Apple-blossom time!
Also, the Solomon's seal are blooming.
Truly, this is the most wonderful time of the year.
I went walking with the dog late last night, beneath stars that were dazzling even in town, with all the lights. It gets a little darker back in the neighborhood, so I walked farther than usual, beyond the clustered streetlights, in order to get a better look at the sky. I'm terrible at carrying star-maps in my head, but I was looking for this alignment of planets, which is supposed to be quite visible this week. I think I saw them --- at least some of them. Will look again tonight in the mountains, where there won't be so much light pollution.
Marly is feeling better, so I am headed up to Cullowhee today. Going to stay here through lunch to walk the dog one last time, since my husband has to work late, and plan to roll up to the mountain house around 4 this afternoon. My bag has been more or less packed since Tuesday afternoon, so all I have to do is put on my clothes, toss in my toothbruth, and go. I'll stay through Saturday, then come home to kick up my heels for one last Lenten Vigil-of-Sunday with my husband before Palm Sunday and Holy Week kick into gear.
By bedtime last night I had walked 4.36 miles, not bad for a day when I wasn't going to walk so far. I'm at 113.09 miles, total: only 7 miles left to walk! I probably won't get much real pilgrimage-walking in over the next few days, since I'll be visiting --- I'll call this a wayside stop, a little retreat, a rest before the last big push (even though it's not that big a push).
I realized this week that I haven't been posting my reading report --- I've been a bit bogged down, in any event. I've been reading the daily Mass readings instead of my Bible-in-a-Year, and haven't picked Barnaby Rudge back up, even though it's good, mostly because I've been focused on writing projects and the things I'm reading for those. At this writing, I've just about finished a satisfactory draft of my Seren of the Wildwood essay, which is due day after tomorrow, so I have some time to revise and cut, but it seems to hang together pretty well, and to be focused on engagement with and participation in tradition and the action of grace in a fallen Edenice space.
Then I've got to bang out a little prospectus for the talk I'm giving for Memphis Arts Moot on April 15. That's due Saturday as well. Got to remember to take books with me to Marly's, so that I can do that.
In my own writing, I've continued to noodle at my nascent historical novel, but also to look intensely at the sonnet crowns I wrote in Lent last year, which, once I was done with them, I just closed and didn't think about for a year. I still don't know how good they are. Certainly they'd get no airplay in any mainstream literary venue, being about the existence of angels, theodicy, and the resurrection. One is a standard corona of 15 sonnets (the rule is that the last line of one sonnet becomes the first line of the next, and the last line of the last sonnet recalls the first line of the first). The other . . . well, it was two sets of poems initially, a crown plus ten more, but I think I'm going to just make that its own big sequence. Both cycles are pretty sprawly and go all kinds of places in their journey, and I don't know that they work at all. But I kind of like them, and would probably build another book around them, if I can get them to work and somebody to publish them.
Wearing today:
Fiona, a good choice for a day of variable temperatures, cool but not cold, warm but not hot. We're at 52F right now, but both here and in the mountains the high will be in the mid-60sF, so a lovely, warm day. This marks Fiona's 4th outing for the month, leaving Maggie in last place with only two wears (and I'm not taking her with me, so there she'll be for now). I felt like wearing a dress with a waist today, and I always love the scoop neck and 3/4 sleeves of this style. Old purple leggings for extra warmth as well as . . . you know, Lent . . . plus thrifted Birkenstock Balis.
For the mountains, my daypack includes:
Sierra
Willow
1 pair of leggings (navy)
1 purple cardigan
1 purple polarfleece
purple Birkenstock Rosemeads
Birkenstock hiking boots (which will be tied on the outside)
underwear
toiletries
I will toss my puffer jacket in the car, because nights are bound to be chilly. And books for writing projects, because there will be some downtime in the afternoon while Marly visits her mother.
More Fiona, because she is nice:
I like the teal and purple together, too.
This all just feels nice and flowy and graceful and easy, put-together in kind of a funky granola way, but not too much of a coordinated uniform (like, at all). Fiona is a terrific travel dress, holding her shape well and adapting to so many different situations: easy to dress up more, but perfect just as she comes.
I always feel good in this color, too. It feels just about right for my coloring and contrast --- about as bright as I'd go, and maybe about as green as I'd go, too (though I do keep wondering about this spruce green color that so many dresses come in . . . whether it might work for me or not. It could be great, or I could look, in my friend Juanita's daughter's words, like a poor little jaundiced child).
I keep casting my eye at new dresses, I think chiefly because it's the end of Lent and I'm dying for dopamine. But --- as I keep sternly reminding myself --- I have this skirt on order, and it'll be good for my spiritual constitution to wait another month to get it. I should also sternly remind myself of all the things in my closet that I'm looking forward to wearing with it.
And be grateful for things I own, that I like as much as I like what I'm wearing today.
Because truly, I do have these things, and I do like them, and I am grateful for them.
Enough pictures of me. And now to let the dog out.