A KING'S CABBAGE, A SHIP'S SHOE: OR, A LITTLE OF THIS AND NONE OF THAT.

I'd like some leaves shot through with sunlight and blue.
Surely faded Miss Winter will soon tire of lingering about.

The Squeezo and Mason jars are polished and waiting, but the garden is still snow-covered and sleepy.

Our Little Fool turned one year old on Friday. May she grow in wisdom and stature. A proper celebration will commence once John's work load diminishes, and a glut of pictures, of course, will come tumbling after.

I weigh the results, both fair and ill, of a leap entire off the culture ship.
(Soggy, I'll bet.)
I think on the place of God's people in their fallen world. We should mark all areas of life—footprints in the flowers of the field and in chattering city squares, telltale fingermarks in damp, turned earth and in a palette's oily smudges. Voices raised roughly over an animal's bleating and voices raised in song, clear and strong.

I think of His hand in every loom.
The unexpected turn of a thread from here to there, the new shape of things, and the peace found in knowing that covenants are forever.

I grin realizing that I, country-bred and waiting for a return to land, tree-seeker still, look to defend a few city ways.
(Over a Terry campfire, perhaps.)

Oh! A memory—some of my brothers and sisters and I used to play the Country/City Game at mealtimes. The entire game involved pretending to be prissy, city folk who, full after one delicate nibble of food and one drop of drink, said in Queen Mother tones, “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly have another bite…I'm soooo full,” and then switching to Good Ol’ Country Folk, who gobbled their food as quick as could be and gulped their drink down only to belligerently demand, “MORE, MORE!”

I don’t know why we thought that was a flattering portrayal of our status, but at the time, we were confident of its rational disparagement of city living.

And now my present view, a little less gluttonous, developed through marriage to a boy who knows firsthand both the good and bad to be found in a place hedged 'round with buildings…