Seek

The title of this blog post is "Seek." Not in the biblical sense, as in, "Seek and you shall find" but in the nature sense. 

There is a wonderful, free app called Seek, look for a single white leaf on a green background. Just point and take a picture of a flower, tree or plant and voila, it gives you its name, or an educated guess, AND keeps a list of what you've identified. 

Our inner courtyard garden is having one of its best years this summer and the sisters, and I, are enjoying the variety and the lushness of the many plants that have been coming and going since May. Right now my favorite are the 16 night blooming evening primrose plants that are going absolutely wild every night. I swear we had 100 flowers the other night and the nicest thing about them is that at 6:30 a.m. when we are passing them along the chapel window corridor, they are still open wide, so we get a great view each morning. 

Here's what they look like---times16 plants!

This week the three peony bushes lost their flowers: pink, white and dark purple, but the roses are out and  the calla lilies are just beginning. The azalea and rhododendron are gone but the hydrangea are just on the verge of getting their blooms going. 

It's a lovely garden and we remember Sr. Rosemary and Sr. Mary Margaret every time we look out upon it or walk through it on the newly-paved winding pathway. They tended it so faithfully for years of summers. 

The Mount and the Companion

Nothing spectacular to share with you this week.....except that two of our summer publications came out just last week and they are really lovely, in fact, maybe spectacular!

a) Take a look at the Summer edition of our Mount  magazine, by clicking on the new cover on the right side of this page...it has a cover of the waves from Lake Erie crashing onto one of our piers at Glinodo;

b) Also, the latest edition of the Companion,  the newsletter of Emmaus ministries: soup kitchen, food pantry, Kids Cafe and inner-city garden, was just put out. See it here.

Enjoy browsing!

Retreat closing

Now that our 2023 retreat is over, I thought I'd share some scenes from an afternoon walk I took on a peaceful, warm, sunny day here in Erie. Although we did have some of the overcast skies from the Canadian fires, we didn't have the visibility issues and severe fog-like scenes that we saw on the news programs from east coast cities.

Here's a whole field of phlox down on our Glinodo property.

And here's a look at part of our Lake Erie shore line. This day is was rocks and shale, 

some days it has quite a sandy beach.

This is a favorite tree for our guests in the hermitages, in the nearby woods. 

It is right outside hermitage #2 and can lend itself to interesting meditations!

In walking out of our nearby woods, we came upon this lone daisy in the grass. 

Hundreds of daisies are blooming right now, but they are all grouped, except...

And, finally, two trees in the library courtyard have their full summer bloom 

of whatever these are. Absolutely gorgeous.

(click a photo to enlarge)

Retreat 2023

This week we're on retreat for 5 days. For the first time our two 30-minute daily conferences will be offered via Zoom for anyone who is interested. Register here.

Blessings on your week, "retreating" or not!