Dear Prairiewoods friends, A few years ago, I planted a peony bush in my little yard. This year it is blooming for the first time—there are two blooms! I am beyond excited! Have you ever nuzzled your face into the face of a Peony? It’s, like, the best thing ever; it’s like a silky flower kiss…
I value the trees in my yard as friends. We go through the seasons together. Trees give me joy, strength, hope. Meeting Face to face, or so it feels, we meet, (two sides of a window, the blossoming tree and I) we breathe, we deeply breathe, together, the same soft-bright sky, above us both,…
Hello, dear Prairiewoods family! The other morning, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a monarch butterfly caught in a spider web in the corner of my window. I was both excited to see the monarch and sad that it had been caught in the spider’s web. I wasn’t upset with the spider; I…
“Conversation is perhaps our greatest hope not only for healing the rifts in human understanding but also for restoring and reinspiring our relationship with the natural world, which is our first and most profound home. Care of the world is always essential, and care arises from conversation.” —Thomas Dean, Introduction, Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of…
I just finished reading a truly heart-awakening book called To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroger, a botanist and medical biochemist from Ireland who was orphaned as a young girl and then raised by her wise Celtic community of relatives…
Hello, Prairiewoods friends! I hope you are faring well today and enjoying this extended weekend. Spring is unfolding beautifully at Prairiewoods, and I am excited to share it with you. Prairiewoods and Metro Catholic Outreach (MCO) have been partnering since 2014 with our shared vegetable garden, the Green Prairie Garden, located on the land at Prairiewoods.…
AAAWWWHOOO AAAWWWHOOO Who cooks for you?? Still Still Blink Swoooooop Clutch, hold, hold, hold Swivel to peer, search, scan AAAWWWHOOO AAAWWWHOOO Who cooks for you?? Still Still Ruffle Gaze Swivel If you guessed it was the magnificent Owl that captured my imagination in last week’s blog entry, you were right! “Who cooks for you?” is…
Hello, Prairiewoods friends! My favorite days are the days when I fall in love over and over and over again. With people’s faces, their smiles, with the bees drinking water at the fountain or the prairie grasses dancing with the wind, a dog’s gruff bark, the feeling of love emanating from deep within me. I haven’t…
Five years ago, my husband and I bought our first home, relishing the joys of our own walls, our own lawn, our own silence. And for five springs, I’m ashamed to say, we have rushed through our lives, barely aware of the natural world that also calls this plot of land home. (We only seemed…
“Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.” —James Hillman, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 2012 “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of…