02.19.2025 | Ordinary Wednesday

The skies are partly cloudy, and the ground is covered in a blanket of fluffy, white snow.  It is ridiculously cold on this mid-February, mid-week morning.  The good news is our friends at Degenhardt Heating and Cooling have fixed the furnace, and we are warm and toasty inside.  Good weather on the horizon as each day for the next week or so we are going to warm up.  Next Monday we may see 60-degrees!  

We are gifted with the joy of this sweet girl in our lives.  Sweet Phoebe is a delight with her ever-present smile, her giggles and her sheer joy in living.  Phoebe's momma was my first, ever niece.  She, too, was and is a beautiful person inside and out.  Together they fill my heart with joy and wonder every time we get together.  We have developed a bit of a Tuesday Night Supper Club over the past year, and it is always the highlight of our week.  Unfortunately, the weather proved more than we could handle yesterday but these pictures from this weekend remind me to always appreciate every moment.  They grow up so fast!  It was just yesterday that her momma was this age!

What a blessing it is to finally realize that life does not have to be perfect, to be perfect.  It simply needs to be lived, loved and forgiven.  Aging has given this old gardener a bit of a revival in spirit.  Getting older has allowed me the gift of time and the gift of playing once again.  Playing with ideas, with projects, with friends, playing with life!  

Gratitude is the theme of the day here in the Carondelet Cottage.  In can be difficult for some of us to overcome the grief and horrors of the world right now.  Sometimes we have to pull inward, circle the wagons a bit and be grateful for the good things we have right next to us.  That's all the news from here in the Carondelet Garden.