Category: Uncategorized

There’s something wonderful and natural about the idea of home burial. From Katie Zezima in The New York Times:

“PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — When Nathaniel Roe, 92, died at his 18th-century farmhouse here the morning of June 6, his family did not call a funeral home to handle the arrangements.
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Instead, Mr. Roe’s children, like a growing number of people nationwide, decided to care for their father in death as they had in the last months of his life. They washed Mr. Roe’s body, dressed him in his favorite Harrods tweed jacket and red Brooks Brothers tie and laid him on a bed so family members could privately say their last goodbyes.
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The next day, Mr. Roe was placed in a pine coffin made by his son, along with a tuft of wool from the sheep he once kept. He was buried on his farm in a grove off a walking path he traversed each day.”

For the full article, click here.

Queenmother Mamaw, a kind mother/grandmother, retired RN, gardener and blogger from Kentucky, sent me a lovely red velvet cake via her blog and the following quote of St. Teresa of Avila from Interior Castle:

“This secret union takes place in the deepest center of the soul, which must be where God dwells. God appears in the center of the soul, not through an imaginary, but through a subtler intellectual vision, just as He appeared to the Apostles, without entering through the door. This instantaneous communication of God to the soul is so great a secret and so sublime a favor and such delight is felt by the soul in such a way that they have become like two who cannot be separated from one another. The Soul remains all the time in that center with its God.

We might say that this union is as if the lighted ends of two wax candles were joined so that the light they give is one. Or, it is like rain falling from the skies into a river or spring: there is nothing but water there, and it is impossible to divide or separate the water belonging to the river from that which fell from the skies. Or, as if in a room there are two large windows through which the light streams in: it enters in different places but it all becomes one. Perhaps this is what Paul meant by saying , the one who is joined to Christ becomes one Spirit with Him.”

Molineaux was the first rose I ever planted back in 2002. The color (that cannot be captured in a photograph) and the fragrance were so beautiful that it inspired me to plant roses throughout my garden.

It seems like we’ve had a greater number of ladybugs in the garden this year. The children have had fun watching the metamorphosis from larva to pupai (pictured) to adults.

On the side of the fort in the Walled Garden, I have a clematis, Fragrant Spring, and a rose, Tausendschon, growing together on a trellis. The clematis blooms a couple of weeks before the rose, which you can see here.
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Related post: How to Build a Children’s Playhouse (the Fort)
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