Four of a Kind

Dear Diary,

I adore turtles.  Frogs too of course but there is something about turtles that is so appealing to me.  Their slow, steady unhurried progress and the way they can retreat into their protective shells when threatened.  They are the introverts of the pond.  When I want to see these charming creatures I visit my friends cabin near my house, high up on the mountain.  They have created a pond that has become a sanctuary for both turtles and frogs.

Sometimes there are as many as a dozen turtles sunning themselves on the log, which was thoughtfully placed there by my friends for just this purpose.  Turtles need all the help they can get too since  habitat destruction is a real problem around here.  I'm so pleased that they have this quiet and safe place to live their lives.  We all wish for that.

I have been typing up little meditations to place in the box in my garden.  I am taking most of them from Joan Chittister's wonderful book, The Gift of Years.  One yesterday really resonated with me:

"By not telling those who follow us the stories of what it took to get here, we fail the harvest of our own life and the plowing days of theirs."

Through our journals we are harvesting, day by day, bits of our lives and through our writing we are passing on the story and that is a very good thing I think.

UPDATE:  A bit of serendipity!  Today happens to be World Sea Turtle Day!  While these little guys are obviously not sea turtles they are still sweetness in a half shell!  One of my greatest memories is swimming with a sea turtle in St. John, USVI.  So, another reason to "shellabrate'!