Monthly Archives: June 2025

June 2025 — Gone But Not Forgotten!

30 Monday Jun 2025

Posted by in Celebrating, MONDAY MUSINGS

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From Memorial Day to July, things change. I mean, really change — from 69 to 96 degrees; from clear to muggy; from planting to picking; and a swirl of colors throughout, taking turns on the dance floor. On Memorial Day weekend, I wrote, “I am in a sweatshirt hoodie, drinking hot coffee, watching the day slide into evening with layers of pink frosting spread across the blue sky. Con’t remember such a cool end of May. The Purple Martins are gathering one last meal for the evening. The bluebirds have just settled into their house with new babies. Traffic sounds have subsided and the evening songbirds are singing in the distance. The song “It Is Well With My Soul” comes to mind”.

We do not recall a spring or summer as wet as this one has been, as everyone else is saying. But look at the beautiful lush corn crops! Our garden, which was not large to begin with, has drowned twice and the replanted greenbeans are struggling. Tomatoes have blossom-end rot. Sweet corn looks lost in its own jungle. Cucumbers are running amok through grass; and zinnias are leaning this way and that. But – the okra looks great for now, and I won’t have as much work to do in harvesting it all.

For a few mornings this month, a person could sit out for an hour or so to enjoy coffee and bird watching. Now, the blanket of humidity and heat that wraps the evenings, awaits us in the early morning. Are we thankful for air-conditioning? The air smells of a dank musty basement, until I walk past the Four O’Clocks, or the wild honeysuckle that has wound itself throughout our barberry bush. Everyone talks of how difficult it has been to keep the lawn mowed, and we agree! But how easily the weeds, the million or so weeds, pop out of the soggy ground when I do brave the heat in effort to battle them. You know the routine — for every complaint we have, there are more blessings to uncover. June has indeed been a full month!

We have enjoyed celebrating: the birthday of our first born, Father’s Day, two bluebird families fledged successfully, the air full of Purple Martins and their chorus, a comfortable house to hide from the weather, and one almost-blue hydrangea bloom. (If you’ve read my “Everyone Else Has Blue Hydrangeas, Why Can’t I?”, you understand that last celebration.) We’ve celebrated with family and friends, their special moments. We’ve come to love little league baseball. I finally got to the lake in June to enjoy an amazing crappie meal my sister and her husband cooked, and took the most peaceful boat ride, viewing a blazing yellow sunset complete with several bald eagle sightings.

As you see, there are no mentions of fantastic trips away from home, nor actually, anything extraordinary to tell. I think just observing the world around you with appreciation for what you have, can be an accomplishment through a month like we have had. Rain showers almost daily didn’t amount to devastating floods. An overgrowth of weeds and grass aren’t anything a good fall frost can’t handle. And did I say ‘praise the Lord for A-C’? Just when I was ready to dig up my poor virus-infected, black-spotted roses, Queen Elizabeth produced four beautiful pick blooms. And so, on goes the world, with its own first-evers; on go the families’ agendas — young and old alike. Diseases progress, and some are healed. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. We all get to enjoy the blessings. And God is still God, through all our seasons. Blessed be the name of our Lord! “From the rising of the sun to its going down, the Lord’s name is to be praised.” (Psalm 113:3)

Some of our June enjoyment:

A random visitor

More Thoughts On Living, Father’s Day, and Remembering

15 Sunday Jun 2025

Posted by in Family, Reflections

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6/11/25
Sitting in the front porch swing, the air of midday seems still, but just alive enough to catch my attention; and perhaps too touchy with humidity for me to linger —  that is, until I check in with my senses. Lifting my eyes from the crossword puzzle I had intended to work,  I sense a sweet aroma from the deep purple butterfly bush reaching upward behind me from its neglected bed. Its blooms, larger than ever, are visited by the hum of bumble bees.
My listening is captured by the simultaneous chatter of various birds – although upstaged by the mockingbird calls. 

A hummingbird zooms in for a sip or two at the feeder. Delicate white pre-berries of the Nandina, complimented by the deep red of my mother’s large astilbe, vie for my attention. Dark yellow Stella D’Oro blooms, nearly exhausted from their show, complete the colors against summer’s green pallet that spreads across my view. And I think, what a nice day to be alive. This is living.


With Father’s Day approaching I am as usual, thinking about my daddy. He spent many days outdoors — gardening, fishing and hunting, and farming for a few years— besides growing up on a farm where milking and raising crops were his parents’ income. They cured their own hams and bacon; raised chickens and gathered the eggs; and he gathered enough enjoyment from gardens that he shared it with his own growing family for years. I wonder what he would think today of the tacky little garden I have eked out of the frequent rains. I wonder what they did back in the day when weather just would not allow tilling, nor completion of the planting. I recall my mother saying (as she would try to console me during the drought years) “honey a dry year will scare a farmer to death, but a wet year will starve him to death”.  As I look at the lush tomato vines, cucumbers, and pepper plants I was able to hill up to avoid being washed away, I catch myself talking to daddy — maybe bragging just a little. I am sure he would advise me to get Sevin dust on those green beans. He might also say I’d done well to hoe out what I could before this last rain. Whatever he would say, he would be pleased that I have continued gardening, being outside, caring about living things. He might say this is living.


As his last year took all of his vision and hearing, daddy forgot the love he had for life. He could no longer recognize which child or grandchild was in his doorway. I feel like that was the worst for him, because he had, over time, regained relationships so dear to him. Now, unable to carry on a conversation, he must have felt so alone. But I am not remembering those last days; no, I am remembering the living he enjoyed, and shared. That was living.

6/15/25
Recognizing the changes that come with age in vision, hearing, and expression, surely reminds us that we all have differences as well, in how we listen and see — our perspectives; we dance with nature to our own music. Enjoy one another’s love for life while it lasts. “Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.” (Romans 12:16) Understanding others — that’s living.

I am remembering the bibbed overalls, the fishing poles, hummingbird feeders, white cats, beagle hounds and large gardens. Thick curly hair, Old Spice, Buicks and Oldsmobiles, soup beans and fifty dollar bills at Christmas, and pea shelling. Mostly I remember “Trish, this is your dad.” I miss you daddy. And, this is living too — having memories, and remembering the living that was done.

Living

09 Monday Jun 2025

Posted by in MONDAY MUSINGS

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Two small flip-chart calendars were given to me a whole lotta living ago. One was from a classmate as we graduated from nursing school. The other is from a sweet friend who roomed with me one of the years we helped with mission work in Guyana. Both calendars stand for memorable times in my life. On both, each day of the year has a quote, or a verse, rather than the day of the week, allowing me to continue using them year after year. The one from 1996 is at my bedside, where I can recall the friendship and her kind words written inside the cover. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to find her so I can thank her, and to tell her how her written note, as well as the quotes within the calendar, have inspired me. I let too much living happen between her Christmas cards, and now I cannot reach her. Christy, I hope you are well.

The second calendar, from my Guyana days, rests atop a small chest in my closet where I can read the day’s quote when I put away my pajamas and put on a new day. On the page for May 27, a quote from Emily Dickinson says, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” Beautifully basic. Some things are so basic, so simply true, they need no explanation. (But you know I can’t pass it up.) Ms. Dickinson explained in one short statement, why we find the distance of day to day life, replacing good intentions. Or, why I can’t get everything done in a day. We mean to do more. We mean to say wonderful things. We mean to encourage the people who have our attention; to cherish those who hold the moments of our lives. And then living happens — a moment at a time — filling our lives with all the wonderful, awful, sincere, silly, precious moments of living.

Emily Dickinson’s statement reminds me of this quote by C.S. Lewis. “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or one’s ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls interruptions are precisely one’s real life — the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination!” The interruption IS our life. Life — living — is easier to manage when we see all those interruptions as the life we are given. And it certainly is. What your life would be at that moment, without that interruption, is — well, non-existent. Startling — in a good way, or not, we are living our lives a moment at a time. I need to be there in those moments, and not waste a one.

If some of the living, if some of the interruptions, are trials, then the present conditions, according to James, IF we are patient, will make better who we are. “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect works that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1: 2-4)NKJV.

Another point that may be made in the first quote is, if I am truly living my life, I have no time to live anyone else’s. I wonder if Ms. Emily was thinking of busybodies.

Standing outside tonight (as I am writing on Sunday night), there is almost a full moon. The dew is heavy; the night creatures are making music beneath a wispy fog. It is tempting to think this is the first time I have ever seen a night just like this. Startling. Take time this week to really take in your living, with all your senses. Your life, given to you, none other exactly like it, full and rich — startling. Taste your cup of coffee in the morning like you’ve never tasted it before.

June 8, from my 1996 calendar: “It is good to praise the Lord…to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night.” Psalm 92:1-2 NIV

Amidst the Tangles

02 Monday Jun 2025

Posted by in MONDAY MUSINGS, Through my window

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So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew 6:28-29) 

Some of us are what you call “nitpickers”, or, critical of minor things that most would not find important. While it is not a complimentary label, we know it’s used figuratively to refer to someone who over-scrutinizes details. I do not like this about myself. As I am growing older, though, I really do not mind being criticized, because I can rest in knowing that at the end of the day, it is my Savior’s opinion which ultimately matters. But as a yard and garden lover, I just cannot let go of wanting my gardens to be pleasing to others. Therefore, I am my own worst critic — picking out the flaws and fussing about them; complaining about not having time nor energy to get it done right; and of course, blaming anybody else for whatever else I can. Having said all that, I will make my point. There is no denying life (and gardens) can get pretty tangled — so tangled, in fact, that we fail to see what IS nicely aligned.

From my clothesline, I turned to walk back toward the house where our sunroom and the intended landscaping around it, are most visible. I caught my breath at the burst of yellow that has popped out recently. It kinda slipped up on me; mostly because I’ve been looking through my inside window into the midst of the flower/tree/weed/vine patch we call the landscaping. From there, I only saw all the work that needs to be done. (So crowded and full of overgrowth, that I may have run the mower just a little ways into the front of it all, just a few days ago.) However, as I turned, on that laundry day, from the back of the lawn, I was pleased to see the ever-thriving Stella D’Oro lilies in full bloom, from one end of the landscaping to the other. I refused to go closer for fear my old nitpicking habit would overcome me.

In life, or in gardens, there is always work to do — especially on myself. As long as I am breathing air, there will be things to learn, to improve, and to share. I have discovered many lessons as I putter around in my gardening — lessons the great Master Gardener placed….well, placed anywhere His willing children will be able to learn. For me it is in the miracle of a resurrected seed, an unfolding bud, the parenting of bluebirds, and in every turn of the spade. The Stellas were reminding me to look at the big picture and enjoy the beauty; to avoid getting bogged down in the details that can be worked out in time, with His help. Those weeds will be there for someone else to contend with after I am gone. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory…For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18b) While I am here, I just want to share the flowers, whether in the form of encouraging words, time spent, a favor done, or a literal bloom on a stem. It depends on what God has given us to share.

If you look closely at my flowers outside the sunroom, you will also find weeds, vines, tree suckers, over zealous black-eyed Susans, and that hateful grass. But don’t miss the lovely purple garden geranium in the midst of the tangles. Stella D’Oro seems to be shining her light so I can enjoy the beauty of her geranium friend, as well as inspiring me to keep on trying, and to be less tangled up in nitpicking.

I could pick at all the reasons my landscaping and gardens have suffered, but for every negative there is a positive. The rain hindered, but the Stellas thrive in it. My knee replacement hindered, but it gave me time to finish a writing project. Last year’s wayward grass seeds that fell into the flowerbeds are a nuisance, but the lawn is thick and green. The weeds are rough, but they inspire me to stretch my back and exercise my mind as my hands work. There is a strange satisfaction found as one works her way through the tangles to find the beauty in its midst.

Now, I have a bit of news! Several things I’ve mentioned in today’s blog about lessons in gardening, are explored in more detail in “Gifts From the Garden Path: Encouragement Through Our Seasons”. This little book of encouragement in softcover, is available through the online bookstore of my publisher, WestBow Press (https://www.westbowpress.com/en/bookstore.). It can be searched by author’s name, Patricia J. Ward, or the ISBN 9798385047482. The eBook will be available around June 9. To say I am grateful to God for His guidance through this adventure, is an understatement. I pray I will never run completely out of gardening days, but my 71-year-old body says it’s ready for me to do more writing and less digging. I have a few writing projects on the back burner, so I suppose I shall buckle down and focus on one at a time, for as long as the Lord is willing.

Have a wonderful week, taking in the big picture, and giving yourself time for the details to untangle. Have a cup of coffee; and remember, life is too short to skip the cream.