Musical Spring

a few unrelated items, otherwise, not a whole lot new going on these days. we are coming up on my favorite month, which will arrive this time next week. the thing that i love about the month of april is that it gets more and more beautiful with each passing day! i always thought that if i were to stand perfectly still on any given day, i would be able to actually SEE things growing! right now, as the tiny leaf-buds are casting a lime haze, interspersed with a reddish haze, it's as if an air hose flung out of God's hands and sporadically sprayed a very light mist of color on the bare branched trees. try it--go ahead, i'll wait here for you; go look to the horizon at the bare trees. see it? see the lime and raspberry mist dusting the landscape? it's the promise of growth and color to burst forth! every day in april, it will become more pink, more green, more yellow, more white, more purple, more, more, more...and MORE! my advice for everyone is to stop! stop (at least) once a day, just to see how everything looks brighter and prettier than it did the day before. that's your homework assignment for april.

now then, i am amusing myself in new ways since the arrival of my new "toy!" well, it is far from a toy really! but anything that i buy that i don't consider a necessity, i refer to as a toy. but this is a genuine musical instrument; one that has several names actually. the older name is zither; it is also sometimes called a chromaharp (which is actually the brand name). and i call it an autoharp. i first played one "a thousand years ago" in elementary school. then back in the early 80's i strummed a bit, and now just really had the hankerin' to get one.

it was a bit of a nightmare and took 6 long weeks, but i picked it up this week and have been THOROUGHLY en-JOY-ing the sounds ever since. i surprised myself by actually being a little better at playing it than i recall doing in the 80's. the sound is so, so lovely. it is soothing and soft on the ears and melodic and beautiful. and one of the nice things is that it is not bothersome to anyone because it is not particularly a loud instrument. if i use the picks, the sound is much louder. but if i strum with my finger it is a quiet, un-obtrusive, personal kind of music. i was upstairs the other day, playing and strummin' away, singing to me and my cat! next thing i knew, two hours had passed! o my! two wonderful, fun, worshipful hours. music is SUCH A JOY! it lightens any load.