Snail Therapy

That's the Western half of my little town down there.  It's quite hilly, though I live on the flat-ish karst side that the mountains hide from this view.

Spring is spring beauties right now.  Other flowers are slow in coming, but I expect a bumper crop of Dutchman's breeches soon.  Otherwise, the woods up high are still pretty silent, brown places.

Whether the winds or squirrels made this little cache, I love it.  I know it was the wind that swept most of the leaves away, leaving plenty of treasures uncovered.

Always snail shells.  Always.

The children re-wilded, if you want to call it that.  They were so happy to be in their place again and worked tirelessly on their vintage bottle and can collection.

The buckeyes are always the first to leaf out and always get burned by the frosts.  I think, if I were a tree, I'd be a buckeye.  Not because I am purported to be half poisonous, but because I am always so anxious for the next phase of life. 

If I could be more like the moss, patiently making my way, now that would be something. 

When despair for the world grows in me 
and I wake in the night at the least sound 
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, 
I go and lie down where the wood drake 
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. 
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought 
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water. 
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time 
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~Wendell Berry