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Hey y'all,

In my backyard, there is a small patch of daffodils, growing around a dead peach tree. It’s in the part of my backyard that is pretty feral right now, the site of a planned mini orchard I planted last winter in a fit of hope, before the one-two punch of a catastrophic freeze (it went from 70 to 12 and back to 70 in three days) followed by 120 days of drought over the summer put shot to that plan.

But the daffodils remain, a signpost of the dreams of the past.

They are an old variety, full of pungent scent, and came from the old homesite on our family land, originally planted by the people who had custody of that acreage before we did, more than 100 years ago. When I was a boy, you could see the old house foundations, the entryway flanked by daffodils, planted by folks who lived a hard life, but who still had room in it for flowers. I remember dad pointing out the old concrete steps, and seeing the ruined cistern and the remains of the chimney.

After I moved away, Dad and my brothers put in a pond where the old homesite was. The steps were gone, the entryway was gone, all the dirt pushed into a berm on the downhill side of the new pond, where my nephews and nieces now fish.

The winter of 2020/2021 was a hard one for me. We were in a global pandemic, isolated from each other, and most of all, my father had died in October of 2020, one of more than a million folks who would fall to the virus that first year. I had gone home to see Mom, and as I drove up the driveway, the hill below the pond was awash with daffodils.

The foundation to the old house was gone. The old cistern filled in. The chimney is gone too, along with Dad and a million other people and a whole way of life that I think is gone forever. To folks coming on it for the first time, there is no sign any of it ever existed.

But for about three weeks in February, the daffodils show up, to remind of what once was, a signpost to dreams of the past. So later that spring, when the stalks had turned yellow, I went back home, dug some up, and moved them to my own backyard. As a signpost to the past, yes, but also, a reminder that life is hard, and good things don’t always last, but there is still room for flowers.

Five Beautiful Things

I love Border Collies - they are amazing creatures. But even so, I was not prepared to watch Pink just dominate this agility course, and to set a record for speed in the process.

I seldom link to individual photos, but this one of a run down street in Baltimore, MD struck me. I’m a huge Vermeer fan, and the light and colors and posture of the woman all combine to make an unintentional homage.

The website Artvee has a huge collection of high-resolution public domain (read: out of copyright, free to use) artwork, in a searchable and categorized database. Lots of amazing stuff here - just in the botanicals I see tons of things I would like to get framed and hung in our front room.

I love murmations of starlings (turn your sound on for that one). An article, with stills from the artist, is here.

The Tell, by William Bronk

I want to tell my friends how beautiful

the world is. Not but what they know

it is terrible too-they know as well as I;

but nevertheless, I want to tell my friends.

Because they are. And this is what they are;

and because it is and this is what it is.

You are my friend. The world is beautiful.

Dear friend, you are. I want to tell you so.

From Selected Poems​

New Directions, 1995.

TCB

The most opened link last week (~16% of opens) was the link to the Grammy performance by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs, which has since been taken down. :-(

This week on the blog, I wrote about compassion for a world that included me.

Thank you to the five new members this week (!), whose support makes this whole thing possible. Members, there is a Member's Only newsletter in the works right now - if all goes well, it should be in your inbox before the end of the week. (You can find out how to become a member, and help keep this project happening, by going here).

That's it for this week. If you want to support my work, you can you can learn more about being a member, or buy me a cup of coffee, or just forward this email to your friends. If someone sent this to you, you can get your own subscription here.

Take care,

HH