Solemnity of the Annunciation

Today was a lovely day and full of unexpected things to meditate on. We were playing outside in the sun and I heard the mourning doves, who have recently returned, cooing for the first time today...reminding me of the Holy Spirit that Mary conceived by. Teresa noticed the first flowers blooming today, Speedwell, aka Our Lady's Resting Place, which I wrote about last year, and which reminded me of Mary. Although we didn't plan this ahead of time, it also happens to be seven weeks before the last frost, so we planted our tomato seeds this evening. I thought it was appropriate that we had purchased, soaked and were ready to plant our seeds today, as Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb. (If you want to read about everything we are going to plant and *try* to grow in our huge garden, click over to Our Big Backyard.)


*Domenico Beccafumi Annunciation 1545, Sienna

The only "planned" thing that we did was having waffles for dinner because The Solemnity of the Annunciation is also International Waffle Day: "International Waffle Day (March 25) originated in Sweden where it is called Våffeldagen. It occurs nine months to the day before Christmas - the day the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant." We didn't have authentic Swedish Waffles, but the Egg-Free variety because I really didn't plan ahead and we were out of eggs. Surprisingly, we liked these better than the cakey ones that require eggs.

Finally, we are going to spiritually adopt an unborn baby...or six. We'll pray for our babies and their parents each night and at the end of nine months, we'll donate Christmas presents to CSS. (A ticker for our babies is way at the bottom of the page...