Weekends Rock in Everyday Ramblings

This is from yesterday at the garden that was left to the Episcopalian Diocese by the heirs of Peter Kerr, a Scottish grain merchant, who built this perfectly sited house in 1914 (the year my mother was born) in the Scottish Manor style.

I took Mrs. Sherlock to this garden for the first time last May when the amazing wisteria was blooming. It is too early for the wisteria but the day yesterday was clear and full of light and the magnolias were fragrant, the yellow azaleas bursting with color and even some early white and red rhododendrons.

If there is a balm in Gilead it must be made up in small part by the essence of a gorgeous garden with a view of the river and mountain on an early spring day after a challenging winter. We both felt it and Frida may have too, she was very good on her lead, (recently closely shorn because she was matted from being sick and the wet weather).

As I had already worked out we took it easy and strolled. Then afterwards went to a high-end nursery near by and had a hot chocolate sitting on a patio with Frida absorbing the warmth.

The cats are not fully recovered but they are also not worse. There has been a lot of lap sitting and hip snuggling up against going on around here.

I downloaded the Great Courses 43 hour American History lectures this week and have been listening to them as I move about and then I returned to Jill Lepore’s These Truths, which covers very similar territory but with a slightly different point of view. I kind of got stuck listening to the audiobook. (I also have a Kindle version of the text) so this is great because I am listening to them at the same time.

It appears I went to school a long time ago and the perception of American History has changed a bit since then. We actually talk about the First Peoples and Slavery now, the unbelievable brutality of the colonists and the genocidal work of disease.

This is all helping me understand a bit more clearly how we got to where we are now.

The first of two side stories I have found fascinating is the story of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his Moroccan Berber companion know as Esteban who after being captured by the indigenous folk created a following as medicine men and in 8 years traveled 1,300 miles on foot from Georgia to Western Mexico.

I found out when digging a little further that Laila Lalami wrote a fictional account of this trip from Esteban’s point of view called The Moor’s Account, which was well reviewed. She is Moroccan American herself. Someday, when there is time I might read it.

De Vacca called some of the tribes he encountered by the names of what they primarily ate…The Roots People, The Fish and Blackberry People, The Fig People. If he had come up here he would have found the Salmon People.

The second story I find fascinating is the resurrection of the Magna Carta by one imprisoned legal scholar in England and the effect that had on the development of the colonies and the Constitution. All of which has some resonance today with a man in office that would very much like to be The Godfather King.

My weekend has been lovely and I am grateful for so much.

For the sun fading to haze with rain behind it, for the cat’s not getting any sicker, for the opportunity to live by myself freely and the means to do it because of the fact that I still have a job, no matter how bizarre. For the beautiful Presto from Sonata in E Minor from Haydn in church this morning.

I am grateful for the two gorgeous African men I met yesterday morning looking for a streetcar connection to the Writers Conference at our Convention Center, one of whom I believe was somebody famous, the opportunity to be useful, and the availability of healthy food to cook in my Instapot.

There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole.
There is a balm in Gilead
to heal the work sick soul. :)