Banana Muffins and Favourite Things

Hello Friend,

I’m so glad you stopped by. 

Before we go in, take a look at that sky. I’ve been watching the clouds skitter by. More than almost anything else, it’s the sky that refreshes me. Wide blue sea, cotton candy puffs, heavy grey snow sky, wind whipped mare’s tails. Where I live, the sky is always changing and it’s one of my favourite things. 

Know another favourite thing? Breath. 

Take a deep breath. Now, let it out. Isn’t that wonderful?

In this season where a breath-stealing dragon lurks any-possible-where, our ability to breathe seems precious.

But in reality, it always was.

When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters. Think about that! Now take another deep breath and let it out. Miraculous.

Praise to the One who gives us breath!

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It is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning

in this broken world.

Mary Oliver

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Now, come on in. Ah yes, that’s my chicken soup you smell. Only, The Cowboy couldn’t find chicken on his last grocery jaunt, so he brought home big turkey drumsticks instead and that’s what I used. So delicious.

Here’s the recipe. You’ll have to scroll down a bit in the website to find it. I know you’ll love it. I had to look up how to clean and chop leeks for this soup because I’d never used them before. Imagine, getting to my age and never using a leek! (P.S. I never add the kale.)

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Soup is the song of the hearth … and the home.

Louis P. De Gouy

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But the chicken soup was for lunch. You have arrived just in time for banana chip muffins. They are just out of the oven.

For me, it’s always a toss-up whether or not to add the chocolate chips. Babe likes them with, The Cowboy likes them without. This time I opted for with. After all, what’s life without a little chocolate?

Yesterday I tried orange pekoe tea – black, and I just couldn’t do it. But once I added some rock sugar and a little cream, it was quite marvellous. Which just goes to show, almost anything can be made more pleasant with a little ingenuity.

Would you like your orange pekoe black or the way I like it?

Please, help yourself to sugar or cream.

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These yellow tulips are captivating to me. See how they romance the sun?

It’s bewitching. Every time I walk by them I’m captured, and I find myself “coming-to” seconds or minutes later.

Yellow isn’t really a favourite colour of mine, but yellow flowers definitely are: tulips, roses, daisies, sunflowers. Cheer, joy, friendship. And there’s something so hopeful about them too.

Pretty soon I’ll be enjoying the tulips I planted outdoors. I hope.

I say I hope, not because I hope they come up soon but because I hope they come up at all. I’m not a gardener. Usually I plant something and pray that it grows.

I had a huge vegetable garden when we lived on the place where The Cowboy grew up, and every year as I planted I prayed, “Lord please bless my garden, because I don’t know what I’m doing.” And He always did.

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Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

May Sarton

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Recently, a friend told me that when she shops for groceries she always asks God to help her pick the things she might need that hadn’t made it on the grocery list. I felt like I’d been let in on a huge secret, because she is the one who never fails to be able to whip something up out of the blue when people drop by unexpectedly.

I think that’s the secret for a lot of things – asking for help.

If God cares about things like gardens and groceries, He definitely cares about things like pandemics and panic. And long-drawn-out isolation.

Lord, we’ve never been this way before and we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s getting tedious. It’s getting heavy. And for many of us it’s getting scary – lost jobs, lost income, lost freedoms, lost loved ones, lost the-way-we’ve-always-done-it.

But you have promised to be with us, so please help us through this time. Help us to see you in the big things and the little things. In the breath that we breathe, in the vast changing skies overhead, in the tulips that delight and the songs of the birds.

Inspire us with new ideas, or even old ideas we hadn’t considered before, and give us wisdom.

Give us hope. Give us joy. Give us love for each other.

Amen

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Thank you so much for popping by today. I love our visits. As you leave, be sure to take in that glorious sky, and here’s something to listen to on your way home.

Daddy Daughter Duet – The Prayer

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Feature Image of lemon teapot and teacup by Jill Wellington from Pixabay