September 13--SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!!!!!!!

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.  --A. A. Milne

    And babies leave the womb when they are darn good and ready!

    I now have a no-doubt precocious grandbaby #2, a boy!!!! Luca is a big brother now. Will he want to keep his new little brother around? Time will tell. 

    The newest little godling in our family is Remy Quinn Hardin, born on September 11, on my mother's birthday. My mother's name was Madeline, and she passed in 1979, so she never got to see her two grandsons delivered by me. She was there last night at the birth though, because my son told me their first nurse's name was Madeline. Mom wanted to help her great-grandson into the world. How cool is that!?!?!?!

    Remy weighed in at 7lb, 11oz. According to his dad, Remy is perfect. Well, of course he is!! I've seen a couple photos so far, and I would wholeheartedly agree. Remy's mom did an excellent job raising him from an embryo and bringing him into the world for us.
    We will go see Remy and family in a couple weeks after things have settled down a bit. 

    Happy Grammie!

        Leta

September 12--The Disease of Fear and Violence

Most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.  --Anne Lamott

    Still awaiting the grandbaby!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    These are the words of Shane Claiborne: 

Violence is contagious. Violence begets violence.… Pick up the sword and die by the sword. You kill us and we’ll kill you. There is a contagion of violence in the world; it’s spreading like a disease.

    It is quite clear to me that a vote for Trump is a vote for spreading the disease of violence. He has demonstrated it in every appearance, ranging from mocking a disabled person to promising to go after anyone who is disloyal to him. His whole message is based in fear and violence. 

    Is this what you want for your future and your children's future?

    It is incomprehensible to me that ANY woman could vote for Trump. His misogynistic behavior is quite evident, and he and his old white male cronies have no interest in women having any rights. 

    Any vote for Trump, "in my book," is an act of treason to the U.S. and the Constitution and everything that has already made America great. This would be either a willful traitor (I'm rich and I want to stay rich; Trump will support that) or an ignorant traitor (somehow convinced to believe his lies, proving the failure of our public education system). Willful or ignorant traitor? I can't come up with a choice of which is worse. 

    Haven't we had enough violence? Let's go for love, no matter how imperfect.

        Leta

Let's make our country for ALL!

September 11--Waiting...

There is not love of life without despair about life.  --Albert Camus

    Well, life begins and life ends. I restate Brian McLaren's definition of grief: grief is love persisting when what we love is passing away. Another way to look at the Camus quote is in this spiritual wisdom: everything has a lifespan. Nothing stays the same, and generally we don't care for that, but oh, well--there is the despair. 

    Right now I am wildly swinging between love and despair. The new grandbaby is due any day now, LOVE OF LIFE. Not knowing what's happening moment-to-moment (they are in Colorado) has me in a concurrent state of anxious despair. We don't know if the baby is a boy or girl, so there's extra excitement over the surprise. September 11 was my mother's birthday, so it would be cool for her great grandbaby to arrive today. 

    Stay tuned!!

        Leta

Barney is really good at waiting...

September 10--Love Evolves

When you love someone you do not love them, all the time, in the exact same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is a lie to pretend to. 
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

    Let's start out with "you do not love them all the time." Note that I removed a comma. 😉😉 The folks I love the most--yep, I do not love them all the time. Or maybe I always love them but sometimes I don't like them. 

    Let's put the comma back in. (By the way, there is a great book for grammar/punctuation nerds titled "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. Note that the comma after "Eats" is quite meaningful.) The quote above makes me think of the "5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. To summarize, we love by 1) quality time, 2) words of affection, 3) acts of service, 4) physical touch, and 5) gifts. Any good relationship is probably an ongoing, changing combination of those five actions. I can look at my marriage and see that those have changed over time. I would say that now our primary "language" with each other is #3. It works for us.

    When you love someone, being able to adapt to change is a very important skill!

        Leta

At Botanica in Wichita

September 9--Wonders!

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.  --Carl Sagan

    Consider our Universe--apparently infinite in every way, thereby giving us unlimited exploration and learning opportunities. And right where you are, your own body, is the same--an unending learning opportunity. Certainly science has discovered much about our universe and the human body, but there is still much more that we don't know. 

    I realize that Carl Sagan was the really-big-picture-Universe guy. But I have opened up a new world for myself with the simple idea of painting clay pots, combining my love of painting and plants. I googled "painted clay pots" and an incredible array of ideas scrolled before me. I even ordered some holographic glitter paints (which excite me to no end--I LOVE sparkles!!). Stay tuned for pot #2. (Pot #1 photo is on Sept 2 post.)

    There are always new worlds to explore if we remain open.

        Leta

Sparkles!!! 😀😀

September 8--Grieving Our Natural World

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation of September 5 is titled "Fall in Love With A Place." The idea is to have somewhere in nature where one becomes intimately aware of all its nuances, gifts, and challenges so that one is willing to work to sustain it. My "place" is Alan Seeger Natural Area in central PA. Another is my backyard garden, and I do put in quite a bit more effort there. 

    Brian McLaren offers these words relative to our grief regarding our abuse of nature:

Through the years, I’ve been involved in a lot of different areas of activism and so often what sustains us and motivates us in our activism work is anger. That’s legitimate because wherever we see injustice, we ought to be angry. But anger … can toxify our motivations if anger is all that’s driving us. That’s why I think it helps often for us to trace our anger back to grief... and then to trace our grief to love. It’s because we love something that we feel grief when it’s threatened. In fact, one of my favorite definitions of grief is that grief is love persisting when what we love is passing away. What you love, you try to save, and that’s why so many of us see the natural world around us with such tenderness, with such grief, sometimes with such anger, because what we love is passing away.

    I love McLaren's definition of grief. I have experienced considerable grief over the past couple of years, and I think that's true for the rest of humanity also. 

        Leta

A mossy decaying tree stump
in Alan Seeger Natural Area, PA

September 7--Bless Our Trees

Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.  --Moliere

    When we moved into our home in 1985, all the trees in the neighborhood were spindly little saplings. I could barely wait to get trees planted in our yard. That happened in 1990. Back then I did not dream that we would be in the same home nearly 40 years later, but here we are and the trees that remain are big. I went from a sunny yard with a thriving vegetable garden to a shady one with ornamental plants only. Disease, age and/or storm damage have forced the removal of several of ours and our neighbors trees, and I'm back to growing some vegetables. Many folks in the neighborhood planted silver maples because they grow fast. Those are the ones that are also failing the soonest. 

    I grew up in central PA surrounded by literally millions of trees. I was a "tree-hugger" before that was even a term. And yes, the slow growers thrive for the longest time.  

    A tree's shade is priceless in our hot Kansas summers. 

        Leta

My "tree heaven"--
Alan Seeger Natural Area in PA