the moon last week when it was nearly full. Today, about
one week later, only half of it was visible. It has been rising in the middle
of the night and setting in the middle of the day. Throughout the coming week,
the moon is going to shrink into a sliver of a crescent, and then totally
disappear as it moves closer and closer to where we see the sun. It will then
rise and set with the sun and will not be visible at all--this we call New
Moon.
May you nights be long and your
skies clear!
My son had 22 screws just like these put in his back--in eleven of his thoracic vertebrae. They had to go back in and remove one of them when it failed, so now we can tease him that he has a missing screw. Two long rods are attached to the heads of the screws.
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Click on the photos to enlarge.
The seeds that were inside these pods were scattered months ago by wind and rain, birds and little mouse feet.
Although they were covered with snow for many weeks, they now are sinking into the mud of our February thaw.
It is possible that the deep snow is gone until next year, or we might have deep drifts and icy drizzle a half-dozen more times before spring; throughout, the seeds will lie dormant.
In April they will feel the spring sunshine, and by May, they will start to put down roots and begin to grow.
The plant may look dried and dead, but it is a sign of the promise of spring.
Tomorrow will be full moon; it will rise at
sundown and set at sunrise opposite the sun.
Each night it will rise a little later and in about a week it will rise in the
middle of the night and the right side of the moon will be dark. You might
notice on the calendar that this is called the last quarter even though the
moon is half visible.
Slowly each night, more and more of it will become dark, growing into a thin
crescent. About two weeks from now, it will rise with the sun and set with the
sun. We call this New Moon, and we cannot see it at all.
The following week, the moon will begin to be seen--growing from a small
crescent to a half moon. This time the left side of the moon will be dark. This
is called First Quarter.
And then, about a month from now we will once again have Full Moon.
Four quarters--New Moon, 1st Quarter, Full Moon, 3rd Quarter...and then back to
New Moon.
~~from Canticle of Brother Sun and
Sister Moon
Of St. Francis of Assisi
The thaw at
dusk
Aldo
Leopold describes a Wisconsin January thaw in the first chapter of his book, A
Sand County Almanac; it is common to have a few days where we feel the grip of
winter falter. This year January was long and hard, and we are just now having
that mid-winter thaw. In the yard and pastures, the melting snowdrifts dissolve
into fast running streams and deep mud.
I doubt
that this is a sign of spring--usually we have plenty of winter weather yet to
come; March is raw and bitter, and April, cool. But today it feels warm
outside, and even though it is only in the 20's and 30's, we feel comfortable
outside. The air feels balmy.
I can tell
the sun is growing stronger; its rays heat the deck in the afternoon. The cats
bask in its warmth. The sun porch gets hot, and we peel off layers of
sweatshirts and down vests and open the window behind the wood stove or let it
run low.
Winter is a
beautiful time of year with its own personality and rhythm; it is something to
be enjoyed.
If you were to look at Venus through a telescope, you would be able to see that as she goes around the sun, she goes through the same phases as the moon. I took this photo when Venus was just a little smaller than half “moon”, but larger than a small crescent. Can you tell that the dot at the top of the picture is not fully round? You might want to stabilize a pair of binoculars and look at her. She is setting just after the sun in the evening right now—a large bright “star” in the western sky at sundown.
Did you know that Venus is so bright that she can be
seen during the day? I took this photo this week after someone in the Classical
Astronomy Yahoo! group told us about it. She is a very faint dot in the sky (just
below the V in the photo), and one really needs to know her position before she can be found—but it is quite amazing when we do!
