2008

My heart is full with all you have shared with me! I am delighted that the Post Office in the Hedge brought pleasure to so many, and such insights to me. Louisa’s influence continues on and on through the years…one of the many treasures of good books. To think that her description of the letterbox-in-the-hedge helped me to sort out my relationship with this journal….for blogging is not like letter-writing, not like emailing, and not like a real, live conversation….but it *is* like me leaving something for you to find if you pass by and lift the lid…and sometimes you leaving something for me to find. Really lovely! You may be sure that just as soon as I come across the right image, I shall try to manifest the Post Office in the Hedge at the top of The Bower page and in the comments area, to round out the metaphor.

And your comments have given me the surety to continue on talking of “Tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden-seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, invitations, scoldings and puppies.” -LMA That line makes me smile whenever I read it, and I shall endeavor to touch upon these things (and so many others) in the days and months to come. When I reread your thoughts and generous reflections, I do feel so rich in online community. And I am also embarking on a little “project” to put myself in the way of face-to-face community more often…beginning with a trip to a knitting shop in Williamsburg where I hope to find a class to help me learn to knit. My real longing is to become a knitter-of-socks.

And the Untangler of Threads (one of the best names for God I have ever come across) has been giving me other ideas and glimmers of answers to some of my problems these past many days…this is the Small Meadow piece of the puzzle that I mentioned in my last post, and I explain it here. Everything still feels a bit muddled in my business and studio at the moment, because the new Plan has a rather short turn-around this first time, my studio needs alot of uncluttering, I have spent the last few days in a blur of numbers doing my quarterly taxes and tending my sick boy-o….but it truly feels like pieces are slowly falling into place, and that they just might continue to do so if I keep pondering and perservering.

There is so much still to share. I want to chronicle some of our Christmas in photos here, and hope it doesn’t seem too late. And I have received some lovely things in the mail recently….but all that must wait until I return from a quick trip to my mother’s to help her with a few things.

Until then,

I remain,

Your devoted,

Keeper of the Bower!

I am grateful for your kind words and wishes and am glad to say that I am well on the mend now. The enforced slow pace of the past week has been just the right thing for my frame of mind in this New Year…..

How to describe these days since Christmas? Reflective, examining, mulling…and tho’ I would like to say I have been doing it as picturesquely as the lovely woman above, I must admit that it has more often been reclining on the sofa….or in the tub…. or whilst driving…reading blog posts about New Year’s goals and such…staring out the window….sifting through old journals….gazing back over the past year.

Answers haven’t come quickly, so I have continued to look and listen and wait and try not to feel that I “ought” to have my plans all laid out nicely by now.The New Year seems to follow too quickly upon the heels of Christmas…for me anyway….and I found it quite freeing to give myself consent to let clarity take as long as it needs to arrive.

A big piece of one of my puzzles fell into place last evening-I believe-and I will share it with you soon. It is a “Small Meadow Press” piece of my puzzle. There are so many different pieces, of course! This blog is another. And I would very much appreciate your input on this piece and what its shape might look like in the year to come. Would you all be so kind as to share with me why you come here to The Bower? What you are looking for? What sorts of posts are your favorites?

I will share with you that I sometimes long for more conversation here…..more of a back and forth between us about subjects dear to our hearts (home, creative business, family, the earth, balance, etc.). A reader who is very dear to me shared that she doesn’t comment here as often as she might because she feels she has nothing to say that she thinks I would want to hear…as tho’ I have it so together. And I am smiling now to think how often we all think this of others!I am so enormously and humbly grateful that I do finally have a peaceful and nourishing home (after so many young-mother years of seeking it), but have no problem telling you that other areas of my life have abundant room for improvement…our home-learning for instance, face-to-face, chatting-over-cups-of-tea friendships, my connections with Nature and God…all this and more I have been examining over the past few weeks. And I look forward to writing about some of what I have been mulling over….I think…but am feeling a bit self-conscious.

So won’t you let me know your thoughts? I feel as tho’ I have been “baring my soul” in this post, and that made me think of the line in the 1993 film version of Little Women:

“Laurie: In token of my gratitude and as a means of promoting communication between adjoining nations, shouting from windows being forbidden, I shall provide a post office in our hedge, to further encourage the baring of our souls, and the telling of our most appalling secrets. I do pledge never to reveal what I receive in confidence here.”

And that made me realize that a blog can be a sort of post-office-in-the-hedge, at its best, with me leaving things for you to find and vice versa. And perhaps it can be as good and interesting as the description I just found in Chapter ten of the book:

“The P.O. was a capital little institution, and flourished wonderfully, for nearly as many queer things passed through it as through the real office. Tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden-seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, invitations, scoldings and puppies.”
-L.M.A.