The day before Mother’s Day was sunny, warm, and breezy–a beautiful Spring day!  The lush green grass got its first mowing, a sure sign that Winter was behind us.  The leaves were still emerging from buds in various phases, some like butterflies fresh out of a cocoon, small and crinkled.  The brilliant pink flowers of the Prairie Fire crabapple tree were beginning to unfold.

The apple tree blossoms were in their full glory with some petals floating to the ground making a tablecloth of white around the tree.

A few small irises shimmered purple in the afternoon sun.  Isn’t it amazing that such an intricately structured and delicate flower can be encased in such a slender bud?

I love the smell of lilacs!  That sweet fragrance, like the smell of a new-born baby, is short-lived, yet invokes such memories and warm feelings.

Virginia Bluebells bloomed in the shade garden, their pink buds maturing into the bell-shaped blue flower.

Flowers for Mother’s Day!  What a beautiful gift to all of us from Mother Nature!

The next day–Mother’s Day and Graduation Day for Aaron–was cloudy, rainy, windy, and very chilly.  It was a stark reminder that our expectations and hopes for a beautiful day are not in our control.  But the Baccalaureate Mass, the friendly, noisy lunch, and the Commencement ceremony were meaningful, bittersweet, and ever so lovely.  It was an emotional day for many reasons–endings, beginnings, deep truths, changes, things we cannot control, happiness, and tinges of sorrow.  In the midst of the day, I felt a bit powerless–like Life was moving on–and I wondered where I fit in the whole picture as the last of our children graduated into the real world.

The day before, along with the flowers, I photographed our statue of Saint Francis surrounded by sun-drenched ferns.  Saint Francis, patron saint of animals and ecology, believed “that nature itself was the mirror of God.”  In emotion and powerlessness, perhaps all we can do is pray in gratitude for the beauty of the earth and for peace in our souls.

The Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, union;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.