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Some autumnal music to start the week off right
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Farewell Summer, Hello Fall
In homage to another summer gone by, Sweet Summer Days by Dennis Caraher.
Need a ‘Haycation’?
What’s been popular in Europe for the last couple of decades is now starting to catch on in the U.S.: Vacationing on working organic farms for those folks in need of a back-to-the-land type of respite. Read about it in Whole Living, or visit these sites:
Stony Creek Farm
Agarita Creek Farms
Leaping Lamb Farm
Turtle Mist Farm
Serenity Sheep Farm Stay
Champlain Valley Alpacas and Farmstay
Photos: Stony Creek Farm, Walton, NY
It’s Thursday. Time for a Sweet, Old Shaker Hymn.
A Tribute to Gardeners
The Gardener
by Ken Weisner
For Kit
You get down on your knees in the dark earth—alone
for hours in hot sun, yanking weed roots, staking trellises,
burning your shoulders, swatting gnats; you strain your muscled
midwestern neck and back, callous your pianist’s hands.
You cut roses back so they won’t fruit, rip out and replace
spent annuals. You fill your garden dense with roots and vines.
And when a humble sprout climbs like a worm up out of death,
you are there to bless it, in your green patch, all spring and summer long,
hose like a scepter, a reliquary vessel; you hum
through the dreamy wilderness—no one to judge, absolve,
or be absolved—purified by labor, confessed by its whisperings, connected
to its innocence. So when you heft a woody, brushy tangle, or stumble
inside grimy, spent by earth, I see all the sacraments in place—
and the redeemed world never smelled so sweet.
Reposted from The Writer’s Almanac, August 6, 2010
“The Gardener” by Ken Weisner, from Anything on Earth. © Hummingbird Press, 2010.
