Welcome to my new blog, Small, With Great Love These are my depth years and I am here to celebrate what remains. Now I no longer can range widely I am challenged to go ever deeper into my surroundings. And, even as I learn the hard lessons of aging, what a rich life I am …
Dearness There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, Gerard Manly Hopkins This is my world. I am standing in rain, something slightly more than a mist. Behind me, yellow petals fall from the astonishing blaze of forsythias. At long last we have come to the greening of the year. There are the tiniest, sour-green …
Ken in the Wilderness This week, I spent a morning revisiting my artist father, Ken Phillips’, Ruined Orchard series of oil sketches. As I looked, I could see how it was for him then. When he set out that September morning to the dying orchard, my father would have been heading deep into his own …
A SEASON OF MIRACLES By the standards of an eastern Ontario spring it’s early yet. But even still my land is full of promise. This morning, there is the bliss of rain. Not snow, but a cleansing rain. When I push open my front door, I hear a first robin singing. (In these uncertain times …