“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever . . . . One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky sky slowly changing and flushing . . . until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange, unchanging majesty of the rising sun . . . .And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries . . . Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night, with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.

And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowded everything it possibly could into that one place.”

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett (In her classic children’s novel, The Secret Garden)

Jubilantly shared by Betty Hanselman

Gardener’s wife (& seeker of Eternity in the everyday)