Home Thoughts From Home.

I think if you live alone,the natural world outside your window becomes important.You become more  aware of the changing seasons ,concious of shifting winds, sense dampness before the rain clouds gather.
          The little house that I live in is surrounded by ancient oak trees, that are, at the moment, dressed in their bright green foliage.This particular green lasts but a few magical days and after, darkens to the steady verdant  green of summer.Unusually this year, roses are in bloom,wayside dog- roses as well as the home grown cultivated ones, at least one month  earlier than the norm.
Hedges are crowned with May blossom,the green sward aglow with buttercups,and in places there are banks of the common field poppy,their scarlett, delicate, heads nodding in the gentle breeze.The world seems to me, to be a kaleidescope of greens,a tapestry woven by  nature empowered by God.Visits to my bird table have slowed since the desperate search for food of the winter months.Natural food is in abundance,and most wild birds now, are sitting on their eggs or the tardier ones still searching for a mate.The song of the wood thrush wakes me every morning ,glorious sounds from that tiny throat and however  much I try, I cannot get a glimpse of him,shy little creature that he is.Not so the smart blackbird who has graced my garden for two years or more.I am familiar with his comings and goings,his penchant for dry dust baths in my vegetable garden ,his alarm call at the sight of a cat.
         My garden,apart from the vegetable plot, is wild.My attempts to tame it have sometimes succeeded ......for a time.But it once was part of a wood,and that ,in truth, is what it reverts to.I can weed and cultivate as much as I like.Plant herbaceous borders,mow the pasture like grass,prune and snip continually,but every spring the yellow celendine appears,wood sorrell grows up in my borders,wild violets and bluebells  and the natural woodland plants make their appearance, and I have not the heart nor the desire to destroy them.So I leave it in it's wildness,and on my less conventional days I rejoice  in the beauty of the uncultivated ,and marvel at the work of the Creator.Out there in the natural world,the troubles and cares of this life recede for me.It has always been so.
Oh Lord.our Lord:how wonderful is thy name in all the earth!
For thy greatness is exalted above the heavens.
For I will behold thy heavens,the works of thy fingers:the moon and the stars,
which thou hast founded.
The birds of the air,and the fishes of the sea:that walk through the paths of the sea.
O lord,our Lord:how wonderful is thy name in all the earth!