Memorial Day parade

In the U.S., the last Monday of May is Memorial Day, mostly to remember fallen soldiers from our wars. But many of us also take the opportunity to visit graves of our loved ones who've passed on, unrelated to war.

I don't think I've been to a Memorial Day parade since I was a little girl, when I rode my bicycle in my hometown parade. I remember decorating my bike with red, white and blue crepe paper in the spokes of the tires. I was proud to ride across the bridge downtown.

So here is our even smaller home town's parade. It was hotter than blazes, but thousands of us turned out to honor our war veterans and fallen soldiers.

I hate war, so don't get me started. But I got teary watching the beautiful old men and women who served in WWII, and the Vietnam vets who are starting to look about as old as me.

In our small farm town, everyone who can or wants to rides in the parade. After the vets come the antique cars and tractors. Here's an interesting one.

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The corn is visible above ground

Click on image to see the corn a little bit bigger

This farmer's field is a few miles from our farm.

Our farm is not a working farm and is just 5 acres. I admire farmers and farms like this one called "Lil Work" farm. Get real! No farm is "lil work." The owners, "Paul and Debbie" according to their little sign, must love farming AND have a good sense of humor.

But the seeds. Do they work? They know to send shoots up to the sun, even though they can't feel it or see it before breaking above ground. It seems almost effortless, this growing. Just doing what they do, being. Year after year I take it for granted, that the sun will shine, seeds will grow, corn plants will produce ears of corn, farmers will harvest them, and I will eat them for supper.

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Our campus gardens

"There is a great insight which our culture is deliberately designed to suppress, distort, and ignore: that Nature is a minded entity; that Nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields; that Nature is not the empty, despiritualized lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind."
—Terence McKenna

Click photos for larger views.

A few of many greenhouses on campus, and viburnum bushes

I stopped by my university’s horticulture gardens after work yesterday to see what’s coming up. Lots of things, including peonies and allium.

Peony (a la Georgia)

Allium, with peonies behind

Today Don has his 4th grade class at the MSU greenhouses all day! The program, “Seeds of Science” is an interactive chance for kids to learn about plant biology. Also, and what’s most fun if you ask me, is that the MSU horticulture and agriculture departments solicit kids’ feedback on their plants!

For example, below are just two of dozens of pansy varieties grown here. Students are asked which their favorites are. (These are mine.) Then the seed companies that use MSU’s horticulture department to test and develop seeds in turn market them as “kids’ favorite.”

Pansies

Don’s class is participating in “my favorite lettuce” meaning that the lettuces the kids think taste the best will be marketed that way.

How fun is that? I wish I’d had Mr. M. for science.

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"HI", from the farm

Vacations are lovely, a needed pleasure away from routines. But it's even sweeter to come home, especially when home is such a haven as this.

Click on photos to enlarge.


I'm glad the lilacs are still blooming because of cool temps.


Can you believe this euonymus spelled out "HI"?


Lesley and I found a frog in the thyme yesterday.


Prisms dance all over the atelier from the sun through the leaded glass window.

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Nice farm welcome, and now good-bye

Dolce & Gabbana with their hay and pitchforks in windows on the most prestigious designer's row in the world, rue Montagne, along with the rest of Paris and its cow parade, have welcomed me most kindly from the farm. And now the farm is calling me back. Au revoir!

Gucci cow, oohlala

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Café crème, again

Tea salon across from the Louvre


I'm going to miss these.

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Synchronicity

me having a café crème at the restaurant where Catherine was also eating; a nice couple from India who live in Chicago offered to take my photo after I took theirs with their camera

Because my blog is "Synchronizing" I want to share this story.

I was reading James Redfield's The Celestine Vision last night before sleep (sleep? ha!). On p. 21 he writes "Another synchronicity . . . occurs when we repeatedly see someone we don't know within a short period of time. The odds against such occurrences are tremendous . . ." He goes on to say we should introduce ourselves if that happens. Perhaps there is an important reason we should meet.

So today, I was walking down the tiny rue Servandoni, an obscure, non-touristy street, and I saw a woman walking toward me who sat two tables from me at a restaurant on the Champs-Elysées yesterday, a long way from rue Servandoni. So, because of reading Redfield's suggestion, I introduced myself to her, Catherine from Toronto.

We chatted for a few minutes, two women on a week's vacation traveling alone. I liked her a lot.

I don't know why we were meant to meet, but that it happened right after reading about the occurrence makes me believe we were connected to something bigger than ourselves.

The rest of the day I've been wishing we had made plans to get together later in the week. We'll see, maybe the universe will arrange it.

A different take on this story at Paris Deconstructed.

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