Ah, a smile at the end of the hissy-fit

I think Mother Nature and Queen Victoria had a tiff this past holiday weekend and Mother Nature threw a hissy-fit. The old girls sure didn't get along that is for sure. We had wind, rain, cold temps and even a threat of snow, so a real damper was put on gardening plans, camping trips, opening the cottage rituals and sighting seeing tours. We had to dodge raindrops and fight our way through gale force winds on our jaunts around the region with our company, but we warmed the air with laughter and made our own sunshine, so a good time was had by all in spite of the weather.

Mother Nature calmed down yesterday, and by today she was feeling her old chipper self so we went out to enjoy her company. I have a house to clean, washing to do, letters to write, blogs to read, and plans to make for our next set of company, but today we just had to listen to our hearts, dust off the bikes and go for a ride in the sunshine. I packed a picnic lunch and off we went.


Lilacs scented the air all along the route and we found this delightful bench in a quiet spot beside a waterfall for our picnic lunch. I don't know who Kathy Roberston Gleeson is/was, but she does have a beautiful smile, and I enjoyed sitting on her bench and sharing the day with her.


This is a view of the garden we sat beside and AC has posted a picture of the view of the water our eyes feasted on while we munched our lunch. It was marvellous indeed.

Before we set off this morning, I was reading a new poetry book my sister gave to me on the weekend. Phrases from a Mary Oliver poem I just read, tumbled through my mind as I watched the water tumble over the waterfall.

I didn't want to "breath just a little" and "call it a life". I wanted to inhale deeply and experience it all. Could I shut out the voices of "caution and prudence" and "fall in", just like the water was falling freely over the waterfall? Splish, splash, fall in, fall in, fall in! Oh joy.

Take a deep breath and fall in with me. Yes!

Talk to you all later. Take care.

Here is Mary Oliver's entire Poem just in case you want to read it too.

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches?
by Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer
feel like?

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy to let you in!
Never to lie down with grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life.

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left-
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb. I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.