Pied Beauty
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
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My friend Linda, whom I have known since first grade, had lunch together on Wednesday; she's the one whose family throws the Super Bowl party my family attends every year, but somehow we don't manage to see each other nearly as often as we should in between, so this was lovely. We got food at Chipotle, brought it back to her house to eat, then took a walk with her dogs and around the duck pond in her neighborhood on a beautifully warm afternoon -- it must have been nearly 60 degrees with glorious sunshine. (Adam got a new lens, so he was enjoying photo opportunities too.)
In the afternoon, I had to fold laundry, so -- having borrowed
Older son decided last week that he wanted Tarot decks -- both the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck -- which of course I am in NO position to protest. So since I was ordering those for him, I got myself the Tarot of Pagan Cats, a really fun Rider-Waite clone. Our evening TV was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which is next on my Trek review list...still fun, Gillian is still batshit insane, "I'm from Iowa...I only work in outer space" is still one of my favorite lines. Some more Oxon Hill Farm Park animals from last weekend:
