Hot Enough to Fry a Groundhog?

So imagine my surprise: I go out the back door, turn to go down the basement steps on my way to check my laundry -- and there he is. Chuckie. Splayed out on the cool of the basement steps my resident woodchuck refused to yield his position.
I actually had to find a long stick, go around the outside edge and poke him in the hind end before he reluctantly moved. (After I took photos, of course.)

The really disturbing part? A second groundhog was spotted munching in the orchard at the same time. One groundhog might be tolerated -- it's hot, the gardens not doing that much to worry about protecting it from a nibble here and there, and I wasn't really feeling all that up to groundhog transportation right now. But two groundhogs means a breeding pair, means baby marmota, means it's time to set the trap after all.

There and Back Again

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

- JRR Tolkien

Waterfall

At the foot of the cliffs they found themselves standing in cool shadows with a light spray sometimes splashing their faces, and there the Shepherd bade them stand and look up. There stood Much-Afraid, a tiny figure at the foot of the great cliffs, looking up at the great, never-ending rush of waters as they cast themselves down from the High Places. ...
Once over the edge, the waters were like winged things, alive with joy, so utterly abandoned to the ecstasy of giving themselves that she could almost suppose she was looking at a host of angels floating down on rainbow wings, singing with rapture as they went.
She gazed and gazed, then said, "It looks as though they think it is the loveliest movement in all the world, as though to cast oneself down is to abandon oneself to ecstasy and joy indescribable."
-- Hannah Hurnard Hind's Feet on High Places

Friday Finds

This Friday I found a view. A view that I first saw in a photograph hanging in a local art gallery. My photo lacks the dramatic light of an approaching storm, but I love that I found the same spot -- that I saw God's handiwork laid out for myself. (And I sort of also love that I didn't pay $250 for my picture of that spot.)

I also found an overlook where no buildings, no rutted scars, no power lines -- no trace of humans could be seen in the valley below -- unless you went all the way across the narrow ledge and craned your neck and then you could see one little white spot that was probably some one's house, but that really doesn't count.


... found out my friend Heather can tame butterflies. This beauty crawled right up onto her finger and posed for a picture.

... found rhododendron in bloom,

...and rooted in the cleft of the rock.

... and found trees. Old trees forgotten in a ravine and left to grow, their trunks too large to span with our arms, dead and fallen, live and hollow, standing, being, dwarfing us as we hiked the small winding trail.


Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes... ~Psalm 96:12b-13a

Summer is Upon

Showy Tickseed (It's a Flower)

"What?"

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a brazen little woodchuck moved in under your garden shed? I was planning on trapping him like I did with the ones last year... and then he sublet to a skunk.