Standing sentinel…

I haven’t been getting out much, content to mindlessly ‘pace’ on the elliptical trainer upstairs while I survey the street below… so it’s slim pickin’s picture-wise, unless we fixate on buds opening in the windowsill…This one is surely morphing into something..a lilac I believe!

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But sitting here one afternoon idly looking out the front window while I chatted with Jim I spied our lone neighborhood gull looking picturesque, though out of place, on the neighbor’s roof… We have lots of crows around but only this one gull.  He’s wandered in from the ocean to join the regular flock of crows that feed on my stale bread and the quantities of left-overs I toss out as I learn (slowly) to cook for a smaller household…

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He clearly lords it over the competition here.  Perhaps that’s why he’s decided to stay.  He’d make a fine subject for a children’s picture book, about the gull who didn’t like seafood, or some such thing…Maybe we should give him a name…hmmm….gull

And such is life in the Wildwood as February runs down to its finish.

–LS

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me…” Hab.2:1

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Hope springs…

Hope springs, because of a promise:

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“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Gen.8:22 

And so the seasons cycle ‘round in a never ending succession.  Winter cannot stay.  Stark leafless branches raising their limbs skyward have only to wait for the sun to do its bidding…

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It’s amazing what a little warmth will do!P1090834

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Though I may seem at present to be obsessed with blooms of the botanical sort, there is another kind of bloom I’m watching, as my youngest prepares to leave the nest…

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Amazing what a little love can do….

–LS

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And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Rom.5:2-5

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Rom.8:25

Rumors of spring…

There’s something underfoot, quite literally…rumblings that spring is on the way.  A great underground network of workers is on the move, tunneling and depositing their waste in neat little mounds that polka-dot our lawn…

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Quiet Snowdrops raise the ensign—winter is surrendering.

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And I was so tickled to walk into my ‘studio’ and see an Artist other than me at work!  

P1090703 The Old Farmer’s Almanac suggested that I gather branches full of buds and put them in water for a winter bouquet. It worked!  The forsythia have graciously yielded up their blooms to adorn my dreary windowsill!

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I never tire of the wonder of an opening bud!

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And I’m glad for the chance to hibernate and dream up flowers of my own that don’t require weeding!

 

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–LS

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