winter into spring…

…and I’ve been quiet here for all these months…

…but noticing and tending…

…gathering and celebrating …

…beginning new things and continuing on with all of the beautiful, beloved ingredients of our everydays…

…beautiful in spite of all of the darkness that comes along with the light of life. I’m writing today because I have a deep desire and need to get all of my ducks in a row, and a note to you is the last of my online ducks to tuck into place. This season of change and bloom and some surprising news we received a month ago have drawn forth some clarity and decisions I didn’t know I needed.

My deario needs heart surgery, to repair a valve that is damaged and weakening his heart. So we are on an unexpected path of consultations and tests and surgery in a hospital in the city next month. He should be just fine after his long recovery, but it’s turned our world a little upside-down. And I am finding I need to be a helpmeet more than ever, and want to be so.

I want to pour all of my spare hours and energies into paring down and making our home and garden as peaceful and well-tended as possible, to make the weeks of Doug’s recovery as restful and untroubled as they can be made. Realizing this led to the understanding that I would need to put down some other responsibilities…and then I realized that it would-indeed-feel like putting down a burden to take a rest from making for awhile.

And not being one to hesitate once I’ve made a decision within myself, I’ve brought it into being in the outside ways. So my Etsy shop is still open, but only for digital goods, including a new digital planner! I’ve been discovering this year (is that a shock?) that digital notebooks and calendars can be really helpful in certain ways (which I explain in the description of the Wings & Wildflowers planner, if you are interested) and have been slowly learning how to use mine. If my days allow, I will get another digital notebook and calendar in my shop in the months to come. In the meantime, I am just grateful for the ease and delightful prettiness of these, for me and for all who receive them.

If you are a current Daybook customer and think there is something you might want before I return to making in the early Autumn, please send me a note (just reply to this.) I will let you know when I open the shop for Daybook orders for just one day in May, to gather orders that I will work on filling before the summer booklets are needed. Does that make sense?

Wisteria & Sunshine will remain as it is, a place of beauty and encouragement that I am pleased to spend part of my days creating and tending. But now, the other portions of those days I can immerse myself more deeply in my homemaking and land nurturing, mending dresses and making herbal concoctions, practicing mowing the lawn and pumping out the basement and other tasks that Doug has always takes care of so well.

Even tho’ Doug’s diagnosis isn’t dire, anything in this realm brings ones mortality into greater awareness. And the birthday cake you see above was made to celebrate my 63rd trip around the sun. I am both a bit weary from twenty years of making and wanting to have more time to get to the things that often fall by the wayside when I am tired or muddle-headed from doing business online these days. And I know I will come back from my respite eager to see what the next chapter of my work will bring.

For now, I will just let you know that you will find a new film at my you~tube channel, and that until you hear from me again (which hopefully won’t be so very long) I am sending love and heartfelt wishes for a sweet spring to you,

Lesley