1. A light in the darkness always speaks of comfort and home…even when you’re only walking up the driveway from just down the road.
2. The blueberries are blooming. If you stand beside them you can hear the hum and buzz of hundreds of bees. Those bees are magic I tell you! They go to and fro working as fast as they can so that I can reap the rewards of their labors.
3. I’ve been too sad to listen to a lot of music. Seems like every group or every song is related directly to Pap. I have been able to listen to Pokey LaFarge. Most of his music is so upbeat and fun that I can hear it without any tears. Here is one of my favorite Pokey LaFarge songs. Not sure if it was Paul or Ben who introduced the rest of us to Pokey several years ago, but I’m grateful to whichever one it was. Pap especially enjoyed the faces Pokey makes while singing and the amazing musical talent of Pokey and his band the South City Three.
4. Every year I’m surprised by the beauty of my columbines. It’s like I forget all about their sweet nodding heads until BOOM there they are again bringing color and loveliness to my yard.
5. Its great to meet up with a cousin you never knew. Its FANTASTIC when the cousin likes history as much as you do.
Tipper
Thanks for the introduction to Pokey Lefarge! Sounds like great road trip music 🙂
Tipper,
I’m late again…but read your post this morning before we left…
In reverse order…
5. At 70+ I am blessed with a few cousins remaining. Some live in the Carolinas…
4. Wherest thou goes to hide your nodding faces my lovely hybrid columbines? All I have remaining are the pinkish red wild columbines, but blessed with many of them…I do believe the fairies absconded with the new blooms for some new Spring hats, in the last couple of years…only one small one bloomed last year.
3. Pokey, Pokey, Pokey…I do believe I could just get up and do a few of those old 40’s moves…What a talent he is…keeping Americana alive as well as the other goodies…
2, Haven’t checked on our blueberries…hope all is well near the woods…We sure need to set some new plants again soon…However, we have so many local close farms that are so devoted to Blueberries and they also need our monies to stay in business…already picked and well cared for too…
1. Especially, if we have been traveling and know that storms were in our area while we were gone. We are so relieved and happy to see the welcome lights come on….If not…which has happened, we start looking around the place for trees and downed lines…very scary…having to slip into a dark house…after a storm.
Thanks Tipper,
Loved the pictures…PS…I saw the most beautiful Hellebores today at the library…I planted some around the edge of the woods…along with some bleeding hearts…sometimes they show up sometimes not…I have got to make me a flower placement map…and put rocks around them too!
For me the old Creedence Clearwater Revival tune “Long as I can see the light” says it pretty well …
“Put a candle in the window
‘Cause I feel I’ve gotta move
Though I’m goin’, goin’
I’ll be comin’ home soon
Long as I can see the light” …
Agreed. Pokey is like an elixir of life.
Tipper,
I’m sorry you miss your pap. I lost my dad 14 years ago & everyday I think of a memory.
I’m going to pray you can look at spring knowing your dad would want you to enjoy it. I kept a journal about two years after daddy passed. I still look at it when I’m in that thinking of him. He was the biggest outdoorsman in the world. He fished all the time & loved his family more than anything. You love to write & journaling might be the answer.
I’m so very sorry and my daughter who is a nurse keeps telling me death is part of life. It’s sure not an easy part of life. But think of that day when we are all in heaven and rejoicing and no more tears & sorrow.
Carol Rosenbalm
I’ve always loved the sight of lights in windows at night, so comforting. Many times I’ve had electric candles in street facing windows as a warm welcome, but now with cats, everything on a windowsill is unseated so they can be there. ;o)
God bless.
RB
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Tipper,
I noticed on yesterday’s post that the Guitar Man commented. I met him and his lovely wife Rachael briefly at Pap’s funeral. They both married WELL!
Our Radio gal played Pap and Ray singing about “helping some Pilgrim along the road.” I love their harmony! (Almost as good as The Pressley Girls.) …Ken
1. A light in the darkness means I can see them better than they can see me. As a child I was afraid of the dark. Now I am more comfortable in the dark than the light.
2. My holly tree is blooming. I had never noticed before. Tiny little greenish-white blooms. Oddly enough it also has little green berries already. The berries are nowhere near the blooms.
3. I looked up Pokey’s wikipedia and the reason he is called Pokey. My mother called me Pokey too and for the same reason but it didn’t with stick to me.
4. Not much of a flower child here. If I have columbines I don’t know it. I do have red hot pokers but they aren’t blooming yet.
5. I am into genealogy. Genealogy is history that rarely makes the history books. Genealogy is the history of ordinary people whose names appear in print only when they are tried for a crime, are in a census or are in an obituary.
Thank you Tipper for introducing me to Pokey Lafarge. Great music!
Thank you Tipper for introducing me to Pokey Lafarge. Great music!
Thank you Tipper for introducing me to Pokey Lafarge. Great music!
Thank you Tipper for introducing me to Pokey Lafarge. Great music!
The only thing that me, plants and flowers have in common is my purple thumb, which brings us to the purple evening haze that has covered your driveway. It’s true, The lights of home are a welcomong thing, so is the dog running to greet you.
All of my cousins are far away; from Florida to Canada. The cousins I meet now are all Linda’s cousins and Law, they’re a-plenty! Family reunion next week. Fun, good food..
I believe beauty is a healing Grace from God. I also believe that finding the beauty that is around
you requires that we look with the eyes of the heart.
Beautiful post.
Tipper,
That first picture of almost dark is a classic. It’s such a comfort to see the lights of home.
Frontier got my phone and Internet back today and I got a call from the Technician just after 8 this morning. A tractor with a bush-hog, hired by the State, ripped up the phone lines Monday evening. It’s good to be back in business…Ken
Also, Holy Smokes! Pokey LaFarge is awesome! I just bought 3 CDs to listen to on my way home. Blind Pig really is the gift that keeps giving!
5 Things always wakes me up and makes me realize how much I just disregard because (I think) I’m too busy. These are always a great reminder to slow down and count my blessings. I’ve been in Pittsburgh all week for finals week. So, I don’t know if we’ve greened up in Northeast Ohio yet. But, I know when I get home tonight, Kim will have left the front porch light on for me. The kids and I are going to plant a dogwood tree this weekend–we put in the pumpkins on Sunday.
But the cousin thing is the best. In March, we went to South Carolina to visit my in-laws. We spent the night in Charleston, West Virginia. When my wife was checking out, the maintenance guy asked if she was one of the Ross County Ohio Karshners. She said I was and while packing the car I met a long lost cousin. We didn’t know each other but we knew all the kin in between. We had the best talk and at the end of 15 minutes its like we had always known each other. Family can be good that way.
Great, thoughtful post today and just what I needed. I’m fixed to slow down and start counting my own 5 things. Starting tomorrow!
Great post! Loved the photos and the photo of you all is very nice. I just love those big ole’ bumblebees! I couldn’t get the music to play on the video of Pokey though.
Pam
scrap-n-sewgranny.blogspot.com
Five things moved me because they are so akin to my mind’s roaming, and how just a scene or an action or a flower blooming sets my thoughts on nostalgic memories or even on things I need to do today. I think it is amazing that memories both stir sadness and resurrect joys. How grateful we should be for “things” (whether five in number, or whatever) that stir us to think, and act, and do–and remember! The days will get better as you go along, but you’ll always (I hope) have that “stirring” and “longing” that “things” brings to mind.
The bees buzzing in the blueberries made me think of a beekeeper several years ago. I said that there were lots of apple trees for the bees in the springtime. He said that bees didn’t go for apple blossoms. He obviously never stood under an apple tree in blossom and listened. The trees are alive with buzz.
Each of the 5 things can jog the memory to bring up a story of its own. Keep writing.
That is a great picture of the little road with light through the trees. I grew up with a little road very similar which emptied into another graveled road. We always called it a lane. Memories of a laughing bunch of teens always watching for snakes.
The memory triggers in songs and many other things will be there for awhile. But, then they become the warm and comforting music and memories that make you smile. Those flowers come peeping through just when we need their beauty.
I love 5 things, it kind of reminds me of the scattered way my mind works. Yes, the light is home, the bees are magic, the song is cool, the purple of the columbines is royal, and new family is fun!
Don’t forget about the song of the first Whippoorwills in April, signaling the end of winter, and a new beginning for everything that grows. Thanks.
All of those are good pictures but I like the light in the darkness best. It is an allegory in several ways. And its perfect that it is your driveway because that means the house is at the end of the road, the destination. No passing by nor passing through. It is reaching where one belongs.
It reminds me of the poem called – I think- “It Takes a Heap of Living”
“It takes a heap of living
in a house to make it home,
a heap of sun and shadder
and ya sometimes have to roam……”
That first image is a very familiar sight to me, Tipper! For many years I worked a second job in Cambridge, over 70 miles east. I often got home very late at night, and in Winter, usually had to park at the bottom of the snowy, icy driveway. No matter how tired I felt, clambering up that winding path toward the light in my own windows was a heart-lifting, soul-soothing joy!