Easter 2010 will be remembered as one of the loveliest ever. [Do we say this each year.] Certainly the weather was perfect with sunny blue skies and warm temperatures. Holy Week services are uniquely beautiful and this year we had a musically gifted congregation to enhance each service and this year - at long last! - our faithful friends were provided with texts and our own music. The early Easter procession began in the dark, followed by the Matins hymns - an explosion of joy and light.

While our monastery is for us a haven of peace and prayer we know the world is filled with conflict and pain. We pray earnestly for the Church, our dear friends.

Spring seems truly to have arrived and with the intention of remaining! Being "spring" we watched it "come and go" over some weeks. Even now Canadian geese are honking, albeit, through sunny skies on their northbound flight. Beautiful bluebirds, robins and others are scouting around for places to nest. Daffodils, hyacinths, early tulips are some of the flowering bulbs which divert attention from spring mud, a bi-product of thawing mother earth. As we bid winter adieu we are grateful Sugarloaf was spared the snowfalls and extreme rain of neighboring areas.

Now our full attention will focus on the out-of-doors: yard clean-up, gardens to be renewed and planted. The Norwegian spruce trees have grown, so tall and majestic over these 33 years - albeit unnoticed. Growth requires time in every living organism, a Monastery included! We realize that thirty-three years have yielded a harvest of what-is-best-for-us in procedures proven suitable over these many decades.

Nine mares are soon to foal which increase of equine population has necessitated the enlargement of the small barn and a reduction in other areas and other species. We considered selling some sheep but will wait on this. Angora goats are extremely lovable but also rather fragile. Now we have just three large and lovely wethers and five ewes have new homes. We plan a more simple landscape, with increased number of perennials, will provide more time for livestock and for ourselves in other areas.

Alas! God provided a painful reduction in our canine family with the death of Twinkle, our beloved and beautiful three year old long-coat German Shepherd. He had cancer of the spleen. Soon we will have a link devoted to our unforgettable dynamo, the forever puppy, Tarantella Twinkle-toes.