Rainy Day Monday

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful,

for beauty is God's handwriting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Outside my window this morning the rain drips down. I see delicate translucent beads hanging from each branch of the bare maple tree. The street is shiny wet, with rivulets trickling down along the curbs. I rather dread going out. Inside, my back is to the fire as I type. A large mug of tea is close by.  

I am thinking about walks in the woods and how fresh everything smells, and the quiet sound of slow rain on fallen leaves. 

During the past week I did some major cleanup. We have a storage room over the stairs and it tends to extreme untidiness over time. It looks wonderful now and I discarded all kinds of things - some to the thrift store, many papers to the recycle (I'm getting rid of my teaching materials), and some to the garbage can. We shifted furniture while my dad and son-in-law were here to help and that's required some cleaning out of drawers. My sewing room has also been sorted and organized, although there is one bank of drawers that I still need to get to. It feels great to start the new year with tidiness. 

(For those who will think that I should pass on those teaching resources to others, most of what I have and use is now digitally filed and readily available to my colleagues.) 

We've met some interesting people recently. Our rental suite has been vacant for a couple of months while we've painted and did some minor repairs. It was lovely to have the extra space over Christmas, and we put up an advertisement just before our guests arrived, planning to rent it for January 1. Rental spaces are very hard to find in our town and we had so much interest that we took the ad down after 24 hours. We interviewed 4 possible tenants and it was really hard to choose between them. In the end, we chose a couple who are brand new to Canada. She will be studying at UVic, and he will work. 

Another couple with a small boy also wanted to rent the suite. They are new to Canada, as well, and she will be studying while he works. Seems to be a theme. We had this couple over for dinner last week. I made a Mediterranean Chicken dish that I liked so much I made it again on Saturday night. The recipe is on my other blog and available if you click the link.

Over the weekend our daughter and youngest granddaughter came to stay. Miss Iris is the sweetest baby, and so content. She looks at the world with big serious eyes and has to feel comfortable before engaging in smiles and play. Just before they left yesterday she was sitting in her high chair completely engrossed with a piece of packaging. The sun shone for a brief moment and illuminated her, so I grabbed my camera and took a quick photo. 

As we contemplate another year in a world where much is broken, I leave you with these words from J. R. Tolkien, 

"The world is full of peril and there are many dark places. But still, there is much that is fair and though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."