The Heart of the Family - Elizabeth Goudge - Book Review

4 stars

This book is a lot more introspective than the other books in this series. It deals gently with the darker side of personality and experience. Because of this, it isn't an easy read. You have to really concentrate to follow the philosophical wonderings of each character, and so it isn't a book to read when you are tired. I kept having to re-read sections to grasp what was being said. Therefore, it isn't as 'enjoyable' but certainly worth it.

We need trees

So, my love of trees is two-fold.

1. God created trees to be the lungs of the world, we need them for life on this planet.
2. The writers of the scriptures regularly use trees as a metaphor represent the life of God in the Bible.

So here is an article from National Geographic, which contains a video that is just astounding:

The Earth has Lungs Watch them Breathe

First you see NASA's video showing carbon dioxide emissions, from various Western countries, swirling in the air.

But the moment June hits...

"That’s the month when trillions upon trillions of leaves are opening, growing, and starting to breathe, and what you will see in the video is their collective breath literally cleaning the sky. This video begins in January, but keep watching till we hit June (then July, then August). It’s like the world’s northern forests become a giant vacuum cleaner, scouring the air, sucking down the CO2 till around November."

*eye roll*

From: Jooleeah_stahkey - Flickr

I made the mistake of looking up what people were saying about a particular topic on Twitter...big mistake. There's a lot of hate and nastiness and weird conspiracy rumours out there. Yuk. It makes me so cross, but also looking at some of the arguments made against reasonable evidence you just think, "Why bother?"

As Winston Churchill said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." and the irony about that quote is that it probably wasn't made by Winston but the internet said it did.

I think I'll just go look at kitten videos for a bit and make some tea.

L has been cooking up a treat!

Amazing homemade tortilla chips and salsa both made by L. Yummy!! And spicy! *phew*

Another of the joys of home education is that children can learn so many different life skills that they would never pick up at school.  Oh they do 'food technology' (what?) at school but they could never just choose something they wanted to learn to make and then make it.

Rainy day walk

L and I had a lovely soggy, rainy day walk out on the hills today.

This is one of the joys of home education.  Freedom to enjoy the wonders around us!

Froggy was not impressed that we nearly stood on her frogspawn!  This was in a big puddle in one of the fields we crossed.

Almost to the top of our wellies!

You're never too old to splash in puddles!

Beauty all around

Beautiful beach sunset

We decided last minute to visit a local(ish) beach to watch the sun set.

It was certainly worth it.

The beauty of creation.

Snow!

Oh my goodness, I just love snow.

L calls the snow drifts - 'snow dunes', hahaha.

We had to pop out to the shop as there was a dire emergency!  We'd run out of coffee!!  The horror!