Outside my window this morning layers of white and grey clouds drift inland from the Pacific, promising more rain. The garden is lush with green, but the flowers are slower to open because of the chilly spring temperatures. But wisteria hangs in fragrant clusters over the garden shed and just standing under it is intoxicating.
Every spring I smile at the way fig trees begin to leaf out from the very tips of their branches, looking like butterflies about to fly off.
In a writing group I belong to, the question of the month is "What writing projects make your heart sing?" I've been thinking long and hard about this topic and have come to a few conclusions.
I love writing this blog. Few of my real life friends read it, along with a few family members, but for the most part, I've never met my readers face to face. Yet something connects us. How could that connection be defined? I'm still thinking about that one.
I love writing about nature, and combining words with images. Not in a scientific way, but just observing the wonders of creation - what goes on in my garden, and in the geographies I visit.
I love writing little stories about my life - short interactions with strangers, or sweet things I observe about my grandchildren.
Yesterday I went for a walk with Iris and Cora. Cora is slow to talk, but doesn't miss a beat. I mentioned the word 'park' at her house and she made a beeline for the door. Later, on the walk, she stopped occasionally to cup her little hand behind her even tinier ear as if to say, "I hear something" - a dog or construction machinery, or a bird, and she nods vigorously, and says 'yes', when I mention what it is.
Not all stories make it to the blog, of course. I'm working on a memoir of our family's time in Ecuador. It's been derailed by teaching this semester, but I will soon continue work on it.
I love to write the kinds of things I love to read - mysteries (they are hard to write!), poetry, essays or paragraphs about food and home-keeping, stories of the past and the present.
In my collected quotations this one, again by L. M. Montgomery in Anne's House of Dreams, where Anne is conversing with Gilbert, perhaps describes my favourite writing projects best,
"I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily.
"I don't exactly want to make people know more...
I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time
because of me...to have some little joy
or happy thought that would never have existed
if I hadn't been born."
I'll leave you with one last cloud of fragrant wisteria, and wish you all a lovely weekend.