Quotable & Mural

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

        I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

               And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
         Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
          There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
         And evening full of the linnet's wings.

         I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats, Irish Poet & Writer Winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature (1865-1939)

This is one of my most favorite, ever, cartoons: It is used without permission from Mr. Schultz's collection.... but hopefully my great admiration for this life cartoonist will supersede any legal complications. :) Click to enlarge!

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry
from Collected Poems (North Point Press) © 1985

To be truly radical is to make hope possible
rather than despair convincing.

Raymond Williams; Welsh born academic, novelist & critic. (1921 - 1988)

MURAL 2013

My Mural is finished: It measures approximately 6' x 8' . We mounted it on the side of the house in the Spring of 2013.
The photo is not a great shot, but gives an idea. The Rudbeckia that are almost reaching the mural is Rudbeckia nitidia 'Herbstsonne' (Autumn Sun).

Detail mural

Mural 6' x 8' approx. 2013

Detail mural

Rudbeckia nitidia 'Herbstsonne' on south side of house below 6' x 8' mural. Old windows frame the mural. ©Bee Glade Farm 2013

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

EB White: Well known American author/journalist/ long time staff
member on the New Yorker/ wonderful children's author: 'Charlotte's Web' (1899 - 1985)

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

William James, American philosopher , 1842-1910

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass
no criticisms.

George Elliot: pen name for Mary Anne Evans (1819 - 1880) English novelist/ journalist/ translator. Leading writer of seven novels, including Middlemarch

wreath on old birdhouse

...my Garden invites into it all the Birds of the Country, by offering them the
Conveniency of Springs and Shades, Solitude and Shelter...
I value my Garden more for being full of Blackbirds than Cherries,
and very frankly give them Fruit for their songs.
By this means I have always the Musick of the Season in its Perfection.....

Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), English essayist, playwright, poet and politician

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
"What if I had never seen this before?
What if I knew I would never see it again?”
Rachel Carson

What I know of the
Divine Sciences & the
Holy Scriptures,
I learned in woods
& fields.
I have no other masters
than the beeches & the oaks.

St Bernard of Clairvaux, French Abbot of Cistercian Order, 1090- 1153

     For flowers that bloom about our feet,
For tender grass so fresh, so sweet,
For the song of bird and hum of bee,
For all things fair we hear or see,
Child, we thank Thee.

    For blue of stream and blue of sky,
For pleasant shade of branches high,
For fragrant air and cooling breeze,
For beauty of the blooming trees,
Woman, we thank thee.

    For this new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends,
Mother, we thank Thee.
      Original by Ralph Waldo Emerson.   This version somewhat amended.

Whenever I am in the garden, getting upset with grass that is growing 'where it shouldn't be', I think of this small essay with it's beautiful language by John James Ingalls: lawyer, orator, author, and politician, Kansas, USA (1833-1900)

Grass is the forgiveness of Nature - her constant benediction...
the Fields trampled with battle, saturated with blood, torn with the ruts of cannon, grow green again with grass, and carnage is forgotten.   Streets abandoned by traffic become grass-grown like rural lanes, and are obliterated. Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal.

Beleaguered by the sullen hosts of winter, it withdraws into the impregnable fortress of its subterranean vitality, and emerges upon the first solicitation of Spring. Sown by the winds, by wandering birds, propagated by the subtle horticulture of the elements which are its ministers and servants, it softens the rude outline of the world.
Its tenacious fibres hold the earth in its place, and prevent its soluble components from washing into the wasting sea. It invades the solitude of deserts, climbs the inaccessible slopes and forbidding pinnacles of mountains, modifies climates, and determines the history, character, and destiny of nations.

Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigor and aggression. Banished from the thoroughfare and the field, it bides its time to return, and when vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has perished, it silently resumes  the throne from which it has been expelled, but which it never abdicates.

It bears no blazonry or bloom to charm the senses with fragrance or splendor, but its homely hue is more enchanting than the lily or the rose.
It yields no fruit in earth or air, and yet should its harvest fail for a single year,
famine would depopulate the world.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cropped, "Beaver Brook 2009 somadjinn / id nBfvJy8"

Do not regret growing older, many are denied the privilege.

Unknown author