There was so much beauty in the meadows and woods today after a night of rain. I woke tired and took Charlie into the woods. It was buggy but pleasant, otherwise, We crossed the trestle bridge, passed the piles of trash (I forgot the trash bag) and we went through the meadow which was a field of wildflowers, Queen Anne’s Lace and mullein, a gorgeous, healthy stock of it standing under the deep blue-gray sky. We walked for a long time, five miles, and I talked to my sister for almost the whole time, catching up, covering everything sisters need to cover: being grandmothers, was a lot of it. In the wetlands, the cattails were cheerful and healthy, and the wild black raspberries are ripening all along the trails. Charlie was very satisfied with our time in the woods. In the late afternoon, I walked across the field to the river while taking a phone call. I looked down and saw the most marvelously laced leaf on top of the moss. Breaking down, returning to soil.

"If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life:  worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ...  Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long."

~ Wendell Berry,  The Unsettling of America, 1977