Rainy Days..

are best when there are ...

 pots of tea and homemade bread,

plenty of sewing projects, 

( these adorable dresses are for two little girls at our church, one of whom just had a birthday)

and stacks of books to keep you company!

The beauty of old books

This morning I started a new book for my history/literature class. The book is On the Incarnation by Athanasius, who was the bishop of Alexandra in the mid 300's A.D ( Don't feel bad if you don't know who or what this is. I didn't even know Athanasius or his book existed until I learn what I was read for this class!)  The introduction was by C.S.Lewis. He explains why it is better to read old books straight from the source rather then taking some biased professor's ideas about what he thinks the author is really trying to say.  Then he says this:

       " In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognize, like some all too familiar smell, that almost
          unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante.  It was
          there ( honeyed and floral) in Francois de Sales; it was there ( grave and homely) in Spenser and Walton; it was    
          there ( grim but manful) in Pascal and Johnson; there again with the mild, frighting, Paradisial flavor, in Vaughan
          and Boehme and Traherne.  In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth century one was not safe- Law and Butler were
          two lions in the path.  The supposed "Paganism" of the Elizabethans could not keep it out: it lay in wait where a
          man might have supposed himself safest, in the very centre of The Faerie Queen and the Arcadia.  It was, of
          course, varied; and yet- after all- so unmistakeably the same; recognisable, not to be evaded, the odour which is
          death to us until we allow it to become life:"


I must admit that while I haven't heard of half the men that C.S. Lewis refers too, I thought that this was a beautiful, dare I say it, almost poetical way of describing the beauty to be found in old books and why it is sooo important to read them.  So I guess I will go look up the men I don't know  right now and figure out what they wrote and if there is a translation in English! 

Happy Monday!

First signs of spring!

 Our Apricot tree

Violets

Crabapple tree

The first azalea!

The first mowing of the season!

Spring Prayer

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For flowers that bloom about our feet;

For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;

For song of bird, and hum of bee;

For all things fair we hear or see,

Father in heaven, we thank Thee!

For blue of stream and blue of sky;

For pleasant shade of branched high;

For fragrant air and cooling breeze;

For beauty of the blooming trees,

Father in heaven, we thank Thee!

Here we go again!

This time last year our down-stairs was rearranged to accommodate the new floor. This year we rearranged the whole house( actually about 75%) so that the carpets could be cleaned! The whole up-stairs and our family room and computer room had most of the furniture moved. The cleaners did the high traffic  areas and any stains we had.

Most of my room and Jacqueline's ended up in the dining room.

This is our bathroom. That is my dresser in the back!  The crates are Jacqueline's bookcase.

 The sewing / school room. 

I love this picture, even though it is a little blurry. That is my chair with a basket of Jacqueline's stuffed animals in it, my table with Jacqueline's rug on top of it and Jacqueline's guitar in the front. 

Thankfully everything is almost back to normal and back in place.