Crab-apple Blossoms and butterfly moments

Thought I'd just drop by and see how ya'll were doing? I've thought about you all a lot. But the pull of the sun, the blossoming buds, the green grasses, and outside tasks that have lain unfinished all winter have beckoned me to them. I decided to share the a bit of spring-time I captured from my own part of the world---hence all the flowery pictures.

Yesterday, I lay down on a garden swing, and closed my eyes, and slept, letting the warmth of the sun relax me to my core. There's something wonderfully lazy, and deliciously abundant about letting one's self relax on such a glorious spring day. At first, my inner "Olga" was like, "wait a minute, you've got tons of things to do, you don't have time to sit and be lazy in the sun. What are you? A rock that can just lie around? What if someone catches you here, sleeping, listening lazily to the birds, like some jungle book creature?"
          My answer back to her was..."So?"
"I am being lazy. So what. It feels fantastic!"
The greater crime would be to let the delicious moment pass by unappreciated. Not to stop and let the rapture of it all sink in seems a great waste. I like to think that God made such days to be fully appreciated, fully lived in, and fully enjoyed, just as a writer, baker, or a painter create not just for their self alone, but for their work to be enjoyed.

God wants us to enjoy his work. To be trapped indoors, to miss the sun, the spring, the green, the air, seems as big a crime as living in a house by the ocean and not going out to swim.  Might as well live freezing wasteland, or in a cement room with no windows. For that's what houses seem like to me on a spring day. Prisons. Where we hold ourselves in, and cling to the man-made things like TVs, computers, and cell phones that disconnects us from nature, each other, and even our selves. 

Oh on such wonderful days like the days we've been having, I wish everyone could step outside together, and remember the abundance of life, the fleetingness of the flowers, so as to cherish each day as a gift. I do believe if everybody did this---let themselves slow down,  look, relax, listen and remember, there would be less crime, and more caring, less selfishness, and more selflessness. 
Less hurry, more contemplation.
Less strife, more direction. 
Less hate and more love.


On Easter morning I wish the church would take their services outside.
Maybe there would be more joy in our meetings. 
I wish that schools would shorten their days so the children could see the sunlight. 
Maybe there would be less depression.  
I wish people who had office jobs didn't have to work such long hours.
Maybe there would be less dissatisfaction and more fulfillment in their lives. 
If we were all more connected to the earth, to God, and each other. 
Maybe the world wouldn't be in such a mess it is in now. 
 
It makes me sad to see empty yards on such wonderful days.
Where are all the people, I wonder? School, work, slaves to corporations. It seems fairly logical to me that people should all live in hotels, because it seems like more than half the population only use their houses as places to sleep in.
 Then, mostly just on the weekends, sometimes I see people puttering around in their yards. It is then I am reminded that the empty-looking houses around me do contain souls.
 
Ah, spring, how much I didn't know I missed you. It happens like magic. The tulips, the wee seedlings sprout. The mornings, especially I suddenly become aware of how alive everything is, and how alive, how hopeful the warmth of the sun, and the fresh air, makes me feel and awakens my spirit to rebirth and new possibilities. 

Yesterday, it was the amazing weather, and an unfinished fence that deterred me from writing here.
Now the fence is finished.

View from our kitchen window

And the weather isn't so nice.

It is the wind again that has shooed me indoors---the gray clouds, and the drop in temperature.
But even for nature's thrashing, and bipolar temperament, I don't believe its moodiness one bit.

Tomorrow, I'm sure the sun will be out.
But for now, I guess I'm glad of the wind, even though it is taking away all the fading crab-apple blossoms. 
For it has brought me back to you. 
And even though this is a short post, I'm glad of it. 
I sincerely hope you have been enjoying the spring as much as I have. 

One thing I know for certain, spring won't last, and nor will those rare, Narnian moments of sunshine.
So take rare those moments as they come, and don't shut them out. Don't let them expire, by putting a time limit on yourself or on them. 

Open your windows wide, and let the sunshine in.

Walking through our field.

Like a butterfly, those moments may settle on you, only if you are still. Don't crush them, nor be too busy to appreciate them. They, like little children, will fade and change all too fast. And the wind will blow those moments away like they had never been. 

And you will wonder why life feels cold, hollow and meaningless. 


But if you pause, and open up your mind, you will be amazed at what beautiful moments will be yours, if you let them.