Saturday Thoughts

Our retreat went well.  The group worked hard on re-defining their mission and came up with a wonderful piece of art work to describe it.  The collage shows God at the center of all they do with rays going out to a diverse community and butterflies.  Their mission is to be catalysts for the diocese in developing and supporting lay ministries. 

Doorman Priest posted a video about global warming on his site and it generated a lot of comments.  For those of you who don't usually go there I highly recommend this.  It goes with my post earlier this week on how "ice out" has gotten earlier over the past century.

I've been away for nearly three days and the pond that is less than 200 feet from the house is nearly free of ice.  Just a little is left at the far end.  I noticed that the lake has streaks of open water now.  It may be that "ice out" will happen before the end of April.  Also there is green grass beginning to peek up through the dead stuff and major growth in the bulbs.  Soon there will be flowers.  The daffodils and tulips are up in full bloom down the mountain.  The retreat center had fresh cut blooms on the dining tables each day and they were even cutting the grass yesterday morning.  It's nice enough this afternoon to sit on the deck and drink a cup of tea, in fact it feels downright warm.  I even ate my supper out there and so did Izzie.

Izzie had a good time at our friend's.  She wasn't at home when I got there.  The two of them were off playing dominos.   Izzie and Oscar behaved pretty well.  There was no chasing the cat up the stairs, only an ocassional sniff as they passed each other.