Artistic Moment?

There's a beautiful patch of tiny lavender flowers in our yard right now.  I haven't mowed the grass yet, and I'm glad that the rain delayed me in that effort, otherwise I may never have seen this purple carpet!  After church tonight I decided to see if I could capture it - as it turns out, the sun was also low enough in the sky that it could be seen through the trees at the edge of our yard, so I thought I'd try to be a bit artistic.  Golden hour is a wonderful time to take pictures with soft, gentle lighting, and having the warm colors that it brings out makes this shot particularly appealing to me.  What do you think?

 

Mother's Day 2025

For a very long time, Mother's Day was a difficult Sunday for Wendy (and me); it's been nice to celebrate this special occasion differently over the last 16 years!  (In case you're wondering about my math, we actually did recognize Mother's Day in 2010, since Wendy's pregnancy was progressing well and seemingly without complication.  We were cautious about it, but we still have a framed collage of pictures from NYC that I had made to give her that morning.)

I believe that our circumstances prior to Mathias's birth in 2010 have made us more sensitive to the struggles that others deal with, and for that I'm thankful.  Mother's Day and Father's Day (as well as a lot of other specifically designated holidays), while well-meaning, can be painful reminders for individuals about what they didn't or couldn't, and the hype surrounding many of these events only makes the pain more excruciating.  We've tried to learn from our own experiences and put ourselves in others' shoes - it's not always easy, but it's the compassionate thing to do.

I hope you enjoy these pictures of a Mom sharing a beautiful afternoon with her "little boy."  💗

Morels, Again!

Imagine my excitement when I was collecting some crushed stone from the yard the other day and noticed a morel mushroom growing there, very near the same location where I had discovered the first one since we've lived here!  After it got my attention, I noticed that it had a neighbor as well.  I left these to grow for a couple more days because we were expecting rain, and today I harvested them.  Two of these halves were sauteed with a bit of onion and then cooked in with two scrambled eggs.  Unfortunately, though I had taken this picture of the mushrooms sliced in half, I didn't have the presence of mine, or perhaps just the patience, to take a picture of the finished dish before it ended up in my belly!

Now, of course, this means that Matty and I need to do some foraging this weekend...

It's Been A While...

It's been over 10 years since I added to this 'blog, but it seems like a good way to have a medium through which I can express and document some thoughts while I'm vacationing from Facebook.  Though comments will still be an option, the engagement level of any comment-based dialogue is significantly different here and I think that'll be helpful to disallow anything from happening like it so easily can on other social media platforms.

I've had some clear anxiety about "pulling the plug," even though I'm committed to it.  I have come to rely on Facebook's convenience and the interactions it facilitates between me and so many people who have come to be a part of my life over nearly 59 years of existence in the physical world.  But, that can still happen through Messenger (and likely more meaningfully and intentionally, rather than just out of reactionary convenience), and any "journaling" such as I often turn into Facebook posts can become 'blog entries instead.  For anyone new to this space I created back in 2007, you should be able to look back on any entries that may be of interest to you - perhaps you'll learn more about me and our little family of three than you already knew, including all of the challenges we faced to make that possible!

So this post is just a test, making sure that I still know how to type in a text box provided by a default template.  I'll probably try to share some pictures here as well, and I recall that being a bit more challenging with regard to proper alignment with text and other details that my "graphic designer" brain wants to be a specific way.  But I'll work on it, and I may ask for feedback (as in helpful critique) from anyone who would care to be part of that loop.

"Welcome back, Don!"

"Thank you, Don!"

😁