Cards and Garments in the Garden

We are again hosting our Cards and Garments in the Garden on the patio where you will find my cards as well as a 2023 calendar this year and Eileen’s hand-knitted items and handmade jewelry. (She also takes custom orders.) We hope you will come have a look and that the weather will cooperate. If the weather turns wet, we will make a rain plan (TBD). It would be lovely to see you in person! But, if you can’t make it to this event, remember that you can also get in touch with either of us by email. 

Hymn to the Morning

For September 1, the opening lines of a poem by Phillis Wheatley (emancipated from slavery in 1774).

Attend my lays, ye ever honour’d nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays…

For the rest of this poem, please see An Hymn to Phillis.

Memory of Venice/Valentines Day

For this day, a painting, and a poem by Philip Booth.

Nightsong

Beside you,

lying down at dark,

my waking fits your sleep.

Your turning

flares the slow-banked fire

between our mingled feet,

and there,

curved close and warm

against the nape of love,

held there,

who holds your dreaming

shape, I match my breathing

to your breath;

and sightless, keep my hand

on your heart’s breast, keep

nightwatch

on your sleep to prove

there is no dark, nor death.

—Philip Booth

Groundhog Day/Candlemas

For this double celebration, a sketch, and the first verse of a poem by Lynn Ungar.

Celebrate this unlikely oracle,

this ball of fat and fur,

whom we so mysteriously endow

with the power to predict spring.

Let’s hear it for the improbable heroes who,

frightened at their own shadows,

nonetheless unwittingly work miracles.

Why shouldn’t we believe

this peculiar rodent holds power

over sun and seasons in his stubby paw?

Who says that God is all grandeur and glory?

—from “Groundhog Day” by Lynn Ungar