Ladydale Diary
Saint Mathias, 2021
Small is beautiful! I’m not speaking of anything related directly to Schumacher’s book of that title, nor to my own book, Small is Still Beautiful, which was intended to offer a fresh look at Schumacher’s original pioneering defence of small businesses and small nations in a world of globalist giants and political empires.
No, small is also beautiful because of the new life that spring brings forth. This week, Susannah spotted a baby box turtle, or tortoise as we would call it in England (our family is bilingual!). The photograph shows the tortoise nestled in Evangeline’s hand. In Evangeline’s own words, it was not much bigger than a quarter.
As if this were not enough excitement for one week, Evangeline came running in a couple of days ago to tell us that she had spotted a baby armadillo, which had spooked one of the roosters. This was a first. Although we occasionally have box turtles on our property, this was the first time ever that we’d spotted an armadillo, of any size, let alone a cute micro-sized baby. We all dropped what we were doing and looked for it in the woods. Sure enough, we found it, rustling noisily like a miniscule tank through the undergrowth.
At lunchtime today, I ate my soup while watching a male downy woodpecker feeding its fledgling from our feeder.
Yesterday, while reading Chaucer on the deck in preparation for this morning’s online class, I saw a pair of courting great crested flycatchers. This was also the first time that I’ve ever seen this species (except in a book), at Ladydale or anywhere else.
The female rose breasted grosbeak is still with us. Every time we’ve seen grosbeaks in the past, and they’re usually males, it’s only for a couple of days as they stop to refuel during migration. This one has decided to stay, or so it seems. The sad news is that we’ve seen no sign of a male this year.
If the surprises of God’s creation have stolen the Ladydale headlines this week, it’s not because nothing else has been happening.
On Saturday, I had an evening at the Flying Inn, which is the name of the imaginary pub in which I occasionally meet some British friends, via Zoom, for several ales and good conversation. We met at 5pm Ladydale time, which is 10pm in the UK, and we didn’t say our goodbyes until 7:30 Ladydale time, which was after midnight for my friends. It’s not the same as being with them in the flesh in a real English pub but it’s the next best thing. We’ve called our virtual pub the Flying Inn in honour of Chesterton’s novel of that title.
On Sunday we hosted some friends whom we know from church immediately after Mass. Ale on the deck in the glorious spring sunshine followed by a mild chicken korma in the dining room.
As for the working week, it’s been business as usual. On the writing front, I wrote three essays: one on slavery (in all its guises) for the Imaginative Conservative; one on The Aeneid for Crisis Magazine; and the last on the Church in China for Catholic World Report.
I’ve also finished all the editing of the next issue of the St. Austin Review, which is on the theme of “Poland: Europe’s Heroic Heart”, and have delivered everything to the graphic designer.
This morning, I gave my weekly interview on the Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio. We’re now working our way through my anthology, Poems Every Catholic Should Know, and we discussed Dante, culminating in my reading of the hymn to the Virgin in the final canto of The Divine Comedy. And then, a couple of hours later, I taught the third of four classes on mediaeval English literature for Red Cultural, concluding our discussion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and commencing our discussion of The Canterbury Tales. After that, I headed to the gym for a much-needed workout, returning to record the podcasts for the Inner Sanctum, one of which is on the aforementioned Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. That brings us to now!
I began with the exclamation that small is beautiful. I’ll end by saying that life is good because small is beautiful, whether it be the Babe in the manger or the babe in the womb, or the baby animals in the woods. Thanks be to God for tiny things!
