Living in Arizona

Here's a taste of what one sees while driving around ...

This is all best enjoyed while the temperatures are way below 100.

Mourning and Reflecting

The generation before mine continues to dwindle as one more person passes on.  I find myself reflecting on significant life events that involved the various people that left vacancies at the top of the family tree.  With sadness and loss also comes a resolve to continue to make something of myself, perhaps even with more freedom.

Seriously

Stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care, and low wages ... We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.

- Dorothy I. Height

To have influence

If you really want to be powerful, if you really want to be influential, then just serve.

- Rev. Willie Barrow

A gift from a daughter

Tucked away in the city

I am always amazed at the diversity of Tempe.

If you drive 1/4 mile west of a major road, you find this.

Horses.

Cattle.  This is Mr. Bull.

And chickens too.

I like spending time in this quite space where the mind wonders and the youngens play, draw, and speak with the animals.

Help

Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.

- Mother Teresa

The post Easter Post

A Sunday afternoon activity.

Happy Birthday Mother

She would have been 80 today.

Photo by Emily Taylor

Penso em ti sempre.

Things are growing in AZ

Outside the office window the Honeysuckle shades me from the soon to be blazing sun.

The Lysiloma tree is starting to come alive.  She is a late bloomer.

And after years of hoping for poppies, any poppies, these are adding color to my front yard.

Aloe that grows and grows, and can be transplanted easily.  These came from Carrie years ago,

I love being outside in the Spring.  In Mozambique we spend our days leisurly outdoors, with nothing but spontaneity as our friend.

A trip to the nursery

What is more precious than looking over plants and flowers.

The possibilities are imense and plans are being made.

About what?

click pic to enlarge

Friends

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing ... not healing, not curing ... that is a friend who cares.

- Henri J.M. Nouwen, from his book Out of Solitude

Biking on a Saturday afternoon

While the rain comes down on the East Coast, I enjoy a sunny day in the valley.

This is the time to be out, see the wildflowers grow and gasp and this tree in amazement.

I want one! Becky Saratoga and I cruised the neighborhood looking for lemons and pretty things to photograph.  Happy Spring!

Surroundings

This week in Arizona.

It's warming up!

Inner Harmony

She says it well.

I still remember this

Pic from the Star Ledger

The latest snow fall in New Jersey.  I can feel it even all the way from sunny Arizona.

Touching images

Guilt Flashes

click pic to enlarge

The happy house

There are fresh flowers in the house.

Saturday morning food shopping at the local favorite supermarket brought me to the flower area.  I purchased a bunch for Vlentine's Day and again a week later just because they make the house happy.

The kitchen table.

I marvel at the colors.

These look so gorgeous on the living room coffee table.

Noticeable just as one enters the house.

I adore them.

As a child would

I have not the courage to search through books for beautiful prayers ... Unable either to say them all or choose between them, I do as a child would do who cannot read -- I say just what I want to say to God, quite simply, and [God] never fails to understand.

- Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, French Carmelite nun, canonized in 1925

Furadouro

I can smell it, can you?

Is it Spring yet?

Lowes and all  the people purchasing plants seemed to think so.

I have leeks, tomatos, cawliflower, spinach, and a type of lettuce.

The ground had been fertilized and mixed.  I am trying new vegetables.  My old tomato plants survived the winter frosts and I hope to keep them around for another summer.

Now I will water and watch it grow.

Smart words

A happy marriage is the union of two forgivers.

- Ruth Bell Graham, poet, philanthropist, and wife of evangelist Billy Graham

Friends

What's to say here.  Grasshopper has many friends.

Silence

Silence frees us from the need to control others ... A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way. We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on that.

- Richard Foster, from his book Freedom of Simplicity