My husband built me a new desk as one of the final projects in our house renovation. It sits right in front of a window overlooking one of the original apple trees on our forty year old property. Two weeks ago the tree started to bloom. It is a stunning thing - it looks gorgeous yes, but more than that it is the smell - delicate and sweet. When you stand under it you can feel the way the whole tree is absolutely alive with hundreds of bees buzzing among the blossoms.

This picture isn't from this year. I kept meaning to get a shot but didn't get my camera out in time. A rain storm we really needed washed them away before I anticipated in the midst of an overfilled week. This picture isn't from last year either because last year I was depressed and reeling from death. It's a quick one I snapped on my phone from the year before and all three of my kiddos are there, enjoying the gift of the blooms and the rain showers, tinier than it seems they ever were.

Two years can go by just like that. I've been told and I've seen it myself, the truth that days (especially if they are dark) can drag on and on and on. Yet somehow I was just rocking my last baby under the stars and now she is about to be five.

I haven't written much here the past year but it feels like it is time again. Time to bring some presence back to this place where I like to reflect about love and life and God and belovedness.

One way I'm going to ease myself in without feeling a need to be too serious or too wordy is a summer series. I'm calling it 'Summer is for...' Just a photo or two with a few words. A chance to capture a few moments of gratitude and a few memories for the future hopefully once a week or so because summer is for savouring.

Summer is for biking in the middle of the day under gorgeous skies just because it is fun and we have nothing else to do.

Summer is for reading bedtime stories in the gazebo while the sun goes down.

Summer is for little girls with pink toenails.

Summer is for new life.

(If you blog or instagram I'd love to see what you are using your summer for too.)

Emily Dickinson wrote: "Hope is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -"

Today is the first Sunday of advent in my faith tradition. Advent is thought of as a time to spend preparing ourselves for the birth of Jesus - the four weeks before Christmas. It's a time of new beginning. Each week has a word associated with it and the first week is always hope.

For a few months I've been listening most days to this podcast called Pray As You Go. It's not for everyone (in many season's it wouldn't have been for me) but right now the contemplative, liturgical style is giving me peace and connection. It always has the same format: song, scripture reading, questions for contemplating, scripture reading again, song and benediction.

This morning's podcast for the first Sunday in advent started with a traditional song asking for Jesus coming and calling on Jesus during the hard and dark times in life. The reading was Mark 13:33-37 which is a parable about being awake not asleep when Jesus comes. They had us ponder what kind of a year we have had. What stands out. What does Jesus want me to wake up to? What do I need more of and what do I need less of?

When I thought about what stood out to me this year the words the words came fast: depression, death, injustice, anxiety, survival, coping, irritability. Ambivalence. Heaviness.

All this to say - I disagree with Ms. Dickinson. Hope has feathers but it's singing can also be stopped.

I haven't written much here because depression being new to me took me months to figure out and then several more months where I was trying to dig myself out and recover. Months where I mostly felt myself but had a few low periods again too. And let's face it, it's hard for me to be vulnerable in my day to day life, never mind on the internet.

But it's advent and I believe in hope, even when I can't feel it beating or singing. I'm questing for hope this week as part of my advent pondering. And I'm writing about depression linked with my advent journey because this year I can't separate the two.

'The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under it's roof.' Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams