(Press play: just some lovely music to go with photos of a lovely musician.)

Once upon a time, I used to take pictures of people. It’s a practice I’d like to get back into. I’d also like to begin sharing some favorites I’ve re-discovered (and in some cases, re-processed) from past sessions that have never yet seen the light of day on this blog.

These portraits are of my dear friend Mckenzie, who asked me to take photos for her junior cello recital. We drove out to a nearby ranch/orchard one sunny spring afternoon two years ago.

I always regretted not posting any of these photos, because the light and the greenery and the colors were all playing together perfectly that day. And Mckenzie (and her music) shone beautifully, too.

Much has happened in each of our lives since we took these photos; in many ways, they do feel like they belong to a past life. But it was a chapter worth remembering, I think, and I am grateful for people like Mckenzie, who gave me the opportunity to capture a tiny bit of what made it special.

The cottage is enjoying (and so are its occupants) its first house-guest this week. My dear friend Molly, who graduated from Gutenberg with me last year, is visiting Eugene after a year at home in Maryland. She is staying with Gil and me, which absolutely delights me, except for the fact that I’m sorry she has to sleep on the couch. But she doesn’t seem to mind; it is a comfortable couch, after all.

When I was little, my brother and I would often make fun of my mom for taking such care to make sure the house was clean when she was expecting guests (clearly we were very respectful children). “But Mom,” I remember saying on more than one occasion, “they won’t care whether the house is completely put together.” This impenetrable argument never seemed to carry much weight with her, however, and she would still make me clean my room.

And now, in the inevitable way of things, I completely understand. It’s true, guests might not care about, or notice, the exact depths of cleanliness you achieve before they arrive (certainly, any friend who I really consider a friend would forgive me for an imperfectly clean house). But cleaning, straightening, and tying up loose ends, I’ve discovered, is an integral part of preparing to welcome someone—it’s a way of clearing your head, and your space, so that both can focus on the person or people you are welcoming into your life for a short while.

It is also a fantastic excuse to finish projects that have been sitting on the “to-do” list for too long. I used Molly’s arrival as an excuse to finally display something on the wall above our couch, which has been sadly bare since we moved here in February. To do this, I turned to some of my favorite tools: packaging twine and mini clothespins.

I pulled a few favorite photos (some old, some new) out of my overflowing photo box (another project, to be sure), and played with ways to suspend them with the clothespins. After a few failed attempts, I ended up doing this:

A length of soft brown ribbon suspended between two tacks in the wall, with photo-clothespinned lengths of twine hanging from it. And some strips of my favorite wrapping paper. Oh, and some clipboards, for good measure. It’s a bit… oh, I don’t know. Kitschy. Homespun. But it fills the space, it’s color-coordinated, and it lets me look at some of my favorite images every time I come into the living room. Why clipboards, you ask? I don’t know. I just like them. I’m sure I’ll find something wonderful to clip on them at some point.

And now I had better go to bed. This week has provided many happy reasons for staying up too late—a blessing indeed, but I think I should try to catch up on some of that sleep. Goodnight.

Oh, how I love to look out my front door and see green.

I have a little writing desk next to this door. Actually, it is an old Singer sewing machine–the kind that is folded away inside a wooden table with drawers on each side and ornate iron scrollwork for legs. It used to belong to my grandmother, who would probably have approved of the fact that I put a typewriter on top of it. She, like me, was more of a writer than a seamstress—though not unable to sew when the urge struck her.

I set the typewriter on top of the sewing machine so that I could use it on those days when computers are getting me down, and I set the sewing machine next to the door so I could look out at the lawn, and the trees, and my little potted plants, which, by the way, are the perfect antidote to a technology-overdose.

This is the first year I have ever “grown” anything. It’s the first year I have fallen in love with little starts at the farmer’s market or nurseries, the first year I have so-carefully nudged them out of their plastic cartons and nestled them with gloved hands in their prepared bit of soil, the first year I have hovered over them day after day checking for water levels and signs of health—and probably, the Negative Nellie in my head says, the first year I will KILL ALL OF THEM. I just have to shush that voice when it crops up, though… no matter what happens, it will have been a learning experience, and so far they are all just FINE.

The pot most visible from my post at the sewing machine holds my strawberries. Oh, my beautiful strawberry plants–what were blooms in mid-April are growing enticingly more and more strawberry-like by the day. Of course, my landlady has informed me that the deer who frequent the property will most likely eat them any day now. Well, there’s that voice again. Oh, and now it’s also reminding me that just buying a pint of strawberries at the farmer’s market yields more strawberries than I may see all summer, at about half the price of the strawberry plants. Hush, voice. Don’t you know that part of what I was buying was experience? Can you really put a price tag on that?

I sometimes wonder, as I’m sitting at my desk, what my strawberry plants think of this very, very wet spring/summer we are having in Oregon. Because there they are, reaching heavenward, protecting their developing fruit, and every other day the sky just opens up and dumps on them. For all I know, they love these storms. But I can’t help thinking, that if I were they, I would not like to sit around outside with my arms outstretched while God poured buckets of cold water on me. I mean, at least if I did that I would have the option of coming inside and drying off—they just have to sit there and take it.

Then again, maybe that’s in their favor. They don’t have the illusion of shelter to make themselves think they are safe from the elements–or to think that their existence is in their own hands. We humans, on the other hand, build ourselves bigger and bigger shelters against wind, rain, and God—until our shelters become so elaborate that it takes earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes to remind us that wind, rain, and God are not yet quite irrelevant.

But, I remind myself, strawberries don’t think (probably), and when I reach the point that I am genuinely concerned about their feelings I know that I have been sitting at the sewing machine too long. Which is just as well, because by then it’s time to move on to some other task around the cottage–like making dinner, perhaps. Or perhaps, if I have the luxury of a few hours with nothing to do, lying on the couch where I can see out this door, and then taking a nap. (This doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it’s heavenly.)

Today I took one look at the state of my house and knew I must get out of it. (I will clean it before the weekend is over; but I had to get the week out of my system a bit before I was ready to tackle it).

While Gil worked on his finals for school (Finals! Ha, I vaguely remember those.), I went down to Alton Baker Park and captured things I found beautiful with my iPhone:

Then I went to a local craft store and picked up the supplies to make my first stamps/prints. So fun! (Thanks to Geninne for the inspiration and instructions on her blog.)

Gil and I went to catch the end of the Oregon/Oregon State civil war game at my parents’ house, and I worked on my project:

I’d say it was a success! I look forward to finding more ways to use these stamps and making many more. (I also got an 8×10-ish linoleum block, but that feels a bit more daunting. We’ll see how long it takes me to work up the courage/inspiration to carve it.)

Here we are, at the verge of fall becoming winter. The days, it seems, rush by just as quickly now that I am working as they did when I was in school. I tricked myself into thinking that there would, at some point, be a respite–a point at which I could step back, relax, breathe, and perhaps even achieve that apparently mythical feeling called “being caught up.” But no, time has continued to slip right away underneath me, leaving behind many unfinished projects around our house and inside my head, not to mention our wedding thank you’s (!).

It’s tempting to despair at this state of things, as there is little in this life that I long for more than that “caught-up” feeling. And I often do despair. (And by that I mean: pout, whine, tell myself stories about how my life is terrible, etc.) But sometimes, by the grace of God, I instead take off my frustrated blinders and realize how abundantly blessed I am and how comparatively little most of the things I spend my days worrying about matter.

And so, in this week set aside for giving thanks, I find that I am truly thankful. I am thankful for my family and friends, without whom I know I would be completely adrift. I am thankful for my work, even when I find it hard to enjoy (but especially when I don’t). I am thankful for moments of beauty, like the ones above, that step quietly into the middle of everyday tasks and lift my spirits. But most of all, I am thankful for the Creator who has given all of this to us, and who has pointed us toward a place where our desires will no longer be thwarted.