A picture of the Lenten roses as the bees buzzed around them today in the sunshine - framed specially to announce the Grand Re-opening of the Garden Diary, noted in the Sidebar. Do come and visit and see how our garden grows.

As an aside from the garden two things I read today that expressed what I have been feeling for quite some time.

Sheila Wray Gregoire in her weekly 'reality check' comments on the changes in society over the last few decades.

"As the idea of objective truth has grown passé, it's been replaced by the ultimate idea that our feelings are the proper arbiter for the goodness or rightness of anything. Truth is what feels right to us.

At one point, people believed in a higher morality, even if they themselves weren't religious. People gave generously, or volunteered, or lent a hand, because it was the right thing to do. They didn't have to be convinced to do it because it would make them feel good about themselves; they did it simply because it was the right thing to do, and doing the right thing mattered.

We no longer believe in "the right thing" as much as we believe in "the right thing for me".


And as I finished the last pages of Alexander McCall Smith's endearing book "The Unbearable Lightness of Scones" one of his characters (Angus Lorde) is remarking in conversation on the importance of rituals and how they lend order to life and a grace to living. He comments on the Sixties, and the resulting chaos when people threw tradition to the wind, tossed their caps into the air and took to the road in search of themselves. And nothing has been the same since, he laments.

I question myself continually as to why I feel that this is so, and I wonder if it is a generational thing - if we weren't Ancient and if the Sixties hadn't turned our ordered life topsy-turvy and if I were one of the flower children, would I believe that the lack of order and rituals (I don't necessarily mean church rituals) and a moral day by day concern for others was necessarily wrong?

And then I think that I generalize far beyond what the actual situation is, and I consider the young people,the middle-aged and the Ancients we know who who cling to honesty and truth and grace and integrity and respect for others (maybe not traditions, she said, ruefully).

Oh well, - what do you think? Are we all going to Hell in a Handcart, or have we just taken a little swerve off the straight and narrow and soon we will all get back on the path and become more civilized again.



Things are quiet and peaceful so far in the garden - we have it looking neat and tidy and orderly, - but when I was digging up some cutch grass today I ran into one of the Chinese Lantern Underground Lines, so trouble is brewing there, as well.

I am off to post some pictures in the Garden Diary....