dual personalities

Tag: nature

November 4, 2025

My times are in your hand*

by chuckofish

The maple tree leaves have turned in our neck of the woods, but the oak trees are just starting. We had a serious drought and there are consequences.

Leaf blowers have not really started yet–it will no doubt be a noisy Advent. C’est la vie.

This is a good explanation of why the leaves turn in the fall and “the colors of autumn fill the earth with a special beauty that reflects the artistry and creative power of God” from the John 10:10 Project.

And one last…

Here’s good news: In celebration of his birth centennial, TCM will honor Rock Hudson with a month-long tribute every Tuesday in November. He’s the Star of the Month! So check out the schedule on Tuesday nights.

Today we also celebrate the birth of Augustus Montague Toplady, Anglican cleric and hymn writer, in 1740. He is best remembered as the author of the hymn Rock of Ages, which we sing quite frequently at my church.

(He was as handsome as Rock Hudson!)

Toplady, we are told, underwent a religious awakening in August 1755. In his own diary, he wrote “I was awakened in the month of August, 1755, but not, as has been falsely reported, under Mr. John Wesley, or any preacher connected with him. Thought awakened in 1755. I was not led into a full and clear view of all the doctrines of grace, till the year 1758, when, through the great goodness of God, my Arminian prejudices received an effectual shock, in reading Dr. Manton’s Sermons on the 17th of St. John”. A man after my own heart.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
simply to the cross I cling;
naked, come to thee for dress;
helpless, look to thee for grace;
foul, I to the fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die.

Have a good Tuesday!

*Psalm 31:15

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August 7, 2025

Thursday reflections

by chuckofish

Today we remember John Mason Neale (1818-1866), Anglican hymn writer, who is remembered on the Anglican and Episcopal Church calendars today. He wrote some really good hymns, including one of my favorites, Jerusalem the Golden:

Jerusalem the golden!
With milk and honey blest;
Beneath your contemplation
Sink heart and voice opprest.
I know not, oh! I know not,
What joys await us there,
What radiancy of glory,
What bliss beyond compare.

This is an interesting article about the time a famous photographer came to St. Louis in the summer of 1926 and took pictures. St. Louis hasn’t changed all that much and neither has the weather.

Also this video about spiders from the John 10:10 Project is fascinating.

My grandchildren are all horrified by spiders, but I tell them that most of them are our friends and help keep down the insect population. Their webs are amazing!

In other news, I continue to check things off my to-do list, including selling the OM’s car. 🎉🎉🎉 This is a load off my heavily laden mind.

“Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” (Gen. 35:3)

Stop and reflect, our faith is strengthened by the difficult things God has brought us through. Trust God in the present as well as for the future. 

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April 30, 2025

Old and modern nooks

by chuckofish

It’s the last day of April! Spring has sprung! Buds on the peonies, buds on the iris…

Goodness gracious–weeds proliferating!

Here’s a poem for May by Leigh Hunt:

There is May in books forever;
May will part from Spenser never;
May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior,
May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;
May’s in all the Italian books:—
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,
And will rise and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.
Come, ye rains, then if ye will,
May’s at home, and with me still;
But come rather, thou, good weather,
And find us in the fields together.

And here’s a prayer daughter #1 sent me yesterday–it’s a good one:

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April 3, 2024

“We can never have enough of nature.”*

by chuckofish

My cousin Steve recently sent me a box of treasures–old newspaper clippings and photographs of our maternal grandparents. Among them were some pictures of their house and yard, which I remember fondly. They had a fish pond.

This made me think of the fish pond we had in the backyard of our house growing up. The yard had been professionally landscaped back in the 1920s or 30s, but by the 1960s when we moved in, it had seen better days. My mother discovered the pond, which had been filled in, and excavated it, bringing it back to life. It even had a working waterfall, but the unfiltered water killed the fish, so we never turned it on. I could not find a picture of the pond in my archive–only this artsy one of my reflection in it which graced my senior yearbook page. (Ye gods!)

My mother loved to sit in the sunroom and look out at the backyard and the fish pond. Sometimes a neighbor’s cat would come by and sit by the edge of the pond gazing down at the fish. If he got too close, she would bang on the window.

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.”

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

You may have noted that daughter #2 has a fish pond in the backyard of her house.

Three generations of fish ponds! Interesting.

Look out the window. Have a contemplative day. Don’t feel guilty about it.

*Henry David Thoreau, Walden

4 Comments
September 12, 2023

Things of minor consequence

by chuckofish

There is a lot going on in the yard these days…sometimes right on your front doorstep. And there are pumpkins at Trader Joe’s.

In other news, baby Ida is on the verge of crawling. She is highly motivated.

Her style is mostly reminiscent of this:

You go, girl!

This is interesting. “”There is no half-mile anywhere on Earth which means more to more people — not to millions, but to billions — than the half-mile that is the City of David.”

And happy birthday to Maurice Chevalier (1888-1972) who, when I was growing up, was considered the quintessential Frenchman. Unfortunately, I don’t think they make Frenchmen like him anymore.

We also remember John Qualen (1899-1987) who died on this day. He was a character actor who made over 100 films, many of them as a member of John Ford’s famous “stock company.” You remember him, playing Scandinavian immigrants and the like in such movies as The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), or as the Norwegian resistance fighter in Casablanca (1940). He’s probably best known for playing Muley in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

He made a lot of good movies. The mark of a really excellent movie, don’t you think, is when the minor characters are allowed to shine and you remember not just John Wayne or Henry Fonda, but John Qualen and Russell Simpson and Ward Bond and Jane Darwell.

So pay attention to the little guy. And look around your yard. C’est magnifique. Have a good Tuesday.

3 Comments
June 7, 2023

Let Nature be your teacher*

by chuckofish

Today, a guest post from DN!

One of the highlights of our home is a space we call the backroom—a three- or four-season Florida room (depending on the year) attached to the rear of the house. In the winter, the backroom’s windows help us feel that we’re getting enough sun. In the summer, the room is a great way to escape air conditioning and feel a little humidity on our skin. But spring is when the backroom really shines. There is so much life to see.

Although we haven’t seen any eggs, we think that they are in there. Every time the robin returns to the nest, she performs a side-to-side tush-scooch, nestling herself in.

And although the backroom has lots of books and toys, what really holds Katie’s interest is the yard beyond. She inherently wants to observe and discuss.

“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even in the era of manhood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

When I showed Katie the second photo, she told me that the sparrow was holding a crumb. Now where would she get the idea that birds love crumbs?

From Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

* ”The Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth. (I couldn’t very well cite a 19th century American author without an offsetting British Romantic.)

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May 4, 2023

“Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute”*

by chuckofish

On Tuesday when the boy came over for our weekly gabfest, a deer ran across our neighbor’s lawn into another neighbor’s back yard. In the middle of the day! What is with the wildlife around here? Deer, coyotes, foxes, BEARS?!

Speaking of wildlife, a Robin built a nest on our kitchen windowsill.

Later we noticed that there is one solitary blue egg.

I hadn’t seen the Robin in awhile and I was afraid the egg has been abandoned. I could have told the Robin that this is not a good place to build a nest, but would she have listened? I doubt it. Nature is red in tooth and claw and of this we are constantly reminded.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

I thought, well, c’est la vie. But then the Robin was back on the nest.

The bird also has found a house,
And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young,
Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts,
My King and my God.

(Psalm 84:3)

In other news, in a miraculous turn, my English Ivy has come back. It was dead, dead, dead a month ago, as was my neighbor’s ivy. I should have taken a picture if it, but it was too depressing. Don told me to be patient and wait and see, but I really thought some scourge had taken it out. However, in the last two weeks it has greened up and filled in.

Now it needs trimming!

Well, have a good day.

[*You can read all of Tennyson’s very long poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” here.]

4 Comments
June 8, 2021

Bits and Bobs

by chuckofish

Today is the anniversary of the passing of the Antiquities Act which was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. This law gives the President of the United States the authority to create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features. The first use of the Act protected a large geographic feature, Devils Tower National Monument. The Act has been used more than a hundred times since its passage, but only once in Missouri. We have the site preserving, by act of Congress in 1943, Moses Carver’s farm, which was the boyhood home of George Washington Carver, who, you will recall, developed many uses for peanuts. It was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to a non-president. It is in Diamond, MO in southwest Missouri, south of Joplin.

I’ll add it to my growing list of places to visit.

If you were wondering, I did get to experience the cicada invasion in Maryland.

It was really special and extremely loud, but I seem to remember that when we had the same thing happen here at home twenty years ago, it was even more intense.

Here’s something great–Tim Allen (another former Episcopalian) giving a commencement address at Hillsdale College this year. Watch the whole thing. There’s more to Buzz Lightyear than you might think.

This article was written by a woman I went to school with, oh, so many years ago. “Parents, we get to pray—with the body of Christ. We are not meant to parent without community. The members of a church congregation are called to help one another raise up the next generations to know and serve the Lord.”

And I know everyone wants an update on the bear sighting situation in my neighborhood, so here you go.

Look up! Here’s an awesome video about cloud formations. I enjoyed looking down at the clouds on my plane rides last week.

May the Lord bless and keep you today.

4 Comments
May 31, 2021

We’ll rally round the flag, boys

by chuckofish

Happy Memorial Day!

Hope you were able to get out and about this weekend. We buzzed over to Washington, MO and walked around a bit and ate lunch, but it was a blustery, cold, overcast day and not really conducive to hanging out.

We went home and opened a bottle of rosé in the Florida Room. However, Mother Nature intruded traumatically on our wine time. A large hawk flew into the forsythia bushes bordering the south windows, pounced on some small creature (which screamed) and then crashed into the metal wall. We jumped up and saw the hawk on the ground as it collected itself and finished off the poor creature (a baby rabbit? a bird?). It then flew into the neighbor’s yard and tore into its victim as we watched. Homicide: Life in the Backyard.

Yikes. Nature red in tooth and claw indeed. Murder and mayhem is literally all around us. I suppose it is good to be reminded of this once in a while. I remember the boy being traumatized at age 6 or 7 when he watched his cat tease and torture a baby rabbit it had caught. He chased the cat away, but lesson learned. House pets are not that far removed from their jungle cousins.

That memory in turn reminded me of the time that same cat was languidly resting in a tree (lion style) on a branch that hung over the driveway. My children frolicked in the back yard. I was watching from an upstairs window when a large black lab trotted up the driveway. The cat went on alert and when the dog was directly below him, he pounced on its back, scaring the bejesus out of the dog, who took off running. The cat was all like, take that, you big dog, walking up my driveway and threatening my children. His behavior was a revelation to me. I had no idea that a cat would defend/protect its territory like that. Maybe he just felt like scaring a dog, but I liked and admired him a lot more after that.

Sunday was a beautiful day, clear and in the 70s with a light breeze. We went to our favorite winery in Hillsboro, Wild Sun, and sat in the sun, listened to live music and drank a bottle of wine. We packed a picnic and brought my new portable table. Perfect.

Not as into it as we were.

Meanwhile little Katiebelle is being appropriately indoctrinated.

Can’t wait to see her on Wednesday! Have a great day today and don’t forget why you have the day off.

P.S. Here’s a little something to take you reeling nostalgically back to middle school. RIP BJ Thomas:

5 Comments
April 19, 2021

Postcards from the weekend

by chuckofish

I turned in a huge project on Friday–a grant proposal years in the making–and so when daughter #1 arrived in town, we celebrated at our favorite local re-opened wine/Tapas bar with a glass of wine and some hummus. Delightful. That set us up nicely for the rest of the weekend which involved a 4.5 hour babysitting assignment with the wee twins on Saturday, followed by a reprise on Sunday afternoon.

It was a lot, but a mostly delightful experience. I also managed to go to church for the third week in a row! In addition, we ordered a car seat and stocked up on Pampers and organic veggie pouches in anticipation of daughter #2 and Katie’s visit this coming weekend. We watched Hatari (1962) in two parts. This movie is a lot of fun and was a huge hit in 1962. All the actors did their own stunts with the wild animals–amazing!

It is a celebration God’s creation, plus there is a lot of chain-smoking, hipster merry-making.

It is fun to have four-year olds with whom to share the bounty of spring: the beautiful blooming trees, the lush green grass, the bugs that are appearing, the hosta poking through the dirt, along with the iris, the roses, the Euonymus and Ajuga, the peonies, the ants.

We even found two plastic Easter eggs that had not been found two weeks ago during our egg hunt! The chocolate bunnies inside were gobbled up immediately!

But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
    or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature
    and the breath of all mankind.

–Job 12: 7-10
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