A few photos from Eric's welcome back party yesterday here. Eric has been in Mexico for the last two months, so Scott invited people over to his house to celebrate Eric's return. Thanks to the fact that Lisa's sister Lindsey was in town with her daughter Caitlin, and also to the fact that the Petras and Niesses came (the Petras with baby Eli, the Niesses with wee Micah), the house was comparatively full of kids. It turned out to be a perfect evening to be outside: the kids played with inflatable balls and a frisbee on the grass, while some of the rest of us sat around on the back porch and talked.

Now Playing: Notre-Dame de Paris.

 My zinnias have finally started to bloom. So far, they're just pink.

 One Sunday at church, Annie gave Lisa and me a pot of pink splash, miniature ivy, and petunias. Unfortunately, the petunia buds look a lot like the dead flowers, and since they need to be deadheaded regularly, I'm always in danger of pulling off the buds instead of the dead ones.

Our tomatoes have reached absolutely monstrous proportions, as has the lantana. Hopefully the tomatoes will now turn to producing fruit instead of trying to grow higher than the house.

Indiana is lush in June! The top photo is from woods northwest of Bloomington; the bottom one, from the Lilly House formal gardens in Indianapolis.

More photos added to this album.

Now Playing: Indelible Grace, "Rock of Ages."

It's been some month so far...! Last week was VBS in Bloomington. Angie and I were teachers for the first and second graders, which meant that we had five boys and three girls to shepherd around the church all week. More like herd, actually. Some of the boys were quite unruly, which made teaching memory verses, doing worksheets, and even lining up to go outside for games an adventure. I was hoarse by the end of the week. During the closing program on Friday evening, though, all the kids were able to say their memory verses in front of a large group of assembled parents and guests, which was quite encouraging. At least they were paying attention some of the time.

During VBS week, Rachel visited from Illinois, so it was good to have her around. She helped Scott with games for the kids and was invaluable in that role. She also cooked for us two nights in a row, which was pretty delicious. One of those meals was her family's special tacos, white corn tortillas fried in a pan of oil on the stovetop.

The first summer session ended last week as well. We had our French final on Thursday. Now it's down to working on my own in order to pass the French reading proficiency exam sometime in September. I'm just thankful not to have to dedicate so much time to class anymore. Of course, I need to test for Latin proficiency at some point in the near future, too.

Now Playing: Nick Drake, "Five Leaves Left," "The Thoughts of Mary Jane."

It's gotten so warm here this week that birds are panting as they fly. Yesterday evening, while Scott and I were making tea, Laura befriended a cat who's been hanging around our house. She's a young calico cat, mostly grey, and she was lying on our back porch, panting. We sat outside after tea, and the cat stuck around, purring so hard that her whiskers vibrated. The cat didn't even mind when Laura started strumming her guitar. Lisa and Lydia, Lisa's sister who's living with us this summer, were both totally disgusted by how much we were enjoying the cat and how much the cat was enjoying us.

Now Playing: Notre-Dame de Paris, for which I have Laura and Peter to thank.

Photos from this weekend here.

Love this photo. So happy to have a new sister in the family!

Philip and Alyson were married this past Saturday. Scott and I drove over to St. Louis for the wedding, and it was a pretty wonderful weekend. Stressful, yes, since Laura, Stephen, and I were all in the wedding party, but really good to see everyone, not only family members, but also TU friends and old family friends. The wedding itself was beautiful and the reception elegant.

After the reception the wedding party went to Forest Park for dinner. It was good to be able to relax in that smaller group (by no means intimate, though it felt intimate after all the panoply of the wedding ceremony and preparation!). We sat on a green lawn by a small lake and watched ducks and white egrets on the water. Philip and some of the other groomsmen threw grapes at the ducks. Caroline, Alyson's wee sister, walked across a tightrope that a couple of random guys had set up between a couple of nearby trees. She was so excited with the experience that she made Alyson walk across it, too, in her wedding dress, with Philip's help--the photographers made the most of the opportunity. (The random guys, thankfully, didn't mind all the attention that their tightrope-walking lesson was drawing!)

Laura, Keith, and I were the last ones at the park. We got to wave Philip and Alyson good-bye as they drove away in a wee red Ford, very similar to the wee red car our parents drove away from their wedding reception.

Trees in Yellowwood. Being from Oklahoma definitely makes one appreciate these magnificent old forests!

Photos from this past weekend added to this album.

 Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique."

This afternoon Cindy and Scott came over, and the three of us drove out to Yellowwood State Forest to hike. The drive into the forest was barely marked and turned out to be a pitted gravel road, slashed across by shallow creeks, which Cindy’s small Ford Focus bumped across. We walked a 4.5-mile trail that ran in a long loop around the lake.

The trail ran up and down the spurs of the hills. It snaked up into small valleys between hills in order to ford creeks where they were narrower, before they fanned out into marshes around the lake. We splashed across several small creeks on flat stones, the clear, shallow water flowing fast under ferns. On the hillsides marched the great beeches, red and white oaks, and sugar maples. Massive: the beeches with skin-smooth silver bark, the white oaks with deeply corrugated pale bark, the red oaks with their darker, more finely ridged exteriors. On the hillsides across the lake, sycamores made splashes of celadon against the jungle green of the other trees. We entered arcades of pine trees, again, straight, immensely tall. Our feet were silenced on pine needles, and that wonderful, aromatic smell mixed with the smell of masses of wild white roses growing over fallen trees. 

We came across a much larger creek, dammed with fallen logs. Scott tried to teach Cindy how to skip rocks on a wide patch of smooth, deep water. We walked through a pine wood, absolutely silent, and then back up into the hardwood forest again. The forest was almost absolutely silent. As dusk fell the light deepened almost imperceptibly, until we were walking in a silent greenness. The wind rose in the trees. We finally came out at the dam at the bottom of the lake, where people were fishing. Wild daisies, red clover, and spiderwort were growing there, with Queen-Anne’s-lace. 

The trail required that we cross below the dam, but because of the amount of water flowing over the spillway, we turned back and took the road instead. By this time it was nearly seven. We marched on the extra half-mile to the trailhead. The drive back to Bloomington was lovely: the sun was just seeping through the clouds. Sheets of water on either side of the road shimmered in its vague light—so much water in the fields after all the storms! In Bloomington we went to Kroger to buy things to grill. Courtney came over to our house, and Lindsay came downstairs from her room and joined us. 

Starting the fire on the grill was an adventure. I didn’t put on enough lighter fluid to begin with, so it took several attempts with the lighter and quantities more lighter fluid (thanks to Scott) before the coals were actually burning. We finally put the top on the grill and left it to sit and heat, while we sat inside, snacking and talking. When the coals were hot enough, I went outside to put brats and hot dogs on the grill. Smell of smoke. Cool outdoors. Watched the clouds continue to roll away from the periwinkle sky. 

When the meat was ready, we all sat around the small table, eating hot dogs, brats, chips, fresh cilantro…. Suitably summery. We made s’mores, too, of course. Oddly enough, by this time the coals were properly on fire and extremely hot. Those perfect little rose-petal flames simmering endlessly over the coals. It would’ve been easy to cook meat on them by now, but it had taken them so long to get to this temperature! 

Three leggy Mayflies snuck into the living room, and a big Junebug buzzed onto my shirt and, when I flicked it off, slammed into the porch light. At about eleven Scott, Cindy, and Courtney went home. Sleeping with the windows open tonight for perhaps the last time for awhile—it’s supposed to be hot this week.

Now Playing: Second verse, same as the first.

It's been a busy few weeks since summer session has started. Lisa and I have French every afternoon from 1:10-2:30 p.m. supposedly, although the instructor usually ends about ten minutes early. Tomorrow we have our first exam, and I'm trying to understand direct object pronouns and verb tenses. Been revising my notes since class ended this afternoon. Lindsay is also taking summer classes, though hers, which are in the counseling program, are much more intense.

You might say that that doesn't sound too busy, but somehow since the summer term began our house has contrived to have a crazy social schedule on top of coursework. Last Thursday, of course, was Poetry Dinner III, which featured readings from Jorge Luis Borges and Dr. Seuss, among others. Saturday night Laura grilled for us, and we made s'mores afterward on the back porch over the hot coals. It's been chilly here, so we were all bundled up in blankets.

Monday was Scott's birthday party, which we hosted: mostly people from church. In order to carry on the grand tradition started by Laura-my-sister (remember that angel food cake we baked from scratch last year?), I made a chocolate cake from scratch out of the Joy of Cooking book. It took a solid hour to make, but the process is half the fun (until your wrists start to ache from using the beater for so long!), and anyway, the results were worth it.

Apart from having the luxury of time to spend with people, though, it's also been good to have time for other things: staying on top of e-mail, practicing my flute again, baking scones, a bit of gardening, and reading Dorothy Sayers mysteries. Lisa has been blazing through the Harry Potter books; she's on number five right now, and Laura and I giggle delightedly whenever she drags herself away for long enough to tell us how great Sirius is or whatever.

Now Playing: Corelli, Concerto Grosso in F., Op. 6, No. 3, Largo.

Once again, having fun with the camera: these chrysanthemums have lasted a ridiculously long time, ever since the end of April.

 

Baked blueberry scones today! Loving the new camera....

Some photos from this weekend here.

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack.

Last night we had a fantastic party, the third in our poetry-reading sequence. The theme: monsters. Carmen painted these glorious little creatures as favors for everyone to take home after the festivities were over. 

We filled the back seat of Scott's car with plants this week, mostly for his garden. But our house also now has plants: a pot of cilantro, one of oregano, one of parsley, and one of basil, all duly fertilized and watered this morning before class.

Now Playing: Bach, Violin Concerto in E Major, BWV 1041.

One of the pleasures of being in grad school: sitting at the dining room table, watching a thunderstorm approach, while writing the conclusion to my paper on Heaney's Beowulf. Beside me Scott is working on a paper on the Lutheran appreciation for early modern anatomical texts, and across the table Mary is writing an essay for her Italian take-home exam about comedy and fencing. Tea and biscuits. Soon rain will be rattling against the glass.

Highlights of today:

Finishing everything except for two of my final papers.

Hearing again a conversion story.

Attending a glorious performance of the Brahms Requiem.

Smelling lilacs at night.

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique."

Today has actually been decent for the most part. After breakfast I went for a run. There's one house that I love to run past down in one of the neighborhoods: it's covered with weather-darkened grey shingles, and outside it grow a big redbud tree, covered thickly with those tiny, vibrant purple flowers, and just below that a big dogwood tree, also covered with flowers, but its flowers a pale green, as though each petal were a tiny china saucer. Love the contrast of the white dogwood against the vivid redbud against the dark shingles.

I did my quiet time outside this morning. The morning was extremely windy from the southwest, so I bundled up in a blanket and propped my Bible open with my phone while I read. I spent the morning grappling with the paper for L746. For some reason writing about Heaney is extremely difficult. A good deal of staring blankly at the screen and at the piles of notes I'd arranged around my desk occupied the morning. I listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons and to Bach and Mozart flute concerti. At about one I got completely fed up with the paper and took a break to eat lunch.

After lunch I worked for another hour or so, and then I wheeled my bike out of the garage, where it's been in dormancy all winter. Thankfully there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it aside from the tyres being flat. I biked to Kroger, bought a pint of cherry tomatoes, a red onion, and a container of part-skim ricotta, and biked home. The afternoon was warm: one of these variable spring days, where the sky is a pasty Easter-egg blue color, and the wind comes and goes in gusts through the new leaves, restless. Again I sat outside on the back patio, with my arms and legs bare to the sun, and read Middlemarch for class tomorrow. Starlings, robins, and a thrasher working their way through the detritus on the hillside made noises like plastic bags rustling in the wind.

At about half five I started to make tea. Laura came home. She and I worked in the kitchen together. On my countertop I sliced up the red onion (skin dark purple and silky) and cherry tomatoes, sauteed chicken, boiled pasta. On her countertop she mixed and kneaded dough for cinnamon rolls. Laura, Lindsay, and I ate tea together, discussing wedding invitations: our household seems to have received a sudden influx of them.

After washing the dishes, I biked downtown to meet Mary and Carmen for dessert. We ended up walking up the square to Tallent, a ritzy local restaurant where Carmen worked as a waitress last summer. I felt definitely underdressed--surrounded by people in suits and dresses, in an atmosphere of dim lights and sleek earth tones on the walls, with waitstaff dressed all in black gliding about.

The three of us had a delightful time, though. We ordered carrot cake with cardamom-flavored ice cream, a rhubarb ganache with rosewater-and-pepper flavored ice cream, and a chocolate tart with mint whipped cream and an espresso swirl. So, so delicious. The best part was watching Mary's faces while she ate: when she took the first bite of the ganache, she shut her eyes and fanned herself with her hand, her mouth spreading into a loopy smile. "If this had been the Victorian era, that would've been a swoon!" Carmen laughed.

We sat around and talked for quite awhile, and then we went for a walk, down Walnut, up Fourth Street (where the smells of the Indian restaurants--curry, cinnamon, garlic, cloves--embraced us), and onto campus. Through Dunnes Woods, where rabbits hopped across the path in the silent gloaming under the trees. Campus is incredibly peaceful at night: an expansive, luxuriant silence, the silence of aisles of trees, of empty buildings, elegant, restful. Down past the IMU, and so up Kirkwood, past all the restaurants and bars, people sitting outside at cafe tables, talking, laughing, TVs flashing and stereos playing through open doors and windows, the smells of cigarette smoke, barbecue smoke, grease. And so up past the library and back toward the square. We said good-bye where I had parked my bike.

I walked part of the way home, talking to Scott on the phone until my battery gave out. Biked the rest of the way. At home Laura was helping Lisa write her resume. It's gotten chilly outside, so I closed my window, but I can still hear the sigh of the woods through Lindsay's window. It had started to sprinkle a bit as I wheeled my bike into the garage.

Photos from this evening here. Hang-out time with the girls to celebrate Carmen's MFA completion!

Lisa sent this out this morning from Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening.

“Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him.”

Isaiah 3:10

It is well with the righteous always. If it had said, “Say ye to the righteous, that it is well with him in his prosperity,” we must have been thankful for so great a boon, for prosperity is an hour of peril, and it is a gift from heaven to be secured from its snares: or if it had been written, “It is well with him when under persecution,” we must have been thankful for so sustaining an assurance, for persecution is hard to bear; but when no time is mentioned, all time is included. God’s “shalls” must be understood always in their largest sense. From the beginning of the year to the end of the year, from the first gathering of evening shadows until the day-star shines, in all conditions and under all circumstances, it shall be well with the righteous. It is so well with him that we could not imagine it to be better, for he is well fed, he feeds upon the flesh and blood of Jesus; he is well clothed, he wears the imputed righteousness of Christ; he is well housed, he dwells in God; he is well married, his soul is knit in bonds of marriage union to Christ; he is well provided for, for the Lord is his Shepherd; he is well endowed, for heaven is his inheritance. It is well with the righteous—well upon divine authority; the mouth of God speaks the comforting assurance. O beloved, if God declares that all is well, ten thousand devils may declare it to be ill, but we laugh them all to scorn. Blessed be God for a faith which enables us to believe God when the creatures contradict him. It is, says the Word, at all times well with thee, thou righteous one; then, beloved, if thou canst not see it, let God’s word stand thee in stead of sight; yea, believe it on divine authority more confidently than if thine eyes and thy feelings told it to thee. Whom God blesses is blest indeed, and what his lip declares is truth most sure and steadfast.