Seek First

Episcopal Computer Consulting is a new business with lots of know how.  Founded by an Episcopal priest, David Bateman, EEC offers consulting services to churches for computer record-keeping systems.  I am honored that the company is using my logo, Seek First, created for the ECUSA Image Shop for its on-line presence.  Check it out and see all the services EEC offers.

Pink Ladies & Crimson Gents

I found the most beautiful book, Pink Ladies & Crimson Gents, by Molly and Don Glentzer.  Everything about this book is simply pleasing.  The photography is gorgeous, and the writing is downright poetic in its imagery and charm.  An example:

"In its sensuous form and color, 'Rubens' celebrates - as the master himself did - Helena's voluptuous spirit.  With a heady fragrance like well-steeped tea, it's a rose that invites you, charmingly, into its dewy bosom."

I am partial to books that give the history of plants, especially roses; this one meets my expectations and will provide history to increase my appreciation for these beautiful antiques and help me see them as the individuals they are.  

Get this book, savor it, wallow in its sensuality and thumb your nose at Cure d'Ars . 

The truth is...

"The truth is I gave my heart away a long time ago - my whole heart - and I never really got it back."

From Sweet Home Alabama

Felicia

Felicia is a Hybrid Musk (1928) who lives in my backyard. 

Easter's Over?

Bun-bun in the front yard.

Abracadabra

A native of Macon Co., Alabama, Abby was brought home by her Mom on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene several years ago when it was way too hot for a baby puppy to survive.  She is affectionately known as Abby-Dabby or Abs, and she always wears a turquoise collar to match her Mom.  Isn't she lovely?

Mystical Roses

Some of the great mystics were just too close to insanity for me to understand their lifestyles. Take for example Cure d'Ars who refused to smell a rose for fear of sinning. Pergation of the senses through exaggerated asceticism that would deny a rose just seems a little too self-consumed to me. Yes, I know that the mystics were supposed to be looking to commune directly with God, but they remind me of people who miss the forest for the trees. Unlike St. John of the Cross, I don't want to "be filled with a burning fervour full of anguish" nor do I want to "renounce all those things" St. John of the Cross waxed on about. As an artist and poet I believe that one of the closest experiences I will ever have of God in this lifetime is savoring a rose.  The mystics would likely say that this is not the direct experience they seek.  Perhaps not, but it's close enough for me. 

The rose in the photograph is Zepherine Drouhin, a gift I received from a person I have never met in person.  Around 2001 or so while at Kent Krugh's web site, A Woodland Rose Garden,  I e-mailed him to see if he knew where I could buy the Zepherine which seemed to be sold out everywhere I looked.  This generous man sent me two from his home in Cincinnati, Ohio.   Check out Kent's web site.  He has some of the best historical reference material I have found anywhere.

Every time I look at the Zepherine I am reminded of the kindness and generosity of strangers.  If that isn't experiencing God, I don't know what is.

Caramel Cake

My family goes way back with caramel cake, but Mama nor Daddy ever mastered the art of making one.  Mama and I nonetheless would buy perfect caramel cakes from the Montgomery Farmers Market made by some local person whose name now fails me.  The cake was yellow and soft; the caramel slightly grainy in a fudgey way.  The combination superb, especially with a cup of coffee.  Over the years I have made facsimiles of that caramel cake, but I never hit the mark.  Sometimes the humidity would be too high, and the caramel just didn't work exactly right.  But I finally did it.  The photo above shows the last slice of a caramel cake I made over the weekend to take for coffee hour at church.  At long last, it matched the caramel cake of my youth, and I credit hand whipping the icing.  That and this old fashioned recipe that did not allow for whipping the flour, which can make a cake hard or tough (as we say down South).  I was amazed at how everyone had a special place in his or her heart for caramel cake, and they ate it with wild abandon, even the diabetic and the guy who didn't stay for coffee hour but stuck out his palms to take a piece as if it were the Eucharist.  

We also have a saying when food is beyond good - it's good enough to make you slap your Mama.  But I didn't.  I took her some cake, and when she gave it a full endorsement I knew I had arrived.  Could anything make a girl prouder than her Mama telling her she sure knows how to make a cake?

A good cake is a tradition - the taste of family, home and memory.   These things are important down South where good recipes and good people are not forgotten. 

Sweet Home Alabama

"Make it a slow one, Miss Stella."

"Sweet Home Alabama...where the skies are so blue.  Sweet Home Alabama...Lord I'm coming home to you."

                                             ~ A great line from "Sweet Home Alabama", the movie

Not All Fish Drink Water

One universally held belief is that all people want to be loved.  Most would agree with the proposition.  But we would be wrong in making that claim.

Similarly, it is error to claim that all animals drink water because we do.  Fresh water fish do not.  They live in water and absorb it through their bodies, but they do not drink it.

While many people live in a state of love, the last thing they want is the true intimacy of emotional exposure that is born of trust and self knowledge.  They are "in love" as fish are "in water" without ever swallowing the element.

I think that popular culture encourages this type of immersion, seducing us into the shallow end.  Oh, but how painfully sweet the pleasure of plunging into the deep.