Water Lily Pad Tiles - Placid Lake, Montana

 ...like so many roof tiles overlapping atop a mermaid family's cozy home...

Still Water Lily Pads - Placid Lake, Montana

"....I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water...."

-from The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

(Listen here - even repeatedly, as I did! - to the author read this dose of utter loveliness and calm. I try not to gush, but Wendell Berry is SO gush-worthy...)

Water Lilies - Placid Lake, Montana

"....Fair beds they seem’d of water-lily flakes

Clustering entrancingly in beryl lakes...."

-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), from "A Vision of the Mermaids"

Leave Room For The Unknown -

"We don't really actually have that kind of control... our utter impatience with the unknown is, I think, a real liability for having the stamina to deal with this extraordinarily difficult time. I mean, I don't begrudge anybody, their terror of the unknown...remarking as a historian, I think there's a kind of shift... nobody has any idea what's going to happen next, you know, from the weather to anything else." - Jill Lepore, in CBC's The Current 6/9/2020 interview