IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL

Yesterday I suggested to my friend that we take a walk in Waterworks Park St. Thomas Ontario on Sunday after church. This morning she asked me if I thought maybe we should take advantage of the beautiful weather and go today instead. That is what we did.

We stopped for lunch after Bible study before taking off for St. Thomas, about 3/4 of an hour’s drive from my end of town.

Some of the flowers in the gardens were past their prime, especially the cana lilies, but the colors were still brilliant. I didn’t take many pictures this time. I have hundreds from other walks through this park.

Well, it turned out that my friend’s idea to go today was sent from the Lord. We stood at one point deliberating which way to go. We almost went one way when I decided we could do that later. We walked towards the little bridges spanning the lily ponds. A man and woman came towards us heading for the walk we just turned from. She made a comment about how great the weather was and we stopped to chat. I mentioned my friend’s name in conversation, and it turned out this lady had the same name. I took a more concentrated look at her then, and asked her if she was (I spoke a name). She said, “Yes!” and looked curiously at me. I told her my name and immediately she remembered me. We used to be neighbors years ago when her children were little. It’s a small world after all.

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If we had followed through on the original plan to go on Sunday, or if we had decided to walk the other way, we would have missed each other. I don’t know why we needed to meet this couple today, but I believe there was a reason for it that only the Lord knows just now. But it was a wonderful surprise.

I believe the Lord loves to surprise us because He loves us so much. He loves to give us gifts whether they be spiritual or natural. Today was a gift to be able to spend a beautiful afternoon walking with a friend, meeting an old friend and enjoying the warm sunshine as we sat on one of the benches just soaking up the sunshine. God is good.

I hope you have enjoyed sharing my afternoon in the park. Sorry I didn’t take more photos, but I think these should brighten up your day (or night). Please take a moment to leave a comment in the box below. If you are not following my blog, please check the “Follow” button at the top to receive e-mail notifications of new posts. I will be announcing the publishing of a new blog site in the near future, and I hope you will join me there as well and sign up for notifications. In the meantime, have a blessed day and enjoy God’s wonderful creation wherever you live.

A WALK IN THE PARK

Well, today was a beautiful day to be outdoors. I called my friend to see if she was up for a walk, and she was, so off we went.

I chose Gibbon’s Park this time. There is a narrow dirt path, narrower this year than last with the wild growth, which I like to follow rather than the paved pathway. It’s a little like being out in the woods. There aren’t as many tent caterpillars this year, so it was nicer to go that way. We tried a side path down to the river, but I couldn’t seem to get to where I wanted, so we returned to the main path.

We walked back via the paved path and sat for some time on one of the benches. The sun was warm, the breeze cool–a perfect combination.

We kept going into the main park and sat again on a bench, this time overlooking the river. It was really pleasant. We walked as far as the bridge and took some photos from the middle. The Canada Geese put on a good show for us while we watched.

As we drove out of the park, I stopped along the street where we had seen a gorgeous bush loaded with flowers larger than any I have ever seen of that type. The photos don’t really show the size without including something to compare them with. But trust me, they were huge.

After stopping at an A & W to get a burger, I dropped my friend home then came back about five and a half hours after I left, tired and sore but having enjoyed a wonderful afternoon.

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I hope you have enjoyed another mini tour of another of our nature areas in the city of London Ontario Canada. Please leave a comment below. If you are not already following my blog, please take a moment to click on the “Follow” button to get e-mail updates for new posts. I really appreciate you taking time to read my posts. It means a lot to me. If you have not been here before, please feel free to browse through earlier posts to see what I have been up to.

Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend. God bless you.

LOST IN THE WOODS

Yesterday was a beautiful day, warm, sunshiny all day. My friend and I popped in to Harvey’s for a burger and fries after church before heading for a walk in one of the conservation areas here in London.

I have been to this area a few times, but not in the last two or three years. As we followed the path we noticed yellow arrows on the trees every so often to direct us in the way. That was great until…

After climbing a huge wooden stairway, we continued walking until we came to a sign that told us that beyond that point was private property. We could go no further, but neither could my body go the distance back over the whole path. We were lost.

We saw a man coming along behind us, so we asked him how to get out and back to the car. He was good enough to pull up Google maps on his phone and I was able to tell him where my car was parked. He told us we had to go back down the steps and quite a distance along until we came to a path leading to the left.

As I limped along behind my friend, I said to her that my body would never be the same again. I was literally forcing myself to keep going as it was my only choice. Spending the night with the cayotes did not sound in the least appealing. The man overheard me, and said that it depended on whether or not I wanted my body to be the same. I said I didn’t really want it to, and that I knew I needed exercise. The only problem was that I seemed to be getting at least a week’s exercise all in one day, and that was not really wise.

Every so often he would stop and wait for us until he turned down that path himself. He motioned to us that this was the path we needed to take. Later that evening I realized we never saw that man again, not even a distance ahead of us. Was he an angel? Do angels carry cell phones?

It was definitely the right path, and we found our way back to the car. None too soon, I should add, because my legs were almost at the point where they refused to work at all. It was so good to get into the car and know I didn’t have to walk any more.

All evening and today I have been suffering from that way-too-long walk, the first walk I have done in at least a year. But I survived, and that is the important thing. Now I will share some of the photos I took along the way.

This butterfly was difficult to photo as it kept opening and closing its wings and my camera has a delayed reaction, so I would click at the right time, but by the time the camera actually took the picture, its wings were closed again. This was the best I could do.

Darning Needle Dragonfly

This darning needle dragonfly was also difficult to capture on film. They move so quickly and don’t alight for long, but I got lucky with this one not long before my battery died.

More of the wildlife in the conservation area

The turquoise “collar” on this bird (grackle, I think) did not really exist. It was simply the way the sun caught the iridescent feathers at that angle. It was amazing.

Some of the wildflowers we saw along the way. The top is sumac. I’m not sure what the one to the left of the second row is. The center is goldenrod, next chicory (or cornflower). I don’t know what the one on the left of the bottom row is. Next is sweet pea then queen Anne’s lace.

Well, that is about it for my photos. The best thing about this conservation area is that it it right in the middle of a subdivision in the city. I love the fact that there are a number of these areas in London designated as conservation areas, places where we can walk and feel as though we are in the middle of the country yet we don’t have to travel far to get there.

I hope you have enjoyed my condensed tour of our Sunday afternoon walk. Please leave a comment below if you liked it. And if any of you know the names of the wildflowers I couldn’t name, please feel free to share in the comment box as well. If you are not already following my blog, please take a moment to click on the “Follow” button at the top to receive e-mail notifications of new posts.

Have a wonderful week. May God bless you richly.

ANOTHER UPDATE

Just a short note today to bring you up to date on what I have been doing. My book, It Is Written: My Prayer Journey into the Heart of God is currently being read by Margaret Gibb, founder of Women Together, as she has generously agreed to endorse it. In the meantime I have been working on a study guide to go along with the book. I do not have a specific publishing date, but hope they will be available within the next month or so. I plan on publishing them together, so it depends on how long the study guide will take to finish.

Then, I have been side-tracked on another issue. My computer keeps telling me I need to update Windows. But the only problem is that I don’t have enough disk space to accomplish that. So I have spent days deleting many, many documents that I have no use for. Also, I discovered I had never resized many of my hundreds and hundreds of photos. Plus I had numerous duplicates that I had no need for. I am not quite finished yet, but I am getting closer to creating enough space for my update. Quite a chore, but one I have wanted to accomplish for some time now.

Some things I just have to be forced into doing. I suppose that is the way life often works, even in the spiritual realm. The Lord asks us to do something, but we are “too busy” to obey, so we keep ignoring it. Eventually, He gets our attention one way or another and we are forced into following His instructions. Often the thought of what we must do appears to be a mountain which, once we begin, we find is not much more than a hill. Yes, it takes effort to climb it, but it’s not really so bad after all.

I hope you are having a productive week. Thank you for taking time to drop by to read my post. I really appreciate you. Please take a moment to leave a comment in the box below before you leave. And if you have any extra time, please feel free to browse through my other posts. If you are not already following me, I would be happy if you would take a moment to click on the “Follow” button. You will receive e-mail notifications when I add a new post.

May the Lord bless you abundantly throughout this week and always.

PRAYER AND EDITING

Sounds like a strange title for this post, no doubt. But the two words do have more  in common than you might think. If you are a regular reader here, you will know that I have written a book about prayer and am in the process of doing some final edits. If you are new here, now you know too.

It has been a little bit tedious as this current edit is to check all of my Scripture references and make sure they are correct. A good thing, too. I have found a few typos which created references which do not even exist, such as 1 Samuel 49, which should have been 19. I had also included a few which, on reading now, could not figure out why I had even chosen them. Out they went. I have another 30 pages to go to finish this edit.

Then comes the next edit. All of the concordance references. That, too, will be rather tedious as there are a lot of them, and footnotes are in smaller type so not as easy to read. But better to make sure now that they are correct than let them go through the publishing stage to find there are a bunch of mistakes. I’m sure I won’t get it perfect, but I do want it as close to perfect as I can come. It can be frustrating to read a book, check a footnote or Scripture only to find it doesn’t make any sense.

Next I will probably read the whole thing over again to check for any other type of errors. I have someone who has agreed to read and endorse the book, so I will probably send it to her before I do the that particular read-through. We can do that simultaneously. Since I have been working on this book for years—more than a decade—since before I even considered turning it into a book. Originally it was just a list of prayers I would pray on a semi-regular basis. I had no idea it would turn into a 350-page book!

When I read/edit, I always do it out loud as I find I can pick out errors much easier than doing it silently. Otherwise I can skip over without even seeing extra words, typos, missing words. I find these audibly much more quickly than visually. I think I tend to almost become hypnotized and sleepy if I don’t verbalize lit.

When I thought further about prayer and editing, it came to me that sometimes we need to actually edit our prayers. There is a possibility that we could be praying wrong prayers. We may be inserting too much of the flesh and too much of what we consider the answer should be. Perhaps we are analyzing the situation from a worldly standpoint and not praying according to the will of God. It’s time to edit.

Not that we want to get too tied up in knots as to how we pray. The exact words are not of such importance as the attitude of our hearts as we come to the Lord. But it never hurts to check our prayers from time to time to see if they line up with God’s heart and word in the situation or for the person we are praying for. Or if we are seeing ourselves rightly before the Lord. If our spiritual vision is twisted or clouded, our prayers will be the same and we will not see the answers we hope for. So an edit might just be appropriate from time to time to make sure we are still in alignment with God.

Prayer is our communication line with heaven and with our heavenly Father. You could call it a life-line. Without it, we have no connection to the source of life. So we need to be sure the lines are clear. This particular book is all about how to pray using the word of God. I have often been in prayer meetings where the leader would ask someone to take a particular verse and pray into it. I discovered that many people do not know how to do this. They will read the verse, but then seem to be at a loss as to how to turn it into a prayer. So my book was born partly for this reason. Then it expanded to a teaching on the different types of prayer we find in the Bible. It kept growing, together with personal anecdotes, until it is now almost ready to publish. I hope it will prove to be a useful tool for many people to enhance and deepen their prayer life.

So there you have the story, in a nutshell, of It Is Written: My Prayer Journey into the Heart of God.

Stay tuned for future announcements when it becomes available on Amazon.

Thank you so much for stopping by to read my post. I would really appreciate it if you would consider leaving a comment in the box below before you leave. And feel free to browse other posts here as well. If you are not already following me, please take a moment to click on the “Follow” button to receive e-mail notifications of each new post. I would also love it, if you are new here, if you would tell me a little about yourself and how you found my blog. It would be a great help to me.

I pray you will have a wonderful weekend. May God bless you abundantly.

VISIT TO THE SUGAR BUSH

Love those horses.

On Sunday afternoon I took a friend and we went to the Kinsmen sugar bush for a tour and a pancake breakfast. The day was perfect, chilly but not too cold and partly sunny. The only problem was the mud. Fortunately some of the path was covered with dead leaves and helped to prevent slipping.

First we had breakfast with two pancakes and maple syrup with three sausages–maple flavored. Very tasty, and just enough to fill my empty stomach. The hot chocolate made the perfect finishing touch.

There was too long a line to get on the wagon, so we decided just to do the tour on foot. It

Tapping the trees for sap

really isn’t that far. There is a volunteer to explain each stop. There is a display to show how maple syrup was made for hundreds of years, then from about 1830 on up to the current equipment. It is all very interesting even though I have been there before. We both enjoyed ourselves and it felt good to be out in the fresh air after all the cold winter weather. Spring is here technically speaking, and the weather is beginning to prove it.

In the photo above, you can actually see the sap bubbling up the plastic tubing to another line which takes it to the storage tank before going into the building where it is boiled into syrup. A very interesting process. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Amazing! And with today’s method it takes only hours to do what it would take days or weeks to accomplish a hundred years ago.

Well, that was our Sunday afternoon. I hope you enjoyed reading about our outing. Thank you for stopping by and taking time to catch up on what I have been doing. I would really appreciate it if you would take a couple of minutes before you leave to put a comment in the box below. Let me know if you have been to a sugar bush and how you enjoyed it. If you are not already following my blog, please take a moment to click on the “Follow” button at the top to receive e-mail notifications of future posts.

Have a wonder-filled day. May the Lord bless you and keep you.

MORE VIEWS OF LION’S HEAD

Sign in the center of the village showing three types of rock and challenging the reader to choose which type the lion’s head is formed from.

Though I did not take as many photos this year, I do still have a few I didn’t fit into my previous post. I would like to share them here.

View of the marina from the beach.

You can see the lighthouse behind the boats. It is no longer used, but makes a good subject for photos.

Garden area between the beach and the marina.

Area beside beach planted in an attempt to keep the geese away.

For a couple of years now they have been planting a grassy area to keep the geese away from the beach. As you can see on the sign, the premise is that foxes or other predators would normally hide in such areas and the geese would know not to get too close. Of course, there are no animals waiting to pounce, but the geese probably don’t know that. I wondered if it would really work, but I must admit that this year I didn’t see nearly as many geese wandering around.

A tiny place called Hope Bay.

There is not much to see at Hope Bay. The beach is tiny–even tinier than Lion’s Head. There is a store there where we bought ice cream and sat on the porch and listened while a couple of country western singers were practicing. So we got a free show. There is a beautiful trailer park by the store, and on another nearby road a gift shop called, of all things, The Frog and Nightgown. The one year I did stop by there, it was closed, open by appointment only. This year I couldn’t remember where it was, so again, we missed it.

Entrance to the trailer park at Hope Bay

This is a lovely entrance to what appears to be a very beautiful trailer park.

Blue sky to match the blue water

Such a beautiful deep blue sky. Just a perfect match for the blue water of Georgian Bay.

Another beautiful entrance, this time to the Lionheart B&B

A lovely scene to greet guests. There is a matching garden on the other side of the driveway. The Lionheart was built in 2011, so is still quite new. It was a lovely place to stay.

A family of ducks and a seagull sunning themselves

It was fun watching the mama duck with her babies following her. It is a little difficult to see them in this photo. We watched the babies swimming with mom as you can see in the final photo in my previous post.

One of my last glimpses of the shore of Isthmus Bay

It’s almost time to say “goodbye” to my favorite place. You can see even in this shot just how clear the water is. The bottom is visible even from this distance. The gulls have gathered here to sun themselves. One lone gull is bobbing up and down in the water. I’m hoping it will be possible to return next year, but we don’t know what a year will bring. I can plan, but also be prepared for the possibility that it won’t be a possibility.

I hope you have enjoyed this extra “tour” of my favorite place to visit. Please leave a comment before you leave. And if you are not already following me, Please click the “Follow” button to receive e-mail notifications of my new posts. Thank you for stopping by. And please tell your friends about this blog. God bless.

LIONS HEAD, AUGUST 2014–PART 1

Can you find the lion’s head?

A holiday, at last!

I had been waiting for years for this weekend. And it was all I hoped for.

Memories of my childhood flooded into my mind as we drove into the little village.

As a child, we would spend two weeks each summer at the cottage my grandfather built when I was a baby. It was about three miles out of the village. Though there was little to do there, and the “beach” was nothing but rocks with icy water in the bay, I always loved it there.  As children, we would venture into the water for short periods. We always wore shoes as the rocks are very slippery with moss and crayfish lived there, too. We often collected them for the neighbor who fished with them.

The above photo is a view from the marina in the village. About the middle of the cliff is where the lion’s head is supposed to be seen. I must admit, I cannot find it in this photo any more than I could just looking at the cliff. The binoculars on the observation deck did not help, either. If you can find it, please leave a comment and let me know. This view we could see from across the bay at the cottage.

Rocks, rocks and more rocks.

I always had to take care not to get into the poison ivy which seemed to thrive there. Fortunately I learned at an early age to recognize the shiny triple-leaf structure and stayed clear of it.

The sound of the seagulls, though harsh to many, has always been welcome to my ears as a reminder of the times spent along that shore. To me, it is a comforting sound. I remember, after breakfast, lunch and dinner, we would put all the scraps on a plate, take it down by the water and scrape it off onto the rocks. First one gull would come, then another and another. Eventually, a whole flock noisily hovered until we moved away. The food disappeared quickly.

My favorite place to sit

My favorite place to sit was down the shore from the cottage, at the point. You can see, just right of the center of the above photo, some very large rocks. The cottage was just beyond the left side of the picture.  I would walk down the rocks until I reached the point, then would sit and listen to the water sloshing over the rocks and watch the sunlight dance on the surface of the bay. Whippoorwill Bay, it is called–part of Isthmus Bay. Though I never saw one, you could sometimes hear the whippoorwills at night. At dusk, we would sometimes see a loon skimming the surface of the water. All memories I cherish.

My curiosity tempted me to climb over those huge boulders, pieces fallen off the cliff many years before, just to see what was on the other side. But I knew it would be dangerous and never got far. Because I could not swim, I never attempted to go around, through the water. So that curiosity was never satisfied.

The view that excited me

Every time we arrived at the top of this hill and I could see the bay, I knew we were getting close to the cottage. That sight always thrilled me, and still did this time. But today, buildings, huge homes, occupy space that back then was empty except for a few cottages and homes that were nothing like the size of some of the new ones. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and had a hard time recognizing where I was. Even the narrow dirt lane–I could not call it a road–that led to the cottage, is now paved.

I will add more photos in my next post and tell you more about my holiday. Until then, I hope you enjoy this one and will come back again for the next installment. Have a wonderful week. And please, do leave a comment.