Tag Archives: Seasons

The 10/06/13 Joy Jar

6 Oct

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.”
Jim Bishop

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.”
Hal Borland

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter woods.”
Henry Beston

“The tints of autumn…a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.”
John Greenleaf Whittier

“I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn; —
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.”
Thomas Hood

“But you can’t plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. (“The North”)”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.”
Siobhan Vivian, Same Difference

“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.”
Chad Sugg

The 10/01/13 Joy Jar

2 Oct

Today is the first day of October. October is simply a transition month between summer and the beginning of winter.

A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you’re in and take advantage of it.
Nikki Giovanni

Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ are transitions like October.

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir: We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls, and calls each vagabond by name.”
William Bliss

“The crickets still sing in October. And lilly, she’s trying to bloom. Tho she’s resting her head on the shoulder of death, she still shines by the light of the moon.”
Kevin Dalton

“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!”
Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.”
Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.
Hal Borland

“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October”
Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!”
Humbert Wolfe

The 05/11/13 Joy Jar

10 May

 

Although the calendar still says Spring, moi took her winter coats to the cleaners, finally convinced that she probably won’t need them for the next couple of months. The past couple of days have been glorious and more than enough to whet one’s anticipation of Summer. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the anticipation of summer.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby

Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
Yoko Ono

Some of the best memories are made in flip flops.”
Kellie Elmore

One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”
Jeannette Walls,
The Glass Castle

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.
Thomas Carlyle

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus

The 03/21/13 Joy Jar

20 Mar
Today was the first day of Spring and in Seattle, the weather can take many paths.  Spring can come early or late.  The calendar says Spring and moi is going with the calendar. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is Spring.
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
Henry Van Dyke
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven–
All’s right with the world!
Robert Browning
 
Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
Bishop Reginald Heber

Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.
Virgil A. Kraft

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
William Wordsworth


April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go.
Christopher Morley
John Mistletoe.

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer, Detective.

The 02/02/13 Joy Jar

1 Feb

The Winter Solstice in December marks the beginning of the march toward Spring. Slowly the days get longer and there seems to be more light. In January, people are acting like it’s Wednesday and there is too much week or too much winter left. Almost defiantly those who weren’t wearing bright colors before, start testing the waters in expectation of Spring. Bright, vibrant colors start appearing as accessories in the form of a hat, gloves, or a scarf. Some are bold and wear a neon coat or sweater. Everyone is waiting for the Primroses to appear, the first sure sign of Spring. Meanwhile random bright colors will suffice for now. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the bright colors of winter.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.
Marc Chagall

Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.                    Murasaki Shikibu

Colors are the smiles of nature.                                                                     

Leigh Hunt

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.                                                            

Paul Gauguin

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors.  I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.                                                            

Winston Churchill

 

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.
Pablo Picasso

The 01/05/13 Joy Jar

4 Jan

The universe has rhythms and cycles. One of the most famous acknowledgments of the cyclical nature of time is Ecclesiastes 3:1:

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven

Just as each year has distinct seasons, each life also has distinct seasons. Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ deals with the rhythm and flow of life called seasons.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
Paramahansa Yogananda

A human life has seasons much as the earth has seasons, each time with its own particular beauty and power.  And gift.  By focusing on springtime and summer, we have turned the natural process of life into a process of loss rather than a process of celebration and appreciation.  Life is neither linear nor stagnant.  It is movement from mystery to mystery.  Just as a year includes autumn and winter, life includes death, not as an opposite but as an integral part of the way life is made.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Rachel Naomi Remen                                                                                                                            

You may not win the Super Bowl. Your kids may not go on to be doctors and lawyers and everything may not go perfectly. That doesn’t mean it was a bad plan or the wrong thing. It’s just like a football season. Everything’s not going to go perfect.
Tony Dungy

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

Anne Bradstreet (British poet, 1612-1672)

Expect to have hope rekindled.  Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last.  The spring rains will come again.

Sarah Ban Breathnach