New Baseball Fans

July 10, 2019.Reading time 1 minute.

Baseball is big in our town. Home to the Baseball Hall of Fame, we have several diamonds, attracting ball fans from far and wide. This year, we have a family of new fans with a view of their own. When we first spotted the nest, there appeared to be one young osprey peeking over the […]

Morning Dose of Greens

June 8, 2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

The early morning sun rouses me from sleep. It’s just after six. I contemplate turning over and then remember that rain is called for later. I get up. Still practising intermittent fasting, I won’t eat anything till 9:00, so I decide to slip on my clothes and drive through the neighbourhood, ending up by the […]

V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #48: Compassion

May 13, 2019.Reading time 1 minute.

“Compassion becomes real when we recognizeour shared humanity.” – Pema Chödrön. As a young woman, I braced myself against the world by adhering to black and whites – a judgmental stance that was not conducive to relationship building. More self-protective than self-righteous, this attitude only served as a wall, confining me to loneliness. Then in […]

Nature’s Balm

May 7, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.

Questions flood in as evening sets, the initial shock of hearing the ‘c’ word now wearing off. I sleep little, spending way too much time with Dr. Google, without any satisfaction. Ric is scheduled to go into town a bit later, so I take the car early and head to a new trail in our […]

V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #43: Rain

April 8, 2019.Reading time 1 minute.

Raindrops, not tears,blur my vision –the line of trees before mea glistening blur.The pounding in my templesis just the steady rhythmof watery drip, drip, drip,not the incessant roarof my blood pounding –discordant is this day. I wrote this piece while stranded in Mississippi, with eighteen hours of driving still ahead of us, and no idea […]

Paradise Pond Take II

March 28, 2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

Warmer weather encourages us to get out. We take the short ferry ride across to Port Aransas on Mustang Island. Paradise Pond is our destination. Many others have had the same idea and gather around the opening to the boardwalk. I look for what has caught their attention and spot a bird rapidly flitting about […]

Thistle in Bloom

March 11, 2019.Reading time less than 1 minute.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #39: Unanswerable

March 11, 2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

“I always start with questions that I can’t answer. Otherwise you get bored halfway through if you already know the answers. If you’re asking what seem to be unanswerable questions, then you have to keep showing up.” – Barbara KingsolverFrom A Talk in the Woods, by Kevin LarimerFeatured in Poets & Writers, November/ December 2018 […]

Together a Tapestry

March 3, 2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

Across the miles, our wordsconvene, threads of our livesintertwining to form a tapestry. Stories of sorrow and kindness,humanity restored –of observation and empathyof inspiration through resonanceof brilliance and artistry. Each thread as colourfulas another, delicately added,thoughtful ponderings Of generations and legacies,misunderstandings contributing to tragedy,of infatuation and love’s fallacy,of childhood and noses in booksand entanglements leadingto […]

Quite the Dancer

February 27, 2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

The antics of the Reddish Egret, and of course its stature, distinguish this bird without further identification. As soon as we pull up to the water’s edge at Indian Point Park, I can see the bird hopping and swaying, like a giant metronome, keeping time to some unknown beat. I make my way up the […]