Good morning!  I wrote this post last night after work, as I thought I might be too tired this morning to write anything that made sense.  I was right.  It's soooo hard to put down a good book!!

Some words are just so beautiful that you can't help but love them.  One of my favorite words?  Serendipity.
And as luck would have it, guess what shy little wild flowers were scattered all over our campsite last weekend?  Little blue forget-me-nots.  And why would that be serendipitous?  Only because today, after five years of eagerly and anxiously waiting (yes, five years!!!) for the next book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series to come out, it is finally here.

I rushed out at lunch time and purchased it, so I wouldn't have to waste time after work but could come straight home and start reading.  But oh my, how those hours from one o'clock to five o'clock stretched out at work!!  And when I got home, my ever-so-understanding husband was sporting an old name badge of his on his shirt...he reckoned I probably would be so tied up in the book I might forget who he was.  He reckoned right.

It's been a long wait and I am eager to start.  I've had enough discipline to hold off on opening the book yet, wanting to write my blog and prepare supper (a quick one!) before I settle down with a glass of wine and savor opening the book for the very first time.  And I'm conflicted...I want to tear through the book as I am desperate to find out what has happened to my favorite characters, and yet...I want to enjoy each word and each scene as it unfolds, knowing full well that it might be a very long wait until the next book arrives.

In case you aren't familiar with the series, the humble forget-me-not starts the main character, Claire, on an unforgettable adventure through time into the brawny arms of a Scottish highlander, Jamie.  Since I knew the book was coming out today, you can imagine my delight on spotting the delicate little flowers at my camp site!  If I'd had a miniature Jamie in my pocket, I guess I could have set up camp like this!

And even more exciting, STARZ is producing a television series based on the first book, Outlander, which premieres August 9th.  In the picture above, you can see Claire on her search for the elusive forget-me-nots.  Needless to say, please don't try calling me that evening.

So I'm off to my reading couch, wine in hand, to say hello to the newest book!  I'll try to surface tomorrow to let you know how it's going..

Okay...I couldn't resist this picture.  But I really don't own a Jamie doll.
Yet...

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things...

Yesterday my blog post was about how relaxed I felt after just a couple of days outside, camping and enjoying all that nature has to offer in northern Wisconsin.  Besides rain and mosquitoes and a poison ivy sighting and one rather large spider, I gloried in late blooming lilacs and lovely pink honeysuckle:

amazing sunsets:

and soul-refreshing sunrises.

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the world

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God's recreation of the new day

And while I was lucky enough to be able to spend my weekend in a lovely state park, getting outside really is as easy as walking out your front door.  So I was a little sad to read a study yesterday that noted we tend to underestimate how much nature affects our well being.  The report stated that even vague instructions to "spend more time in nature" has a positive effect on humans, but as we (and children in particular) spend less and less time outdoors we are developing what scientists have now coined ...nature deficit disorder.

Nature deficit disorder.  Now that, in my opinion, is about as sad as it gets. Let's get outside and soak up the sunshine.  As Emerson urges...Live in the sunshine, Swim in the sea, Drink the wild air!!  Poet Gerard Hopkins (1844-1889) must have agreed with Emerson when he penned the lovely poem below, God's Grandeur.

Have a wonderful day, and get outside!  

Days are where we live...

Hello, summer!  I've missed you so much!  And since you now seem willing to hang around and spread your warm sunshiney rays on us, it's time for a camping adventure!  We ended up on a rare trip alone to Door County, as our oldest son has just had a baby, our second son wouldn't be caught dead camping, our third son acts on the weekends and our daughter is still in Europe. That means last Friday saw the two of us heading "north of the tension line" for a short bit of r&r.  I came home relaxed and feeling like I had a week's vacation--there is something about walking along the lake shore...

and reading whenever you feel like reading and knowing there are no home chores calling your name (well, to be completely honest there were LOTS of chores back home with my name stamped all over them, but we managed to drive out of hearing range...)

that leaves me feeling energized.  Maybe it's the Vitamin D in the sunshine, but whatever it is it makes me happy. I'm hooked on camping and even more hooked on Door County.  Wisconsin is a lovely state, but the peninsula is in a class of beauty all by itself.

I have lots more pictures to share and tales to tell, but it's already Monday morning and work is calling.  I'll leave you with a lovely poem I discovered Saturday morning while sipping my coffee and looking at this view from my camp chair.  Poet Philip Larkin (England, 1922-1985) asks the question "What are days for?" and I couldn't agree more with his answer.  I hope you feel the same.

Days

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Have a wonderful Monday!!

A rose by any other name...

Oh, the infinite possibilities you have before you when you first start thinking about what to name a baby!! Family names, favorite names, "celebrity" names, "fad" names, literary names...the list goes on and on.  As my husband and I pondered and discussed names late into the night each time we were expecting a child we learned one valuable lesson the hard way. Do not share your chosen name with anyone.  ANYONE.  Either the name will be ridiculed (as in "really, you want to use THAT name?!") or, as we sadly found out during one pregnancy, a cherished name that we had shared was liked by someone else who won the delivery race and named their child OUR name.  Not that you have a patent on baby names, but still...it was disappointing, to say the least.

So when we discovered our son and his wife were expecting I shared this little piece of wisdom with them.  I did not exactly mean that they shouldn't share it with ME (just kidding! well, kind of kidding...), but they definitely took my advice and kept their selected names to themselves.  So the excitement was really building while we waited for "the call."  Would it be a boy or girl?  Red hair (my son) or blonde (my daughter-in-law), or brunette (me) or black (my husband)?  Freckles (my son)?  No freckles (my d-i-l)?  And names...classic? classy? traditional?  Why yes...all of the above regarding her name!

And not only is Lily a fun name (think fairy lilies in the garden, or Lily's Purple Plastic Purse in the library), it is also the name of one of my favorite literary mothers...Lillian Gilbreth.  Who couldn't love the brilliant time and motion study pioneer who along with her husband, Frank Gilbreth, were the forerunners in the study of ergonomics?  In the early 1900s she earned a master's degree in English literature and PhDs from both the University of California and Brown University (the first degree ever granted in industrial psychology) . She became the first American engineer ever to create a synthesis of psychology and scientific management. By applying the principles of scientific management to household tasks, she sought to provide women with shorter, simpler, and easier ways of doing housework to enable them to seek paid employment outside the home.  She paved the way for so many of us now in the workplace.  And did I mention that during all of her collaborative work and research with her husband, she had twelve children and managed her home with the same precision she managed her career?  Growing up, I read Cheaper by the Dozen and Bells on their Toes every year and never grew tired of this somewhat eccentric and completely charming family.

So welcome, little Lillian Marie.  Your name is lovely and will serve you well all the long days of your life.

Naming the Baby

by Faith Shearin

When you are dreaming of the name

you are also dreaming of who they

might be. They are invented in darkness —

under cloak of skin — and, for the better

part of a year, are a swelling

or a set of symptoms. The name

books are like a box of chocolates

and when you open them you see

how many kinds there really are.

There are names of people you

have known and disliked and names

that make the wrong sounds and names

that suggest your child will be

like everyone else's. There are names

that turn your child into a character

in a novel and names that recall

the time when your great grandmother

was young. Naming the baby is a way

of dreaming about a creature who is

almost but not quite. It is a way of

imagining the soul of a person you

are making but have not made.

The name is the first way you see

the baby: their title, the syllables

that conjure a shape from the lantern.

It's official.  I'm in love again, with a tiny little girl who has captured me heart and soul.  My husband and I visited our son and daughter-in-law last night and over dinner I remarked that I had wondered how I would feel when I became a grandmother--how would it compare to being a mother?  Now I have my answer...it feels wonderful!  And very liberating, because I can do the "fun" things and not have to worry about all the parental responsibilities (been there, done that!).  My husband and I tried to share her equally, which meant while one of us was holding her the other was watching the clock, waiting for the next opportunity to rock her.

I prefer singing a baby to sleep.

While my husband prefers whistling.

Both methods seemed to work equally well!

Looks like it is time for another song!

I had my favorites when rocking my children...Michael row your boat ashore, Puff the Magic Dragon, and  one of my very favorites seemed to do the trick last night...All Through the Night.  

Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,

All through the night

Guardian angels God will send thee,

All through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,

Hill and dale in slumber sleeping

I my loved ones' watch am keeping,

All through the night.

Angels watching, e'er around thee,

All through the night

Midnight slumber close surround thee,

All through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,

Hill and dale in slumber sleeping

I my loved ones' watch am keeping,

All through the night.

All through the night, or until the next feeding...

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Lily's library

As soon as I learned the exciting news that I was going to be a grandmother, I couldn't wait to start collecting special books that I could share with our family's newest member.  Nothing gave me more delight as a child than to curl up on the sofa or underneath the weeping birch tree in our backyard and read my way through a long afternoon.  I will have to be patient and wait to share some of my favorites, since it's a little too soon for A Little Princess, The Secret Garden and the Anne (with an "e") books but thankfully there are many charming nursery rhyme books that can start as the foundation of Lily's library.

And here is a little rhyme for today that goes along with how I celebrated her birth...the beginning of Lily's garden!  I choose to take the rhyme in a light-hearted fashion, and not delve too deeply into the darker origins of the rhyme, which are slightly macabre and involve Mary Queen of Scots and some of her dastardly doings.  

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

So if the first book in Lily's library is a book of rhymes (from a grandmother who was raised on Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verse) the first flowers in Lily's garden need to be...lilies of the valley, of course!  As I was planting them one of the first songs I learned in Brownies kept running through my head:  White coral bells, upon a slender stalk, lilies of the valley line my garden walk.

Oh don't you wish that you could hear them ring?  That will happen only when the fairies sing!

And speaking of fairies, I couldn't resist a few pink fairy lilies for Lily's garden as well, because after nursery rhymes comes fairy tales!

And I when I spied some lovely daylilies named Big Smile, they had to go in the garden as well because that is exactly how Miss Lily makes me feel.

I can't wait to see how all the lovely white, pink, and orange flowers bloom in her corner of the garden, but while I'm waiting I'll just enjoy the hues in Lily's Sunday outfit instead.

Perhaps Lily was lulled to sleep by Rudyard Kipling's beautiful ballad Seal Lullaby.  It's been one of my favorites for years, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us

And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

The moon, O'er the combers, looks downward to find us

At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, there soft by the pillow
Oh, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!

The storm shall not wake thee, no shark shall overtake thee

Asleep in the storm of slow-swinging seas.

Sweet joy befall thee!

Welcome to the world, my sweet Lillian Marie!  I am sorry for the long silence on my blog, but it was a crazy week for our family...celebrating the arrival of our granddaughter, followed by pesky bilirubin levels that led to jaundice, that eventually led to a rather dramatic late evening transport in the rain to the NICU forty miles away. A little more excitement than we had planned for, but a week of good doctors, magic twinkly bilirubin blankets and lots and lots of family and friends' prayers means that Lily is now home and settled in and we are all rejoicing.

We couldn't wait to see her the day after she was born!

And what poem could be more perfect today than William Blake's Infant Joy!  

I have no name 

I am but two days old.— 

What shall I call thee?

I happy am 

Joy is my name,— 

Sweet joy befall thee!

 

Pretty joy!

Sweet joy but two days old,

Sweet joy I call thee; 

Thou dost smile. 

I sing the while 

Sweet joy befall thee. 

We are so happy you are here, Lily.  And so it begins...adventures in being a grandmother.  I can't wait to start.

Happy Monday!