Cedar Siding Quotes

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime.

Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?” “If I can be of use.” “Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.

People walk the paths of the gardens below, and the wind sings anthems in the hedges, and the big old cedars at the entrance to the maze creak. Marie-Laure imagines the electromagnetic waves traveling into and out of Michel’s machine, bending around them, just as Etienne used to describe, except now a thousand times more crisscross the air than when he lived - maybe a million times more. Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of televisions programs, of e-mails, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I am going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscape we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it. Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out of the world. We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

Neither a land nor a people ever starts over clean. Country is compact of all its past disasters and strokes of luck–of flood and drouth, of the caprices of glaciers and sea winds, of misuse and disuse and greed and ignorance and wisdom–and though you may doze away the cedar and coax back the bluestem and mesquite grass and side-oats grama, you're not going to manhandle it into anything entirely new. It's limited by what it has been, by what's happened to it. And a people, until that time when it's uprooted and scattered and so mixed with other peoples that it has in fact perished, is much the same in this as land. It inherits.

By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry— Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there’s a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods’ excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someone’s road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you’re lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall. First there’s the children’s house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny’s A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t. (I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

And soft. I was surrounded by softness. A nest of it, tucked into me on all sides. It smelled heavenly. Masculine. Fresh, earthy moss and damp cedar. Old, tanned leather with a peppery musk. It smelled like my beloved forest. It smelled like home.

Had I the tongue of Orpheus and his mellifluous strains and by song could cast a spell on Persephone and her spouse to wrest you out of hell, I should go down and neither Pluto’s hound nor the spirit-ferrying Charon at his oar could stop me: not till I’d brought your soul up into the light. Wait for me down there. Wait for me to die. Prepare the home where you and I shall live as one. For I shall make them lay my bones side by side with yours: stretched out with you in the selfsame cedar box.

I prayed to a mystery. Sometimes I was simply aware of the mystery. I saw a flash of it during a trip to New York that David and I took before we were married. We were walking on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan. I don't remember if it was day or night. A man with a wound on his forehead came toward us. His damp, ragged hair might have been clotted with blood, or maybe it was only dirt. He wore deeply dirty clothes. His red, swollen hands, cupped in half-fists, swung loosely at his sides. His eyes were focused somewhere past my right shoulder. He staggered while he walked. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him and with him. He was strange and frightening, and at the same time he belonged on the Manhattan sidewalk as much as any of us. It was that paradox -- that he could be both alien and resident, both brutalized and human, that he could stand out in the moving mass of people like a sea monster in a school of tuna and at the same time be as much at home as any of us -- that stayed with me. I never saw him again, but I remember him often, and when I do, I am aware of the mystery. Years later, I was out on our property on the Olympic Peninsula, cutting a path through the woods. This was before our house was built. After chopping through dense salal and hacking off ironwood bushes for an hour or so, I stopped, exhausted. I found myself standing motionless, intensely aware of all of the life around me, the breathing moss, the chattering birds, the living earth. I was as much a part of the woods as any millipede or cedar tree. At that moment, too, I was aware of the mystery. Sometimes I wanted to speak to this mystery directly. Out of habit, I began with "Dear God" and ended with "Amen". But I thought to myself, I'm not praying to that old man in the sky. Rather, I'm praying to this thing I can't define. It was sort of like talking into a foggy valley. Praying into a bank of fog requires alot of effort. I wanted an image to focus on when I prayed. I wanted something to pray *to*. but I couldn't go back to that old man. He was too closely associated with all I'd left behind.

It's been over a year since they've visited their son's market. As they walk through the parking lot they take in a number of improvements. Brian admires the raised garden beds made of cedar planks that flank the sides of the lot. There are stalks of tomatoes, staked beans, baskets of green herbs- oregano, lavender, fragrant blades of lemongrass and pointed curry leaf. The planter of baby lettuces has a chalkboard hung from its side: "Just add fork." A wheelbarrow parked by the door is heaped with bright coronas of sunflowers, white daisies, jagged red ginger and birds-of-paradise. Avis feels a leap of pride as they enter the market: the floor of polished bamboo, the sky-blue ceiling, the wooden shelves- like bookshelves in a library. And the smells. Warm, round billows of baking bread, roasting garlic and onions and chicken.

cabin for a long moment. Just looking at it made her smile. It was tiny and whimsical – a cedar sided A-frame with a bright green roof and purple trim, complete with a purple star at the point of the A-frame. It sat in a small open area amongst spruce and alder. The hill tumbled down behind it, offering a wide-open view of Kachemak Bay. She’d been in Diamond Creek, Alaska for almost three years. The sun was rising behind the mountains across the bay, streaks of gold and pink reaching into the sky and filtering through the wispy clouds that sat above the mountains this morning. The air was cool and crisp, typical for an Alaskan summer morning. When the sun was high, the chill would dissipate. A faded blue Subaru pulled into the driveway. Susie climbed out of her car, grabbed some fishing gear and walked to Emma’s truck. “Morning! Sorry I’m late,” Susie said. Emma reached over and took a fishing rod out of Susie’s hands.

Jacob remained by Mollie’s side throughout the night, clinging to her hand as well as to her vow. She wasn’t going to leave him. She’d given her word, and Mollie never broke a promise. He prayed. He tended the cuts she’d suffered from the blackberry brambles when she’d fallen. The vines had grown entangled within a cedar’s branches, and as best he could tell, she’d climbed the tree in order to reach the ripe berries that other pickers had left behind. Unfortunately, the limb she’d shimmied out on had been weak and had broken beneath her weight. “You know, this tree climbing and dropping through busted church floors is going to have to stop after we’re married. My heart won’t be able to take the stress.” He smiled and ran the back of his finger down the smooth line of her cheek. “Not that I expect any dictate I give you to have much effect. My only hope is that you’ll grow to care enough about me that you’ll take pity on me and cease taking unnecessary risks with your life.

all the time you hate you steal it from love, its sole provocation, for it does not precede the facts that call it forth; it nourishes itself on them. Dichromatism always extends to the complementary colors. You commit in one exactly everything you simultaneously omit in the other. They exist side by side to kill each other, like the heterosporous combination of cedar and chokecherry. What, after all, is the precise morphological distinction between an embrace and a strangulation? L’amour, la mort: every kiss muffles a bite. Inside every lover is manacled Taras Bulba. The anagram of ‘The heart’s desire’ is ‘hate strides here’—the imperfection in the transposition being the apostrophe you can’t cry out.

This garden was peaceful and calm. Pink cherry blossoms and violet plum blossoms graced the sweeping trees. The petals fell like snowflakes, dancing and swirling until they touched the soft, verdant grass. There was something familiar about this place. Her eyes traveled down the flat stone steps. She knew this path, knew those stones. The third one from the bottom had a crack in the middle- from when she was five and the neighbor's boy convinced her there were worms on the other side of the stones. She'd hammered the stone in half, eager to catch a few worms to play with. There weren't any, of course, but her mother had helped her find some dragonflies by the pond instead, and they'd spent an afternoon counting them in the garden. Mulan smiled wistfully at the memory. This can't be the same garden. I'm in Diyu. Yet no painter could have re-created what she saw more convincingly. Every detail was as she remembered. At the bottom of the stone-cobbled path was a pond with rose-flushed lilies, and a marble bench under the cherry tree. She used to play by the pond when she was a little girl, catching frogs and fireflies in wine jugs and feeding the fish leftover rice husks and sesame seeds until her mother scolded her. And beyond the moon gate was- Mulan's hand jumped to her mouth. Home. That smell of home- of Baba's incense from the family temple, sharp with amber and cedar; of noodles in Grandmother Fa's special pork broth; of jasmine flowers that Mama used to scent her skin.

He took a cedar shingle or splint eighteen inches long and four or five wide, rounded at one end, that the corners might not be in the way, and tied it with cedar bark by two holes made midway, near the edge on each side, to the middle crossbar of the canoe. When the canoe was lifted upon his head bottom up, this shingle, with its rounded end uppermost, distributed the weight over his shoulders and head, while a band of cedar bark, tied to the crossbar on each side of the shingle, passed round his breast, and another longer one, outside of the last, round his forehead; also a hand on each side rail served to steer the canoe and keep it from rocking. He thus carried it with his shoulders, head, breast, forehead, and both hands, as if the upper part of his body were all one hand to clasp and hold

Maybe the true surprise, I thought, was that it had not happened sooner. My uncles’ eyes used to crawl over me as I poured their wine. Their hands found their way to my flesh. A pinch, a stroke, a hand slipping under the sleeve of my dress. They all had wives, it was not marriage they thought of. One of them would have come for me in the end and paid my father well. Honor on all sides. The light had reached the loom, and its cedar scent was rising in the air. The memory of [Redacted]’s white-scarred hands, and the pleasure I had taken in them, was like a hot wire pushed through my brain. I dug my nails into my wrist. There are oracles scattered across our lands. Shrines where priestesses breathe sacred fumes and speak the truths they find in them. Know yourself is carved above their doors. But I had been a stranger to myself, turned to stone for no reason I could name.

She walks back, more slowly, the way she came. How odd it feels, to move along the same streets in reverse, like inking over old words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange. It seems so simple: one minute ago, four, five, he was here, at her side; now, he is gone. She was with him; she is alone. She feels exposed, chill, peeled like an onion. There is the stall they passed earlier, piled high with tin pots and cedar shavings. There is the woman they saw, still making her decision, holding two pots in her hands, weighing them, and how can she still be there, how can she still be engaged in the same activity, in the choosing of a pot, when such a change, such a transformation has occurred in Agnes's life? Her very world has cloven in two and here is the same dog dozing in a doorway. Here is a young woman, tying up clothing into bundles, just as she was doing when they passed. Here is her neighbour...giving her a grave nod as he walks by. Can he not see, can he not read that life as she knows it is over, that he is gone?” Hamnet, pp214-5

Egypt was, arguably, a nation state when most Europeans were living in mud huts, but it was only ever a regional power. It is protected by deserts on three sides and might have become a great power in the Mediterranean region but for one problem. There are hardly any trees in Egypt, and for most of history, if you didn’t have trees you couldn’t build a great navy with which to project your power. There has always been an Egyptian navy – it used to import cedar from Lebanon to build ships at huge expense – but it has never been a Blue Water navy. Modern Egypt now has the most powerful armed forces of all the Arab states, thanks to American military aid; but it remains contained by deserts, the sea and its peace treaty with Israel. It will remain in the news as it struggles to cope with feeding 97 million people a day while battling an Islamist insurgency, especially in the Sinai, and guarding the Suez Canal, through which passes 8 per cent of the world’s entire trade every day. Some 2.5 per cent of the world’s oil passes this way daily; closing the canal would add about fifteen days’ transit time to Europe and ten to the USA, with concurrent costs. Despite having fought five wars with Israel, the country Egypt is most likely to come into conflict with next is Ethiopia, and the issue is the Nile. Two of the continent’s oldest countries, with the largest armies, have at times edged towards conflict over the region’s major source of water.

Finally, he allowed me to turn the key in the lock and the front door, with its porthole-shaped window, swung open. I don’t know what I’d expected. I’d tried not to conjure up fantasies of any kind, but what I saw left me inarticulate. The entire apartment had the feel of a ship’s interior. The walls were highly polished teak and oak, with shelves and cubbyholes on every side. The kitchenette was still located to the right where the old one had been, a galley-style arrangement with a pint-size stove and refrigerator. A microwave oven and trash compactor had been added. Tucked in beside the kitchen was a stacking washer-dryer, and next to that was a tiny bathroom. In the living area, a sofa had been built into a window bay, with two royal blue canvas director’s chairs arranged to form a “conversational grouping.” Henry did a quick demonstration of how the sofa could be extended into sleeping accommodations for company, a trundle bed in effect. The dimensions of the main room were still roughly fifteen feet on a side, but now there was a sleeping loft above, accessible by way of a tiny spiral staircase where my former storage space had been. In the old place, I’d usually slept naked on the couch in an envelope of folded quilt. Now, I was going to have an actual bedroom of my own. I wound my way up, staring in amazement at the double-size platform bed with drawers underneath. In the ceiling above the bed, there was a round shaft extending through the roof, capped by a clear Plexiglas skylight that seemed to fling light down on the blue-and-white patchwork coverlet. Loft windows looked out to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Along the back wall, there was an expanse of cedar-lined closet space with a rod for hanging clothes, pegs for miscellaneous items, shoe racks, and floor-to-ceiling drawers. Just off the loft, there was a small bathroom. The tub was sunken with a built-in shower and a window right at tub level, the wooden sill lined with plants. I could bathe among the treetops, looking out at the ocean where the clouds were piling up like bubbles. The towels were the same royal blue as the cotton shag carpeting. Even the eggs of milled soap were blue, arranged in a white china dish on the edge of the round brass sink.

could stand to be a little scared. “No, let’s spook them,” I whispered back. Lake grinned, Carla shook her head. “They’ll turn us in,” Carla said. “They’ll tell the others.” “They won’t,” I whispered and then motioned for them to get close. When they did, I let them in on the plan. “Let’s sneak around the back. Carla, do you have your flashlight.” With it being a clear night, and the moon glowing above, we hadn’t needed the flashlight. Carla had brought it, though.  She pulled it out of her pocket and held it up. “You stand back,” I told her, figuring she’d want this job. “Shine the light toward the back of the tent. Lake, you and I stand close to the tent wall. When Carla shines the light, you pretend to be a bear and roar. And we’ll make shadows.” “Sounds good to me,” Lake said. “Only we have to be quiet from here out,” I whispered. “North can hear everything.” I wasn’t so sure he couldn’t hear us out here now with his supersonic hearing. Maybe he was asleep... The girls followed me as I tiptoed my way around wide toward the back of the tent. Carla positioned herself near the trees, so her light would cast a good glow. Lake and I stood halfway between. Lake stood really close to me. “So we don’t look like two people,” she explained when I started to back away from her. I realized she was right. Standing together, we’d make one big shadow. We stood hip to hip and I counted down with hand signals to Carla. Three. Two. One. Go! Carla lit up the beam, creating a strong enough glow to spread across the back of the tent wall. She even angled from below so the beam went up, making our shadow taller. Lake raised a curled hand like a claw and growled, doing a great bear impression. I raised my own hand on the other side—another claw. The tent erupted with the sounds of grunts, curses, and a few squeals. “Kota!” Gabriel’s voice erupted over the mix of noises. “Bear!” “Bears don’t have flashlights,” Kota said. “Shit,” Gabriel said. “Fuck. Shit. Fuck.” “Enough,” North said. The three of us outside giggled and started making our way back around the tent, when I was tackled, and on the ground in a heap before I even realized what had happened. The smell of leather and cedar wafted over me. I’d recognize the big bulk of muscle anywhere. “It’s just us!” I cried out in an eruption of giggling, struggling for breath with him on top of me. “I knew it was you,” Nathan said, leaning back while still sitting on my hips. “No one else at this campground would dare.” The others had been tackled, too. Silas was on top of Lake. Luke was on top of Carla. “Get off,” Lake said but she was laughing, pushing on Silas, only Silas

A small silver-handled shaving brush... a folding-blade razor... an empty soap dish... a lidded porcelain box with a silver top. Unable to resist, Beatrix lifted the top and looked inside. She found three pairs of cuff links, two in silver, one in gold, a watch chain, and a brass button. Replacing the lid, Beatrix picked up the shaving brush and experimentally touched her cheek with it. The bristles were silky and soft. With the movement of the soft fibers, a pleasant scent was released from the brush. A spicy hint of shaving soap. Holding the brush closer to her nose, Beatrix drew in the scent... masculine richness... cedar, lavender, bay leaves. She imagined Christopher spreading lather over his face, stretching his mouth to one side, all the masculine contortions she had seen her father and brother perform in the act of removing bristle from their faces.

Twenty-two hours, forty-seven minutes, and eighteen seconds to go!” she said to herself. Not long until her best friends till The End, Raven Queen and Cedar Wood, would return to Ever After High. At last! They both lived far, far away, and calls on the MirrorPhone just weren’t the same as a friend by your side.

I’m pretty sure he plans on killing me anyway,” I said with a shrug. “At least if he kills me for this, it was for something that matters.” “I-” “Tell him I came here and spoke with you about Darius. Tell him I made some excuse to get you to leave the room and by the time you came back I’d done this. Put all the blame on me. I mean that.” “Okay…” she said hesitantly and I met her eye. “Do I need to make you swear it on the stars?” I growled. “No. I’ll tell him. Thank you, Roxanya.” “It’s Tory. Only Darius calls me Roxy and I can’t make him stop, but I don’t want anyone else making a habit of it,” I said. Although at this point if Darius started calling me Tory it would probably just be weird. Not that I’d ever admit that I was okay with the Roxy thing. “Okay. Thank you, Tory.” I smirked at her and hit post. Catalina gasped as Xavier’s secret went viral and I glanced down at my Atlas as reactions and comments began to pour in before I locked the screen. Shit, what if Daddy Acrux really does kill me for this? “Run, Tory,” Catalina breathed, real fear dancing in her eyes. “Run for the gate and get back to the academy before he comes back. If he finds you here-” “Consider me gone.” I barked a laugh as nerves made my heart flutter. Catalina smiled at me before ripping her dress off, knocking her hair free of its perfectly styled bun, flashing me those gloriously fake tits and leaping out of thewindow after her son. She transformed as she plummeted and my lips fell open as a stunning silver Dragon burst from her flesh. She beat a path up towards the clouds just as Xavier dipped beneath them with an excited whinny. I quickly raised my Atlas and snapped a picture of the two of them dancing through the sky before I took a running jump out of the window too. My wings burst to life at my back and I flew hard and fast along the drive until I soared over the gates, beyond the anti-stardust wards where I landed quickly, my boots skidding in the gravel. I grabbed the stardust from my pocket and winked at the startled guards half a second before I tossed it over my head and the stars whisked me back to the academy. I stumbled as they deposited me and suddenly strong arms locked around my chest from behind, making me scream in surprise. A hand slapped over my mouth and I stilled for a moment as the scent of smoke and cedar overwhelmed me. Darius dragged me back through the hole in the wards, pulled me through the fence and shoved me up against a huge tree at the edge of campus before he took his hand from my mouth. His hands landed either side of my head as he penned me in, glaring down at me with an angry as fuck Dragon peering out of his eyes, his pupils transformed into reptilian slits and a hint of smoke slipped between his lips. He was only wearing sweatpants and I got the impression he’d flown here to ambush me the moment I returned. I guess he didn’t like my FaeBook post. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded. “Whoa, chill out dude,” I said, pressing my hands to his chest to push him back. He didn’t move a single inch and I just ended up with my hands pressed to his rock hard muscles, his heart pounding frantically beneath my right palm. “Do you know what you’ve done?” Darius snarled. “Father could kill Xavier for this! He could-” “He won’t,” I snapped angrily. “He can’t. Don’t you see that? The only power he held over Xavier was in keeping his real Order form a secret. Now everyone knows, he’s free. Killing him wouldn’t change the truth. And he can’t very well alienate every Pegasus in Solaria by making his Orderist bullshit public knowledge. He’ll have to let Xavier leave the house, join a herd, fly.” Darius was staring at me like he didn’t know whether to kill me or kiss me and as my gaze fell on his mouth, I found myself aching for the latter. Fuck the stars. (Tory POV)

Spring is beautiful everywhere, but it is most beautiful in Syria. It is a spirit that roams round the earth but hovers over Syria, conversing with kings and prophets, singing with the rives the songs of Solomon, and repeating with the Holy Cedars of Lebanon the memory of ancient glory. Beirut, free from the mud of winter and the dust of summer, is like a bride in the spring, or like a mermaid sitting by the side of a brook drying her smooth skin in the rays of the sun.

Shingle Mill Road. She turned right and passed a large building with rusty, corrugated-metal siding and a faded sign that said Anderson’s Cedar Shakes. Driving down the road,

I walk into the night forest. I reach out my hands on either side. I can feel the smooth bark of the Red Alder trees and the rough chasms of mature Douglas Fir, and then I can feel the stringy fibrous bark of the Western Red Cedar. I can push my fingers into the Cedar bark; it is like cloth to my fingertips. But here and there I can also feel the lacelike fingers of Hemlock and the prickly needles of Spruce touching my face and my neck.

brown on the bottom and cook the other side until it is golden brown. Serve hot. I love to serve these with big steaming bowls of soup on a cold night. Enjoy!

cup sauerkraut, drained (I use a colander and press my hand down to get rid of the excess liquid) 2 tbsp. butter, softened 4 tbsp. catsup 4 tbsp. mayonnaise Directions: Preheat large skillet or griddle on medium heat. Combine catsup and mayonnaise. Lightly butter one side of 4 bread slices. Set aside. On the other 4 bread slices evenly spread the catsup mixture then layer l slice Swiss cheese, 2 slices corned beef, ¼ cup sauerkraut and second slice of Swiss cheese. Top with the buttered bread slices which have been set aside, buttered sides out. Place assembled sandwiches in skillet or on griddle, buttered sides down. Flip when golden

For God’s sake, Eve Windham, it was just a kiss under the mistletoe, probably inspired by your papa’s wassail more than anything else.” She had to put her hand on his arm while the feeling of the ground shifting beneath her feet swept over her. “My brothers said it was white rum.” “The occasional tot makes the holiday socializing less tedious. You really do not look well.” The last observation was grudging, almost worried. “I did not mean to swill from your glass, Deene. You should have stopped me.” They had to get to the coach. The night felt like it was closing in, and Deene’s voice—a perfect example of male aristocratic euphony—was swelling and shrinking in the oddest way. “I might have stopped you, except you downed the whole drink before I realized what was afoot, and then you were accosting me in the most passionate—” Eve clutched his arm and swayed into him, breathing shallowly through her mouth. “If you insist on arguing with me, my lord, I will be ill all over these bushes.” “Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped an arm around her waist and promenaded her down the steps. By the time they got to the garden gate, the nausea was subsiding, though Eve was leaning heavily on her escort. She had the notion that the scents of cedar and lavender coming from Deene’s jacket might have helped quiet her stomach. Deene ushered her through the gate, which put them on a quiet, mercifully dark side street. “How often do these headaches befall you?” “Too often. Sometimes I go for months between attacks, sometimes only days. The worst is when it hits on one side, subsides for a day, then strikes on the other.” Deene pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, then used two fingers to give a piercing, three-blast whistle. “Sorry.” All the while he kept his arm around Eve’s waist, a solid, warm—and quite unexpected—bulwark against complete disability. “The coach will here in moments. Is there anything that helps?” “Absolute quiet, absolute dark, time.” Though her mother used to rub her neck, and that had helped the most. He said nothing more—Deene wasn’t stupid—and Eve just leaned on him. Her grandmother had apparently suffered from these same headaches, though neither Eve’s parents nor her siblings were afflicted. The clip-clop of hooves sounded like so much gunfire in Eve’s head, but it was the sound of privacy, so Eve tried to welcome it. Deene gave the coachy directions to the Windham mansion and climbed in after Eve. “Shall I sit beside you, my lady?” An odd little courtesy, that he would even ask. “Please. The less I move, the less uncomfortable I am.” He settled beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. Without a single thought for dignity, skirmishes, or propriety, Eve laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and was grateful. ***

It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar….” —Ezekiel 17:23 (NIV) I e-mailed my siblings: “Prayers appreciated for a talk I’m giving on Thursday afternoon.” Several responded, relaying the sentiment “God is with you, and so are we.” At the appointed hour, I encouraged participants to compare their prayers to trees. I displayed photographs and artists’ renderings of gnarly olive trees, weeping willows, deserted palms, orange-laden orchards…. I handed out colored pencils and suggested they draw a tree that represented their recent prayers. “Imagine Jesus as the trunk—the core ‘vine’—and your prayers as the branches. Then consider the big picture: Whom is your prayer tree shading or protecting? Where is it in the seasonal cycles—producing hopeful spring blossoms or mature fruit? Do your prayer-branches reach for the sky in praise or bend close to the ground with requests? Is your tree in a solitary setting, or do you prefer praying when you’re surrounded by peers, as in a grove?” Eventually I asked them to explain their pictures. A husband had sketched two leafy trees side by side, representing his prayers with his wife. A mother had envisioned a passel of umbrella-shaped twigs, symbolizing parental prayers of protection. When I was packing up, a woman who’d held back earlier showed me a nearly hidden detail of her flourishing tree. At the base of the trunk, underneath grassy cover, she’d outlined deep roots. “They represent the grounding of my family, my upbringing.” “Oh my!” I smiled. “You introduced a whole new dimension.” I drove home with a revitalized prayer—like limbs stretching upward with thanksgiving—for my natal family and many others who have enriched my relationship with God. Lord, thank You for the grounding of my faith through my family and the family of God. —Evelyn Bence Digging Deeper: Ps 103:17–18; Prv 22:6

IV-132. Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, / Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green, / As with a rural mound the champain head IV-135. Of a steep wilderness, whose hairie sides / With thicket overgrown, grottesque and wilde, IV-137. Access deni'd; and over head up grew / Insuperable highth of loftiest shade, / Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm / A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend / Shade above shade, a woodie Theatre IV-142. Of stateliest view. Yet higher then thir tops / The verdurous wall of paradise up sprung: IV-144. Which to our general Sire gave prospect large / Into his neather Empire neighbouring round. IV-146. And higher then that Wall a circling row / Of goodliest Trees loaden with fairest Fruit, / Blossoms and Fruits at once of golden hue / Appeerd, with gay enameld colours mixt: IV-150. On which the Sun more glad impress'd his beams / Then in fair Evening Cloud, or humid Bow, / When God hath showrd the earth; so lovely seemd IV-153. That Lantskip: And of pure now purer aire / Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires / Vernal delight and joy, able to drive / All sadness but despair: now gentle gales / Fanning thir odoriferous wings dispense IV-158. Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole IV-159. Those balmie spoiles. As when to them who saile / Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past / Mozambic, off at Sea North-East windes blow / Sabean Odours from the spicie shoare / Of Arabie the blest, with such delay / Well pleas'd they slack thir course, and many a League / Chear'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

She was not alone. “There’s a definite panic on the hip scene in Cambridge,” wrote student radical Raymond Mungo that year, “people going to uncommonly arduous lengths (debt, sacrifice, the prospect of cold toes and brown rice forever) to get away while there’s still time.” And it wasn’t just Cambridge. All over the nation at the dawn of the 1970s, young people were suddenly feeling an urge to get away, to leave the city behind for a new way of life in the country. Some, like Mungo, filled an elderly New England farmhouse with a tangle of comrades. Others sought out mountain-side hermitages in New Mexico or remote single-family Edens in Tennessee. Hilltop Maoists traversed their fields with horse-drawn plows. Graduate students who had never before held a hammer overhauled tobacco barns and flipped through the Whole Earth Catalog by the light of kerosene lamps. Vietnam vets hand-mixed adobe bricks. Born-and-bred Brooklynites felled cedar in Oregon. Former debutants milked goats in Humboldt County and weeded strawberry beds with their babies strapped to their backs. Famous musicians forked organic compost into upstate gardens. College professors committed themselves to winter commutes that required swapping high heels for cross-country skis. Computer programmers turned the last page of Scott and Helen Nearing’s Living the Good Life and packed their families into the car the next day. Most had no farming or carpentry experience, but no matter. To go back to the land, it seemed, all that was necessary was an ardent belief that life in Middle America was corrupt and hollow, that consumer goods were burdensome and unnecessary, that protest was better lived than shouted, and that the best response to a broken culture was to simply reinvent it from scratch.

INSIDE MY EMBRACE   Pulling her closer to me as she sits inside of my embrace beneath the fragrant cool of morning, I warm her legs and arms as her eyes shine like dew over morning clovers, eager to bear the weight of this weary traveler. I kiss her in a way that longs for her love to be made. Caressing her underneath her neck and face I give my soul’s kiss to the side of her face, kissing her again above the eyes, sliding down the bridge of her nose as I find her lips once more.   I calm her growing anxiousness as I reach my hand over her face, she taking my hand to warm her face with. I reach for her lips tasting the sweet nectar from her body and spirit as she takes her time loving me beneath the great red cedar tree that stands furthest from the house. She again kisses me gently having known from the day that we first kissed that I could never get enough of her love. I watch as she lays peacefully in my arms without any disturbance of any kind as a dark slate grey and rifle green flitter above from the leaves of a large alder tree. Seeing her as she is now I am reminded of how still the soul can be when looking at a painting. I now feel as if all of the simple pleasures in life have been granted to me as I watch her wrapped inside of my embrace.

I need you Gabe. I need you to fuck me, hard and fast. Please, I want to feel your cock inside me, and feel your come dripping down my thighs. I want to scream your name so fucking loud that they hear us in town.” I don’t know where this side of Tessa came from, but fuck do I love it, and who am I to deny her what she wants?

This possessive kinky side of Gabe is entirely new, he was never like this before, and I fucking love it. it’s driving me fucking crazy.

Honestly, I’m so turned on by you defending me like that. I’ve never seen that side of you, and it does something.

Tessa, Gabe is nothing like that fuckhead.” “Dad,” I exclaim, trying my best to hide the smile that’s creeping across my face. “Sorry, but it’s true. He would never do something like that to you. That boy loves you with his whole heart. He always has. He’s never had another girlfriend since you. A couple of dates maybe, but nothing serious. As for the business side of things, you very well could fail, but that’s the risk you take with anything you do. You’ll never know unless you try.

Forget small. Go big baby, show everyone what you’re capable of,” I say and she smiles at me from across the seat. “I knew I loved you for a reason.” I stomp on the brakes and pull over to the side of the road. “Are you okay?” Tessa asks, giving me a concerned look. “No, I’m not okay. What did you just say?” I say, unbuckling her seatbelt and pulling her over to me. “I said I knew I loved you for a reason.” “Say it again,” I whisper. “I knew—” “No, not that part.” Tessa looks at me, a teasing tone spread across her face. “Oh just the last part?” Tessa asks and I let out a groan, and she giggles. “Gabriel, I love you. I’ve loved you since we were fourteen years old, I—” I don’t let her finish. “Again,” I whisper against her lips. “I love you Gabriel. I’ve always loved you.” “Thank fucking God you’re staying. I couldn’t go through you leaving again.

I peel my eyes off of the woman sitting on the other side of my bar. The woman I’ve been in love with since I was 14 years old.

Motherfucker,” I curse under my breath. I’m going to kick his ass. Gabriel stands on the other side, a smirk across that ridiculously handsome face of his. “You better wipe that smirk off your face. How could you do this to my neck? Where everyone can see!” “So you’re saying I can do it, but in places only I can see?

As I sit alone in the dawn of the morning. The sun was creating the eastern sky. A rise in the wind, and in the distance a muffled rumble of a train. It takes my memories to a small over pass, the size is just right for a young child to hunch and pass under, to another level of protection. On the other side of the tracks was a whole other world for me and a few of my friends. The rail stretched below our property after a row of stubbly cedars is where it lie, running east to west double in its power both rails past by our home.

I missed you,” I tell her, not having planned to say the words out loud but feeling it so deeply that I’m practically compelled to. “God, Gabi…” Using my good hand, I caress the side of her face, stroking my thumb along the apple of her cheek. “I missed everything about you.

The menu was full of classic American cuisine—bone-in ribeyes with garlic mashed potatoes, cedar plank salmon served with risotto and drizzled with lemon butter, smoked sausage, venison medallions, and game hens served with grilled vegetables and wild rice. Free-range herb roasted chicken with roasted potatoes. Porterhouse steaks, seared and served with steak fries and creamed spinach. Sweet corn soup topped with fresh herbs. To finish it off, dark chocolate cake layered with velvety ganache and served with a side of vanilla ice cream. Rustic wood beams

Habitat. The environmental niche occupied by a plant reflects stresses and conditions which it has had to adapt to, and these often correspond to conditions in the organism. Plants which grow in wet situations often relate to organ systems which handle dampness in the body, such as the lymphatics and kidneys. They correspond to diseases produced by an excess of dampness—respiratory problems, mucus, lymphatic stagnation, swollen glands, kidney and bladder problems, intermittent fever and rheumatic complaints (rheuma = dampness in Greek). Here we think of Horsetail (low, wet sands/kidneys), Eryngo (salty, sandy seashores/kidneys), Gravel Root (swamps/kidneys), Swamp Milkweed (swamps/kidneys), Hydrangea (sides of streams/kidneys), Boneset (wet soils/joints and fever), Willow (low ground/joints and fever), Meadowsweet (low ground/rheumatic pains, intermittent fever), Northern White Cedar (cedar swamps and margins of lakes/lymphatics), Labrador Tea (cedar swamps and margins of lakes/lymphatics), various Knotweeds (low ground/kidneys), Sweet Flag (swamps/mucus, lungs and joints), Angelica (damp, shady, cool valleys/damp, cold rheumatic and respiratory conditions).

Habitat. The environmental niche occupied by a plant reflects stresses and conditions which it has had to adapt to, and these often correspond to conditions in the organism. Plants which grow in wet situations often relate to organ systems which handle dampness in the body, such as the lymphatics and kidneys. They correspond to diseases produced by an excess of dampness—respiratory problems, mucus, lymphatic stagnation, swollen glands, kidney and bladder problems, intermittent fever and rheumatic complaints (rheuma = dampness in Greek). Here we think of Horsetail (low, wet sands/kidneys), Eryngo (salty, sandy seashores/kidneys), Gravel Root (swamps/kidneys), Swamp Milkweed (swamps/kidneys), Hydrangea (sides of streams/kidneys), Boneset (wet soils/joints and fever), Willow (low ground/joints and fever), Meadowsweet (low ground/rheumatic pains, intermittent fever), Northern White Cedar (cedar swamps and margins of lakes/lymphatics), Labrador Tea (cedar swamps and margins of lakes/lymphatics), various Knotweeds (low ground/kidneys), Sweet Flag (swamps/mucus, lungs and joints), Angelica (damp, shady, cool valleys/damp, cold rheumatic and respiratory conditions). It is interesting to note that sandy, gravely soils are also a signature for kidney remedies (Horsetail, Eryngo, Gravel Root, Gromwell, False Gromwell, Uva ursi, etc.)

Scan for sensations in your body. Sit quietly in a chair for a few minutes and scan your body, noticing all sensations. Starting with the toes on one foot, move up through your leg, then into your groin, to your chest and shoulder, down your left arm to your hand, then all the way back to your foot. Repeat on the other side. Notice sensations in your neck, jaw, lips, face, and scalp but do not describe them; simply observe. Pay special attention to any area where there is tension or discomfort. Create space for the tension or discomfort to be present without avoiding it or intensifying it. Simply allow it to be.

In one picture, ten loggers sat side by side in a wedge-shaped cut sawed out of a massive cedar. James could almost hear the thunderous, splintering crash that giant must have made when it fell. The thought filled him with a strangely intimate sort of woe.  On

I’ve never done this before,” she finally tells me, confirming my suspicion. “And it took all my nerve to ask, so I’m gonna need you to take the lead on this, okay?” At her bold honesty, I let out a deep laugh of relief. I hope she can always be this honest with me, especially if we’re about to take this into the bedroom. “I can do that,” I tell her, reaching out and taking one of her hands in mine, then tugging her my way so she’s standing between my legs. Then I place my hands on either side of her face, enjoying the little look of nervous excitement she gives me. “This is going to be fun,” I whisper. And then I pull her mouth to mine.

I sit on a bollard and listen to the swallows swooping among the old cedars by the side of the road, and I realize that I have been drinking for hours and yet I have no memory of it. It is negative time.

Honestly, it’s a good thing this is just a backyard little tournament because Tessa is bad, like really, really bad. I don’t think she could hit the broad side of a barn with these bean bags even if she tried. I don’t think she’s made it to the board once.

You’re gawking,” Morgan says interrupting me thoughts as she elbows me in the side. “I’m not gawking,” I say back, but I know that I am. It’s hard not to when she looks like that. “That’s the one who got away huh?” I glance over at her with a puzzled look on my face. “Don’t look at me like that, I just married the town gossip, of course, I know everything about Tessa.” She’s not wrong. William is worse than a group of grandmas at tea time.

Salvatore picked Lu up at 6 pm, sharp. She opened the door and closed it behind her. Standing atop her porch, the wind lightly blowing through her hair, Sal was absolutely mesmerized by the beauty which befell her. She wore an A-line dress which shimmied just below her knee; her head was adorned with a beret which tilted to one side. Her face bore the natural glisten of the sun, while her lips were painted a sunburst red.