A Beautiful Moment

The Boys are back in Town

Tomorrow my # 1 son and grandson arrrive. Somehow I don't think The Wedding will be on the agenda but I'm not grumbling. Meanwhile here are this week's blooms


Pittisporum has this tiny blossom - new to me

Weigelia at the back of the house blooms later.

Laurel

Could this be an Escallonia? I have three of them.

Weigelia - south facing and blooming

This I tend to disdain but it's a good blue.

I've tried to look this up but failed.

Margaret's husband gave me this little purple flower which was special.

Stocks - such a fragrance.


I'm cross with this clematis - it was meant to lighten a dark corner and it has shot off next door!

Second time around

Two roads diverged in the middle of my life,

I heard a wise man say

I took the road less travelled by

And that’s made the difference every night and day.

Larry Norman (with apologies to Robert Frost.)

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.

Paul Tournier

The soul is healed by being with children.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sadness is a wall between two gardens.

Kahlil Gibran

We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgement as to invalidate evidence that does not con firm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means.

Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam

No matter what God’s power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on a human level and limits himself.

Jacques Ellul Anarchy and Christianity

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

C.S. Lewis

Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.

Author Unknown

Even if we find another Eden, we should not be fit to enjoy it perfectly not stay in it for ever.

Henry Van Dyke

New world- big horizon

Open your eyes and see it’s true

New world- across the frightening

Waves of blue.

David Wilcox

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein

Oh my soul…be prepared for him

who knows how to ask questions.

T.S.Eliot

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully

as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God

G.K. Chesterton

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations,

but truth has only one mode of being.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

God is a verb.

Buckminster Fuller

You can kiss your family good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you

Frederick Buechner - Telling the Truth

An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children.

He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.

A.W.Tozer

Earth has no sorrow that

Heaven cannot heal.

Author Unknown.

Faith never knows where it is being led,

But it knows and loves the One who is leading.

Oswald Chambers

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Waiting for delivery of three new books I decide to re-read The Shack by William Paul Young to see how it stood up to a second reading. This time I noted the quotes with a relevance to each chapter they headed. As they seemed fitting for an Easter weekend I decided to share them with you.

Happy Easter

My mother's acer - just out.

Another of Mum's gifts. It was meant to be 5'

Muguet de bois from our French son It has a special significance in France. Remind me:)

We have had a week of warm sunny weather , but you see the mist at the edges. Now there is tak of smog

Isn't this worth waiting for - even with all the leaves it sheds in the autumn.

This got lost in transit. See copy below.

Hands off the Sandhills!

This is the children's Convalescent Home in Lytham St Annes - now no more. I went here , aged sixteen, to work with children and babies who were having a respite from their hazardous life in the slums of Manchester.
For three weeks they were loved and cared for and allowed to run wild on the sandhills by the sea. They were deloused and fed good nourishing food
Probationers and children alike lived life to the full under the watchful eyes of Matron, and a few tears were shed each time the children left, to be replaced bythe next batch. We never knew what they were going back to.



Below, this is on the sandhills between the Home and the sea. The nurse on the front right was a Jewish girl who, with her brother, escaped the Holocaust. She was one of the kindest people I ever met and when , on night duty, I committed the unforgiveable sin of letting the boiler out she got out of bed, came down to the cellar , now reeking of fumes, and with great dollops of floor polish got the beast blazing away before Matron found out. We probationers were doing pre- training until we were 171/2 and old enough to start our State training at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. Out of the five of us I was the only one to go to RMCH where I stayed to take my finals aged 21.

One night the night nurse found an empty bed in the boy's ward and all of us were dispatched with lanterns to search the sandhills. The convent next door rang its bell and the nuns in their gowns slithered with us, up and down the sandhills frantically calling Tommy's name.

At last the bell rang the signal for us to return and there was Matron - still chalk white - but a smile on her face. Little Tommy had got up to go to the loo in the night and got back into an empty bed in the girl's ward. No-one had thought to count the children. Sandhills have always been special to me and evoke such memories.



Decades later I dicovered the sandhills at Instow where we go in June. What triggered this post - familiar to my old faithfuls, was reading that residents in St Annes want to have the sandhills removed because it spoils their view. I'll leave it to you to comment as I don't want to get my BP up.

This afternoon’s blooms.

The first post with accompanying copy wasn’t successful. The second – without the copy - was so I shall add copy now. Mustn’t grumble!

From the top – bluebells – for Kim. I wish they were a deeper blue. I’m sure his

Scottish ones will be.

The first iris - already fragrant.

Columbine – so pretty and always reminds me of the Bard and how close he was to nature.

The deep purple lilac – too high for me to reach.

A curtain of vanilla scented clematis – an annual delight.

These fantastic tulips were a surprise – I must have planted then last year.

Such a relief to have Picasa back – almost

There is definitely an imp who fiddles with my script. Don't think I haven't noticed!