It's been weeks since I last posted here. February was a rather brutal month:  Amy was in the hospital again (her third stay in nine months); our whole family caught a nasty gastrointestinal virus, and my uncle died.

Now it's March, and I'm glad. Spring begins in March! Even though it's still very cold (it snowed yesterday), and the trees won't burst their buds until the third week of April, there are already crocuses up in sunny spots, and I heard a couple of red-winged blackbirds singing at the pond last weekend which lifted my heart.

Last week, we did a springtimey puzzle that I framed and hung-up over the chest of drawers in the living room.  I think it is the only puzzle we did all winter. And, I baked this cake, recommended by Veronica Roth. The author of the recipe calls it banana bread, but it is moist and sweet and really very cake-like  to me. I made it in my gram's bundt pan and covered it in icing. Yummy!--I will definitely make it again. I also finished knitting a pair of socks and cast-on another pair in a lovely colorway from Ivy Brambles called "Secret Garden". Lately, I've been using a lot of hand-painted yarn and a simple stockinette pattern with a gusset heel (different from the traditional gusset and flap heel) from Wendy D. Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up book. This heel is by far the easiest to do, and it fits my foot better than other heels. I have no idea why it isn't mentioned in discussions of heel methods. Personally, I think it is one of the nicest looking heels, and it has no extra bulk.

Since Thursday, I have been giving the house a good cleaning: laundering curtains, washing floors and woodwork and windows and pretty much everything. Once you get started on a project like this you always find one more thing that needs doing. I do like a clean house.

My current strategy is to keep busy--that is the way through a difficult time for me. I think it was Elisabeth Eliot who quoted an old Saxon poem and made the last line her motto :

Do it immediately;

Do it with prayer;

Do it reliantly,

casting all care;

Do it with reverence,

Tracing His hand,

Who placed it before thee with

Earnest command.

Stayed on Omnipotence,

Safe 'neath His wing,

Leave all resultings,

Do the next thing.

Yes, doing the next thing, and also getting outdoors, is very helpful to me. What is not helpful is lying about and indulging in morose thoughts. Those thoughts do come, but serving my family and spending time in nature scatters and replaces them with better thoughts.

So, I vacuum and fold laundry, write postcards, prepare meals and tax returns, teach reading and writing and how to pray, bake, sing, vote, knit, go to the library, walk in the woods, scrub toilets, take photographs of crocuses, pet the cat, walk the dogs, tell a story, look up at the clouds and the stars, fill the bird feeders and watch the birds. These are all  little things, but done consistently, with faithfulness and love, they make up a life that significantly contributes to other lives--this is the quiet power of doing the next thing.