Spiritual Quote of the Day (Dag Hammarskjold, on Uneasiness and Life)

“Bless your uneasiness as a sign that there is still life in you.” —U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, diary entry for Aug. 26, 1956, in Markings, translated by Leif Sjoeberg and W.H. Auden (1965)

Tasmanian Tree Fern, Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA

I took the attached photo while visiting the marvelous Phipps Conservatory this past October.

The Tasmanian Tree Fern’s green foliage comes with a lacy texture. What you see mostly here is the bottom of this fern—a dark brown trunk. The fern requires full- to-partial shade and regular watering to keep the soil evenly moist.

Quote of the Day (Poet Patrick Kavanagh, on Remembering ‘All That Has Loved You or Been Kind’)

“Count then your blessings, hold in mind

All that has loved you or been kind:

Those women on their mercy missions,

Rescue work with kiss or kitchens,

Perceiving through the comic veil

The poet’s spirit in travail.

Gather the bits of road that were

Not gravel to the traveller

But eternal lanes of joy

On which no man who walks can die.”—Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “Prelude,” in Irish Poems, edited by Matthew McGuire (2011)

Photo of the Day: Korean Tetradium, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

In the picturesque Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, the Berkshire Botanical Garden is a particular delight—a bounty of beauty that is nature’s counterpart to the Daniel Chester French and Norman Rockwell Museums that are also in the town of Stockbridge.

Among the many items in this garden that caught my eye when I visited in late August 2017 was the Tetradium daniellii, or more commonly known as the Korean Tetradium. This rounded, dome shaped, tree, which can grow to 50 feet, is native to mountain woodlands of western China and Korea.

Quote of the Day (S.J. Perelman, on His Childhood Dental Care)

“Ever since Nature presented me at birth with a set of thirty-two flawless little pearls of assorted sizes, I never once relaxed my vigilant stewardship of same. From the age of six onward, I constantly polished the enamel with peanut brittle, massaged the incisors twice daily with lollipops, and chewed taffy and chocolate-covered caramels faithfully to exercise the gums. As for consulting a dentist regularly, my punctuality practically amounted to a fetish. Every twelve years I would drop whatever I was doing and allow wild Caucasian ponies to drag me to a reputable orthodontist. I guess you might say I was hipped on the subject of dental care.”—American humorist and screenwriter S.J. Perelman (1904-1979), “Dental or Mental, I Say It’s Spinach,” in The Most of S.J. Perelman (1958)

Quote of the Day (Poet Derek Mahon, on How ‘Everything Is Going To Be All Right’)

“How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.”—Irish poet Derek Mahon, “Everything is Going to be All Right,” from Selected Poems (1991)