colour my world/a Lenten musing

The first three photos were taken in summer of 2011 (I think) at my family's home in Illinois. Currently,  I miss colour. The world is white and brown, which is beautiful of course, since we all know I adore snow. But February is nearing its end now; I find myself longing to see green buds on the trees and hear birds singing in those trees. We have another snowstorm coming; exciting as always. But as I page through my Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog and pick what I will grow this year, I wish I could open the windows and feel a warm breeze. Spring breezes have a certain scent to them. I don't mean the ones that smell of manure and farms! I mean the other ones, those that smell warm.

Lent is also upon us. We sang the hymn in that last picture both on Ash Wednesday and last Sunday. When Lent comes so early, it's a bit of a shock; we think of Easter as being in the springtime. And it will be -- it comes on the last day of March. Easter, that is. So perhaps Lent being so early isn't a bad thing. As winter holds on and spring struggles to break through, we can be reminded of our Lord and Savior's struggle with Satan and death and how He won, just like spring overcomes winter each and every year.

Yes, I love winter. I kind of hate summer. Autumn is awesome. But spring is a good time to be contemplative, and that's something I look forward to as the weather warms up.

the nostalgia of a clothesline

It is 90 degrees outside and quite sunny. I hung my clean laundry on the clothesline for the first time this year. The cold and wet clothes felt good against my skin and made the task feel not so tedious. And it made me realize that I hadn't hung clothes on a clothesline since I was not quite tall enough to reach the clothesline! It's been awhile. But I think clotheslines are wonderful, and they hold a lot of nostalgia for me, because when I was little, we would make fortresses out of big blankets and the clothesline and it was magical. Especially at night when we had only our beach towels (and maybe our swimsuits) hung on the clothesline after we had been swimming in our tiny pool all day. I say especially magical at night because this is when the heat would die down and the fireflies would come out and it felt as if we could run through the forest of towels into another world underneath the giant fir tree. It really was giant, and the fireflies congregated under there.

I miss those days. I hope that someday our children will play like that.
I hope we are able to teach them that imagination is the best plaything.
I thank God for giving me such a wonderful husband, since I know that he feels the same way.
Someday, there will be children to play under the clothesline.
Today, I will revel in the nostalgia of a clothesline and the heat of long-ago summers.