Sunday Dinner: Ever Widening Circles

Monarda fistulosa

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“I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Daucus carota with Cyrtomium falcatum

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“I beg you, to have patience with everything

unresolved in your heart

and to try to love the questions themselves

as if they were locked rooms

or books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers,

which could not be given to you now,

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future,

you will gradually, without even noticing it,

live your way into the answer.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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“To love is good, too: love being difficult.

For one human being to love another:

that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,

the ultimate, the last test and proof,

the work for which all other work

is but preparation.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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“We need, in love, to practice only this:

letting each other go.

For holding on comes easily;

we do not need to learn it.”

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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Zantedeschia albomaculata

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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Heuchera ‘Midnight Rose’

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“Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now,

lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words

that sometimes do you good.

His life may also have much sadness and difficulty,

that remains far beyond yours.

Were it otherwise,

he would never have been able to find these words.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Clematis

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“It is spring again.

The earth is like a child

that knows poems by heart.”
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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Sunday Dinner: What We Learn From Our Fathers

Zebra Swallowtail butterfly on Agastache

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“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies:

know more today about the world than I knew yesterday

and lessen the suffering of others.

You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

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Neil deGrasse Tyson

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“Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character.

These are the qualities that define us as human beings,

and propel us, on occasion,

to greatness.”

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R.J. Palacio

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A Pearl Crescent butterfly feeds on catmint flowers.

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“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,

a smile, a kind word, a listening ear,

an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,

all of which have the potential

to turn a life around.”

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Leo F. Buscaglia

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2018

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A female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly feeds on our native buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis, at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden.

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Honoring the Fathers among us,

present and absent, 

yet alive and those departed;

biological Fathers and those

who become Fathers by affection and commitment. 

Being a real father is a choice. 

How would any of us be who we are today,

without their guidance and their love?

~

 

Sunday Dinner: Gratitude

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Verbena ‘Lollipop’ at the Heath family’s garden in Gloucester.

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“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy;

they are the charming gardeners

who make our souls blossom.”

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Marcel Proust

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“Beauty is not who you are on the outside,

it is the wisdom and time you gave away

to save another struggling soul, like you.”

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Shannon L. Alder

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Alliums with Iris, Gloucester, VA

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“I believe that what we become

depends on what our fathers teach us

at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

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Umberto Eco

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Allium in our Forest Garden

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“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up

trying to pay back the people in this world

who sustain our lives.

In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender

before the miraculous scope of human generosity

and to just keep saying thank you,

forever and sincerely,

for as long as we have voices.”

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Elizabeth Gilbert

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The rare daylily left ungrazed to bloom in our garden; for which we are most grateful!

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

With love and appreciation to all of those Fathers

who give of themselves so generously

to make this a more beautiful and more loving world for all.

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Zantedeschia aethiopica in our Forest Garden

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“You pray in your distress and in your need;

would that you might pray also

in the fullness of your joy

and in your days of abundance.”

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Kahlil Gibran

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