Wednesday February 4 – “odd to talk about gardening on the tail end of a blizzard, but . . . . “
It turns out that one of Detroit’s most notable urban farms is in a neck & neck voting contest for a $40,000 grant. The usual deal, vote once a day until next Monday; the other competing garden is in Oakland, CA – a good town too, but this is DETROIT!
Even if your votes and mine don’t push us over the top, the contest ask offers a close-up of a larger urban farm in the heart of the city (and some pictures of summer time in the city).
Here’s the link to the contest ask, consider voting ok?
Back to snow and to Mary Oliver who’s been a little neglected here lately.
Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.
Mid-week. Have a blest day.
john sj
View of the courtyard in the Jesuit residence, February 2, 12:34 pm
First Snow
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
–Mary Oliver ©