another afternoon visitor.....

 taking a summer afternoon break

We have several cats that roam through our yard and sometimes stay for a while. This pretty cat wandered into the yard today as we all sat outside celebrating Canada Day. The cat strolled around the yard for a spell and then settled onto the bench at the back of the yard. I think she can sense the good energy that is a part of the garden. It seems to be as welcoming to her as it is for all of us. 

gardening my heart......

Ah.....this morning early I headed to my garden plot at the Community Garden site. It was early enough that I was able to enjoy the quiet time of just me and the garden although there was a beautiful cardinal that did keep me company for a while. The garden is new experience for me and it is a part of my country dream that I spoke of in my last post. I did grow up with a garden in our backyard but never took an interest in it. Now I have a big interest that began with the organizing of the Community Garden site. I wanted people to be able to experience the value of growing and eating good food. Initially it was more about them than me. The first year I didn't even have a plot. This year I have a plot with my daughter and we work on it together as a community of two and with the rest of the gardeners as a larger community. It works for everyone.

Our wonderful garden plot

growing like a garden should

If I had my home in the country I would have a garden just like this one. One where I can plant and water and weed and harvest. One that will feed my soul as well as my physical body. One that will inspire me to connect with the earth. This morning I was weeding along and could feel a blister beginning on my hand.......it didn't matter. I could feel the perspiration dripping off my nose........it didn't matter. I could feel the crink in my lower back........it didn't matter. I just need to be there with my hands in the dirt and a hoe in my hand. I need to pluck the weeds from the loosened soil and take them to the compost pile. I need to be among all those living plants and share in their beauty. It allows me to tend to the garden of my heart and for me that is a good thing. It's part of looking after myself after years of putting others first and pushing myself too far in other areas. The garden is a gift in so many ways for myself and it is a destination along the path of my life that is teaching me new lessons to live by. I love my little garden plot. It warms my heart and makes me smile..............

living in pretendia......

my morning walks' bounty

I came across this word 'pretendia' a while back and for some reason it resonates with me in terms of what I create in my pretend mind, but it by no means takes me away from my reality. Just an escape in my mind that serves me well in a particular instance. You might be wrinkling your forehead by now  wondering what on earth I am talking about, so let me explain.

My dream is to have a home in the country. It will be my dream home and will be a place where our children can come to visit with their children and make memories. I will walk the grounds and feel the peace and serenity around me. I see this as my dream and yet if I only focus on that dream then I am not living in my present moment also. So, I live in pretendia too. I live now in a relatively small city and have neighbors all around me. I have lived in this home for 18 years and it is the home that my children know the best. I love my home and it is always a work in progress to have it just the way I want it so that it feels warm and inviting for all. But I pretend that I live in the country :) My garden especially is the place where I envision the countryside. It is small, but it is so wonderful. I grew up in the country and my parents had a huge garden of both flowers and vegetables. Each evening after dinner they would go for a walk and look at all that was happening in the garden. I find myself now doing the same thing. Becoming familiar with each and every plant and looking for new leaves or buds. Maybe there is a new tomato starting to show itself in my container tomatoes or the basil is ready for picking. The lavender was just ready in time for my lavender lemonade experiment. Just several evenings ago the shasta daisies were only budding and ready to burst into bloom and now some of them are arranged in a vase. I took note yesterday of the purple clematis and how it changes from year to year in how it shows off its blooms. All of this is my way of living inside of my country dream before it happens and brings joy to my heart. I don't really know if my dream will ever come true, but I can live parts of it now and smile all the while.


Are you living your dream?

Namaste..........

where are we racing to...........

Have you noticed that most everything these days is done at a fast pace. We need to do things fast, get somewhere fast, work fast, eat fast, talk fast, listen fast and even to think fast. What are we doing? and why are we doing this to ourselves and setting this example for our children? I am one who was quite wrapped up in this for many years and still sometimes find myself in this state. A friend just yesterday told me that she was an expert at multi-tasking, which is another method of doing things fast. Doing several tasks quickly in an effort to get them all done. But why the need? Are we that short of time that we need to race through everything. We are rewarded for being able to multi-task though. We have been led to believe that it is a good thing when in fact I believe it is damaging. Our lives are running at full speed and I often wonder where it is we are all racing to. We are addicted to 'the fast lane' in many areas of our lives. We race through our morning routine with ourselves and the kids possibly so that we can get to work and move quickly through our work day. And then we need to race home to quickly put dinner on the table (or maybe not table and simply eat on the 'run') and then do who knows what during the evening (laundry, homework, errands, etc) to catch up on things that need to be done before the next day is upon us. This is all too much. Day in and day out of these habits will undoubtedly catch up with us either physically, psychologically or spiritually. It just will. But instead we have been brainwashed into thinking and believing that this is all a good thing. The more things you can check off your list the better a person you are. Whew!....makes me tired just thinking about it. We have been living with something called 'fast food' for years and years and to counteract that we have something called the 'slow food' movement. We need a movement to return ourselves back to 'real' food and how it benefits us and the planet. Once again we got caught up in the marketing of food that was based soley on brainwashing us into believing that fast was good. And we bought into it.

I know for me it was a way to 'accomplish' myself. I thought that with all that I could 'do' I would be seen as more valuable and worthy. So, for me it was personal and filling a need inside of myself. I look at others and wonder what their needs are and why they are racing through life. What are we missing out on though when we are racing through life. I'm sure we will say that we aren't missing anything, but we barely know that because we are simply moving too fast and wouldn't recognize it anyway. We have bought into the whole package of speed equaling personal power and reward. I'm just not so sure about this. Studies show that we are a frantic society. Studies show that we have more stress related illness than ever before. We are becoming bankrupt in our efforts to accomplish so much in such a small amount of time. The expression 'time is running out' is now so true. We are 'running' out of time to be able to change these habits in ourselves and turn a new page in our lives and how many pages are left to turn before the book is done. Can we affort to keep putting this off? When are we going to recognize all of this and make some changes. I know for myself it only happened when I saw that all this was making me sick......physically, psychologically and spiritually.
Inside of every moment there are only the same 60 seconds each time. It doesn't matter how fast we go, it is still only those same 60 seconds and if we try to fill that time with more and more we are going to lose alot. We must slow down.......we need to be more mindful, we need to see inside of the present moment and live in it. Once each and every moment is spent it is then history. It has been written and we can't go back to change it. We can though look at how we might spend our next moment and live it differently. We need to take the time to breathe........to slow down our lives and truly experience them in a way that won't look like a blur. For myself it has taken a long time to make the changes I needed to make. Some were big decisions that carried with them big consequences, but they were the biggest lessons too. I still have to be careful of my behaviors because life long habits and engrained patterns live long lives. Shaking them is sometimes hard. So I 'slowy' am slowing down my life and it is allowing me to breathe better, feel better and be a better person to myself first and then others. Half of my life is probably over and it took me this long to 'get it'. So the last half of my life will look different and thankfully so.

Start your own 'slow' movement and make the changes that you need to make and move forward in life. Start living life inside of each moment and feel each second of those 60. You will only have them one time. Yes, there is always another minute after the last one, but use it wisely. The old adage that states 'life is too short' is something we need to stop saying and start living today. I just don't want you to miss out on your life and hear you say that you wished you had had more time.....because you did have the time. We all did.

I wish for you joy in each moment.
Namaste.......

I'll be back tomorrow......I'm working the weekend with just one more day to go. See you then.....

falling rain.....

It's time for me to turn in for the night and the rain has begun again. It has been a day that has gone back and forth with sun and rain. To end the day with rain is perfect though because the sound is so very soothing to fall asleep with. I truly love the sound of the rain and especially at night. So tonight I am very fortunate to end my day with the gently falling rain. It is my gift at the end of a lovely day. Thank you for the rain for so many reasons...........

a lesson learned .......

my patient impatience

I have a flowerbed at the front of my house which is simply a bed for flowers. I bought a flat of impatience at least a week ago and it has sat nicely on my front porch since then. I was always going to get around to getting them in and yesterday it was on my list in my head to get them planted......well, it didn't happen. Yesterday was kind of a funny day all around and I was able to see inside of all of that later in the afternoon. I have a bad habit of self criticism that manages to beat my psychological self up quite well fairly frequently. This is something that is carried over from my childhood and I took over the reins when I moved out and became an adult. I have recently come to understand that this behavior is one that is one of the last lingering effects of my upbringing and I need to get a handle on it and let it finally go and I have been working on it for some time actually but in deeper areas. So this morning I wander into my back yard thinking about these flowers that are not yet planted and its like the lightbulb goes off! Here was this behavior again and these poor flowers were taking the brunt of it. All these little plants wanted was to be planted and show themselves off in all their glory......oh, and yes I do believe that plants have souls and are energetic beings. So when I realized that this old thought process had been revealed inside of this task, that was enough for me to grab the trowel and my gardening gloves and plant those wonderful little plants that had come home with me such a while ago. I marvel at how such a simple task can have such meaning wrapped up in it. 

A lesson learned for me and my reward is a beautiful flowerbed for the summer.