We’ve just had the pleasure of hosting our beloved friends Joel and Lauren for the weekend. And these are not just your ordinary houseguests. Here’s what we did while they were here:

   ~Wired our new sunroom/keeping room for electricity (seven outlets!!)
   ~Installed insulation and tongue-and-groove paneling in the same room
   ~Put out twenty bales of pinestraw
   ~Laid my garden path with pea gravel
   ~Went to Home Depot for more pinestraw and pea gravel
   ~Trimmed dead branches out of trees
   ~Cultivated and fed 12 rose bushes
   ~Fed 14 fruit trees
   ~Repaired our front screened door with brand new screen and hardware cloth which will (hopefully) be doggy-proof

And that’s not to mention the four meals we shared together, the stimulating conversation, the swapping of ideas and book recommendations, the mutual edification that took place all weekend. They left us both bone weary and spiritually refreshed. And absolutely thrilled over all the work that had been accomplished around here. After having been very sick for over two weeks (hence my long silence!), it was especially wonderful and invigorating for me to see such ‘beautifying’ going on everywhere I looked. This morning I wandered about from window to window, smiling and offering happy little prayers of thanksgiving at all the pleasant sights that met my eyes.

We have been swapping work weekends with Joel and Lauren for years. We both live in old houses that require tremendous energy and upkeep (we feel a deep sense of responsibility that we talked them into theirs in the first place ). And we absolutely cherish each other’s fellowship. My husband grew up with Joel, but Lauren was one of God’s precious presents to me when I married Philip. I recognized a kindred spirit in her right away. I don’t know whose idea it was at first to transform our weekend visits back and forth into This Old House, but it had to be one of the best notions of the century. (I hope it was mine.)

We’ve painted, weeded, caulked, wired and hammered. Philip has helped Joel build a window seat with a toy box beneath. Lauren has emptied my ironing basket more than once and made a big dent in my mending. Joel helped install a paneled ceiling in our den. I’ve planted flowers and vegetables and herbs in Lauren’s garden. There is evidence of their craftsmanship in almost every room in my home: curtains, upholstered chairs, a bricked hearth… Even the barn has had its day. And out in front of our house there’s a lovely, spreading cherry tree that’s growing up with their oldest child, as Lauren helped me plant it when she was pregnant.

But the best advantage of all has been that of ‘iron sharpening iron’. We’re polishing our tools together for the real things in life: our marriages, our families, our homes and our ministries. Every conversation seems so important because our time is brief and we don’t have the luxury of day-to-day contact. I am always challenged to be a better wife, a more artistic homemaker, after being around Lauren for a weekend. Together Philip and I are inspired by their example to shed unnecessary encumbrances and invest our lives in the Kingdom.

We’re already looking forward to the ‘fall session’!

Here are our new babies—ten in all! There are few things in the world as sweet as baby chicks. We always have so much fun when we have a new brood of them…and I spend an inordinate amount of time leaning over the brooder, feeding them out of my hand, picking them up and kissing their downy little heads. And telling them all about their big sisters out in the hen house who are (not so) eagerly awaiting their arrival. It will be a good five weeks, yet, before they’re big enough to move into a house of their own. So, for now, I am loving every moment of chick-hood. It’s hard to believe that this is our fourth brood. I remember coming home from the feed & seed seven springs ago with a cardboard box full of fluffy, peeping Rhode Island Reds and absolutely no idea what I was doing! I’ve learned a lot about chickens in the mean time—and everything I have learned has made me love them. And smile a thanks towards God for making these funny, quirky, sometimes ridiculous, always entertaining creatures. And for allowing me to raise them!

With chicks in one basement and seedlings thriving under lamps in another, it’s starting to feel like spring is really around the corner! It’s hard for me not to be impatient, not to be disappointed that the peas I planted in the garden Saturday have not germinated yet! But remember my sweet peas? They’ve all sent up slender green stalks topped with leaves folded like a newly-emerged moth’s wings. Soon those delicate trailers will begin groping for the picket fence. And one magic day not too far in the future, I’ll notice that the tops of the vines are drooping with tiny, pale buds. I can’t wait…

Did anyone see the lunar eclipse Saturday night? We didn’t even know that it was happening, but were fortunate enough to be driving to a dinner party that evening with a full and open view of the skyline.

“What’s wrong with the moon?” I asked my husband. For only the tiniest crescent of what I knew to be a full moon was visible in the darkening sky. With that wonder in the east and the stain of sunset in the west, it was a sight to take your breath. We stared in wonder as we drove along, the book we’d brought to read out loud lying forgotten in my lap. By the time we reached our destination the sliver had grown to a good-sized wedge. It was so weird and lovely to think that we were making that shadow on the moon.

I’ve had that line singing in my head all this past week of cool radiant dawns and soul-warming mid-days and chilly pink dusks. This lovely, fragile time is like the world standing on tiptoe, holding its breath, flushed with the anticipation of all that is to come. I still need my sweater to walk the dog in the late afternoons—five o’clock, the sweetest, freshest hour of all—but the sunshine, not as pale as it was a week ago, rains down on my eager face and bare head like a blessing from heaven.

The trees around the house and down through the woods have been a wild symphony of birdsong. The robins and cedar waxwings—those dashing cavaliers with their black masks and coats of dun-colored velvet—have been gorging themselves on the big holly tree in the backyard and making quite a fuss about it. Philip absolutely cannot keep the bird feeder filled for more than a day or two at a time, owing to all the ‘weary little wandering wings’ that have made this their place of refreshment.

One morning last week when I went out to feed the chickens, I stopped in the middle of the yard and gasped with a catch in my throat. For the walnut trees around me were full of the music of Jekyll Island, after home (and England) my favorite place on this earth. I closed my eyes and saw the golden marshes, the moss-hung oak trees, almost felt the warm, humid, salty air on my face. And when I opened them again, the flash of scarlet I glimpsed as a flying form darting overhead assured me that I had not been mistaken. The red-winged blackbirds were here en masse. Several days later I watched a black host of them startle to life from one of the trees as if by some mystic signal and head south. I watched them go with a genuine heaviness in my heart—their music had been such a stabbing pleasure. I look forward to greeting them again this summer on the Island.

But there are so many other miracles abroad. The willow tree we planted last spring is covered with millions of tiny green tufts. The pear trees have velvet buds of pearl and grey that will not be buds many days longer, and my husband brought me a handful of golden jonquils the other day, their fragrance as aerial as the spring itself.    

I’ve been sick the past few days, but a friend wisely reminded me that my body needs the vitamins from sunshine to assimilate all the vitamins I’m popping in my mouth by way of multis and Juice Plus…and so I’ve been sitting on the patio with my lunch and my book and soaking up all the goodness of my Father’s beautiful world. All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres…