Summer at Home

Although traveling is wonderful, so is being home, something that is all too easy to take for granted and is well worth savoring! Here are some reasons that we love being at home and at the cottage, photos taken in the last few weeks.

Seize the day!

The Greenfield Gypsies are on the road again! We just spent two days in Ohio, visiting family and attending John’s 50^th High School reunion.  It was great being able to visit with David and Charlie Biggs, John’s cousins over breakfast on Friday and to spend most of Saturday catching up with John’s former classmates.

David, John, Charlie

                 
John's classmates are a remarkable and welcoming group of people, so even though I don’t really know them, I felt comfortable accompanying John at the various reunion activities.  John was honored at the evening Alumni gathering by being inducted into the West Alexandria HS “Hall of Fame”.

 

John had been told he would not have to speak, but when invited to do so, he made gracious and brief remarks thanking teachers for sharing their knowledge and inspiration, and the warmth of school friendships that provided him and all his classmates with a great foundation upon which to build their lives and their careers.  I was so proud of him! 

One of the classmates took the initiative to send questionnaires to each classmate and compiled those as well as both old and recent photos into a 50-year Reunion booklet, which makes for fascinating reading.  

Paired with personal conversations with John’s classmates, I would summarize by saying that their small group was representative of graduating classes of much larger size in other locations in terms of life ambitions, achievements, careers, and challenges.  Those who have lived their lives primarily within the same geographic confines of where they grew up seem to be largely content with their choices, yet proud of those classmates who “escaped” to far-flung locations and moved on to more ambitious careers and broader experiences. Those who left appear to have maintained a special, warm place in their hearts for their hometown, their friends and former classmates.  Many have experienced heart-breaking personal challenges, many have experienced remarkable and durable love,  some are currently fighting difficult health issues, some are delighting in the freedom of these later years; most are amazed at how quickly the years have passed and that there has been less time than anyone expected to accomplish all their dreams. 

One of John’s classmates who was unable to attend the reunion because he is currently living and traveling in Asia made this very poignant summary of his life: “I’ve heard that regret is a useless emotion.  Yet as I think back on my life, I am struck by how little difference my having been on the planet has made.  I spent my energies and career working for others…working just for money, doing things that I really did not enjoy and that did not advance the course or condition of humanity.  I feel I owe you all an apology – for failing to realize the promise and possibility and potential that was present in High School.  I trust you did better in your time on this globe than I.  If there is another opportunity, another lifetime…I promise to make more of a meaningful contribution to the planet.”

May we all live our lives with less regret than he has expressed, but instead with pride in our life-choices and our accomplishments.  I leave you with a favorite quote:

This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will.

I can waste it, or use it for good, but what I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.

When tomorrow comes this day will be gone forever, leaving behind in its place something that I have traded for it.

I want it to be gain and not loss,

good and not evil,

success and not failure,

in order that I shall not regret the price that I have paid for it.

-Samuel F. Pugh

Butterfly Exhibit at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids

Attended the special exhibit "Butterflies are Blooming" at the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park today.  This is our second year to attend this event, and while there appeared to be fewer varieties on the loose in the greenhouse this year than last, it was still lovely.  It's breathtaking to see them sipping nectar from a flower, flitting around in small groups, feel them land on you lightly before taking off again, watching the wonder on children's faces when one perches on their finger or arm letting that child get up close and personal with these fragile beings.  Photos below are mine from today:

This one is a moth - wingspan of about 6 inches.

Another huge moth - beautiful!

Gardens Compared

A few days ago, we were visiting Garvan Woodland Gardens, near Hot Springs, Arkansas, where we wandered for a couple of hours through these beautiful spring gardens:

Today we are home, and OUR garden scenes look like this:

Having missed most of this winter by traveling for the last two months, largely in Texas, I must confess that I find the snow beautiful and I'm glad we got home in time to see it, though it will take a bit of time to adjust to the significantly colder temperatures here in Michigan.

Because we had rather poor cell signal in a number of our campgrounds, I've fallen way behind in sharing photos and impressions of some places we'd still like to share, so I will be posting a bit more in this travel blog over the next couple of weeks as we sit in the comfort of our own living room, dreaming of green grass and colorful flowers as we look at this blanket of lovely, soft, white snow.

Galveston, TX – Catch-up, Part 2

Today's Catch-Up blog is about the Galveston Mardi Gras Parade.  Galveston actually celebrates Mardi Gras in a HUGE way, with multiple parades, the most elaborate ones require an entrance fee to watch. We just attended the first one, the  Mystic Krewe of Aquarius 25th annual parade, a free parade featuring 25 area High School bands and over 80 fun floats that runs along the Galveston Sea Wall on Saturday Feb. 2 in late morning on an absolutely beautiful day.  I'm not much of a fan of parades, but never having seen a Mardi Gras parade we figured we should not miss the opportunity.  I'm glad we went; it was a wonderful 'people-watching' opportunity as well as a fun parade.  If I could have done so without feeling I was intruding, I would have taken more photos of the people watching than of the parade floats - especially of the wonderful excited children staring at wonder at the spectacle and gleefully hanging beads around their necks.  Here is just a sampling of what we saw:

Parade Participants/Performers:

 And the Audience - in a few cases, hard to tell the audience members from the parade participants, as people really get in the spirit of the event wearing amazing costumes and having a ball!  

This little boy was so adorable that I don't think a single float passed by without tossing him beads!

This guy caught a few beads too :)

Galveston, TX – Catch-up, Part 1

Galveston is a city rich with opportunities of sights to see and things to experience. Galveston was an early stop in our trip, and one of the richest in terms of varied experiences; also one that we have barely mentioned to date because while there we were too busy ‘doing’ to write about it. Today therefore is catch-up day on the blog, presenting the first of three belated blog entries to be posted in the next couple of days: 1) a beautiful quilt exhibit, 2) the Galveston Mardi Gras celebration, and 3) Oil Platform Museum.  

Remarkable Quilt exhibit of historical reproduction quilts: 

Galveston Historical Foundation’s U.S. Custom House is home to a rotating exhibit of quilts; while we were there, the exhibit focused on reproduction Civil War era quilts, in which modern quilters either reproduced quilts known to have existed in that era or used materials of a pattern known to have existed in that era.  These colorful and beautifully executed quilts were displayed in the high-ceilinged and lovely old U.S. Custom house. 

Large posters featuring the exhibiting quilters were placed near quilt groupings to more fully tell the story of the quilts, both their historical significance and their modern makers.   The biographies of the quilters were as varied and amazing as the quilts themselves; some were homemakers, others physicians, some historians and others teachers.  Each spoke of the importance of the study and creation of quilts to their particular life circumstances.

Many of the quilts were machine pieced and hand quilted, some both machine pieced and machine quilted, but several of amazing complexity were – remarkably – hand pieced and hand quilted, in tribute to the women who created them in exactly that way while waiting for their men to return from war.  

Few quilters today have the patience for that degree of handwork when visually similar results can be obtained more quickly and easily through machine sewing, paper-piecing, or modern quilting techniques that were not available in the Civil War era.  

For more detailed information about this quilt exhibit, see this Galveston blog from February. 

1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt Reproduction - contains 225 individual blocks, most 6" square, the remainder comprise the triangles that make up the border, each of which is a unique pattern.  The exhibit included several examples of this reproduction quilt; this one was pieced, appliquéd, and quilted totally by hand - a total of 5602 individual tiny pieces of cloth. 

Close-up of one of the blocks and it's surrounding blocks from the 1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt Reproduction quilt in photo above.

Entrance to this rich display of quilts was free, and I left inspired to work on my own quilting while on the road.  Though modern in design and no where near the complexity of the quilts we saw in Galveston, this quilt begun last fall during an airstream trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is now completed; I finished the hand-quilting using a new-to-me large-stitch method, just two days ago.