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Black Coffee

April 21, 2014 //
0

When I was wee I thought coffee was simply the most horrible thing grown ups had come up with for self-torture. Adulthood had to be fraught with peril for that foul black brew to be anything but deserved for some great wrong-doing, possibly to children. It was bitter. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It just wasn’t good. That’s where I left coffee until I joined the Army.

On a humid, hot, Alabama morning, dizzy with fatigue, and dehydration, I slouched over my breakfast tray in the mess hall – first Army breakfast, first morning of basic training; I just wanted a cool shower and to go back to bed. I was very certain that the whole ‘join the Army’ decision was a huge mistake. While I sat there staring at my uneaten breakfast, toying with the scrambled eggs while I toyed with questions about my judgement as an adult, a drill sergeant’s shadow fell over me, and a white ceramic mug entered my view. The burly man-voice in my ear followed the too-loud-for-this-to-be-real clack of ceramic mug to table with a hearty “drink this, soldier, you’re going to need it!”  Hesitant to do anything to rouse the ire of a drill sergeant, I put the mug to my lips and took a taste. I know what I expected, I know what I got.

For years after that, I drank coffee – with sugar and half n half – like my body was 60% coffee, rather than water. lol I’ve quit once or twice, when my consumption got so ludicrous it had the potential to affect my health. I’ve spent months at a time on decaf, and always gone back to the real thing, eventually.  Years ago I found my way to really good coffee: exceptional beans, from verified sources, well-roasted by local craftspeople, really fresh, ground-to-purpose just prior to use; really exceptional coffee is a very different experience from the Yuban and Folgers my Mom drank when I was a child.  More time passed, and I eventually found my way to buying my own espresso machine; everyone in the house favored really good coffee, espresso beverages, and it was both a better value, and more consistent quality to have our own machine and learn to pull really good shots. Lattes every morning have been the thing, for a long time.

This morning I drink my coffee black.

This morning I drink my coffee black.

In this all adult household, more than one of us is off dairy, either temporarily, or for the long haul.  It’s a recent thing. For me it is likely temporary, but this morning, I am drinking black coffee. It’s been a while since that has been my early morning practice. The taste of coffee is so different without the smooth ease and luxury of a little cream, the sweetness of a bit of sugar.  On top of the simple change to unadorned blackness in my morning cup, we had also run out of our preferred morning beans (if you’re curious, that’s Ristretto Roaster’s ‘Beaumont Blend’ these days).  A quick walk over to the local grocer, and our weekend coffee was assured, but they don’t carry Ristretto Roaster. I got a couple other roaster’s beans for the weekend, and the beans of Saturday and Sunday were by far more pleasant than the beans of this morning, which are strangely reminiscent of Army coffee in the 80s.

So…I write about coffee, this morning. The taste of it, the memories, the importance of the experience… It’ll be black coffee for a while, at least a week, maybe longer.

There are other exciting bits and pieces. My visit to The Grotto on Saturday was lovely, and I got some amazing pictures. It was mildly disappointing, too, because although it is a garden for meditation, contemplation, and even advertised that way, it was quite crowded with large-ish extended families visiting (probably due to the Easter weekend) and they were more boisterous, and louder, than I expected or found pleasant. Gangs of giggling high school girls taking selfies and sharing social network items vocally while they lagged their parents steps were distracting, and quarrelsome couples, or people with fussy children, took the potential for real stillness right out of the experience. It was still worth doing. I got some great pictures, and enjoyed exploring the features on my new camera phone.

Symbols, and messages, in the forest.

Symbols, and messages, in the forest.

It poured down rain the entire time I walked the paths and explored The Grotto. The Stations of the Cross are not my symbols, but the powerful arrangement and beautiful statuary were moving, even so.

There were also flowers that hinted at love...

There were also flowers that hinted at love…

And the soft light filtered through rain and clouds made some blossoms seem luminous.

And the soft light filtered through rain and clouds made some blossoms seem luminous.

Colors stood out from the lush greenery, seeming magical and more exotic than 'real life'.

Colors stood out from the lush greenery, seeming magical and more exotic than ‘real life’.

From a distance, even symbols that are not 'mine' might speak to me of things that matter.

From a distance, even symbols that are not ‘mine’ might speak to me of things that matter.

It was a lovely spring weekend. Flowers, fellowship, and love generally make for a fine weekend I think.

Simple flowers, a rainy day.

Simple flowers, a rainy day.

I took a lot of pictures. The lingering sensation for me is that the pictures somehow capture things I didn’t experience in-the-moment, that day. It is strange to look at them later, and feel those feelings that were missed in the din of chattering school girls, arguing in-laws, and assorted people who’d only come along ‘because it matters so much to her‘. I wonder for a moment, if the ‘her’ I heard referenced so often is a mother, a grandmother, an in-law, or… the woman for whom The Grotto exists, in the first place? She is of many faiths, many religions, many followers; she is woman, herself.

A powerful symbol of life, of love, of family; a woman and child.

A powerful symbol of life, of love, of family; a woman and child.

Well, Spring, that was lovely. Let’s do it again, sometime. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Spring, women, Words

“Tell Me of Your Home World, Usul”

April 13, 2014 //
0

We have language. It’s one of the interesting features of the creatures that we are, and of our experience. Words have extraordinary power; our understanding of the world, and of our lives and who we are, rest heavily on the words we choose to express that understanding.

We even understand how limiting that can be, and our understanding is portrayed in a simple bon mot, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  We love words, we use words, even knowing our words cannot tell the entire tale.

Atlas?

Atlas?

I probably use too many words. Even using so many, I sometimes find myself struggling for clarity, or to express myself accurately. Precision and poetry are two very different tools to tell a tale. I tend to be very frank, to the point of lacking common boundaries. I also tend to favor ‘pretty’ language, to the point of sacrificing clarity for something that ‘sounds better’ to me. My TBI has a thing or two to say about the way I use language and why, another tale for a different day. I bet it can be difficult for people to understand me, more often than I’m aware.

I’ve been more about questions than answers for a while now… how nice for me, I suppose, only… some questions function best immediately preceding an actual answer. lol I mean… “How do I get to the train station?” is likely to be most efficiently followed by actual directions, or a simple “I don’t know” than anything else.  I’m honestly not sure I’d do that well on it, if it were a test.  With me it might be something more like this:

Person “How do I get to the train station?”

Me “I rarely ride the train, these days, although I prefer it to flying. Well, unless you count the commuter trains…”

Person “How do I get there?”

Me “You’d have to get downtown. If you want Amtrak.  If you’re just using the light fail, you could grab it a lot of places. Where are you going?”

Person “To the train station. How do I get there?”

Me “To the train station? Or down town?”

Person “To the train station!”

Me “Oh, the same way as if you were going to go down town – you take the light rail.”

Person “Where do I catch the light rail to the train station?”

Me “Right here.”

Once upon a time at a train station...

Once upon a time at a train station…

Oh, yeah. So me. I do try to answer the questions I am asked as simply as possible, although it wasn’t something on my radar until a couple years ago. I often thought it was strange how jacked up people could get over ‘a simple conversation about a [train station]’.  Someone who loves me very much, enough to care that I be able to communication easily with other people, finally sat down with me and explained what he saw in our conversations – with actual sketches, diagramming of sentences, and propositional calculus; I got it.  Fixing it is an entirely different matter. Sometimes it is as basic as a preferred sentence structure, a syntactical detail, that confounds real understanding simply by being unexpected to the listener, or inexplicably uncommon in general speech. lol Sometimes ‘pretty’ gets in the way of conveying information. Pretty is distracting.

One of the bits of weirdness I am working on is a clear preference verbally for ‘phrasing things in the negative’. For example, if asked “How are you?”, I would be more likely to say “Not bad, thanks!” than “Good, thanks!”.  It’s pretty consistent with a variety of types/intentions of questions, too. I regularly reply to questions using negatively phrased replies, that seem to satisfy the question, mostly by way of dismissing it, rather than providing information. I don’t think I have a spare lifetime to study the phenomenon, instead I am simply working on changing how I reply to questions.

(Is it important whether the challenge I have with answering questions is a byproduct of a traumatic upbringing, or a brain injury? How many hours of my life have I wasted trying to source something solely because I wasn’t satisfied with it, instead of simply acknowledging my dissatisfaction and acting to change?)

The title? Oh, that – well, simply this: Dune would have been a very different movie, wouldn’t it, if, when Paul is asked “Tell me of your home world, Usul,”  he had replied “It’s not like here.”  I realized, upon considering it, that finding balance, contentment, satisfaction, and meaning is a different journey, and a different experience, when I am living what it is – rather than what it is not.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Words

The Perfectly Miserable Man

April 9, 2014 //
5

There’s this guy…

…Oh, hey, some ground rules, first. I’m pretty human and I have my share of petty moments; it matters to me to be compassionate, to be aware that we are each having our own experience, and to do my best to be non-judgmental. I see human behavior. Being human, myself, I have some. I don’t always understand it, and liking words I often want to describe it. Today, too. So, this one is more a character study than a judgement, and I’ll do my best to attend to my phrasing. 🙂

Each of us is having our own experience.

Each of us is having our own experience.

There’s this guy I see regularly on my commute to work, in the morning. I usually see him near the coffee stand. Days when I see him, I’m struck by how much I want to ‘type-cast’ him. He has a very ‘East Coast vibe’. He also strikes me as the essence of The Perfectly Miserable Man. I feel a bit sad for him, generally, because on any given day he seems stressed to the breaking point, and entirely and completely miserable. He also conveys some other things through his discontent tone. He seems angry, disagreeable, and entitled. I wonder each time I see him what it is about life that sucks so much for him that he finds the will to be that miserable.

I’m not being mean. A day or two ago, I walked up to the coffee stand, and gave the gentleman who runs it my order, a latte. Between my words, and the barista’s reply, The Perfectly Miserable Man rushed up, inserted himself physically between me, and the counter, and barked at the barista “Do you have half and half?”. It was obvious the barista was as startled as I was, and didn’t quite hear what this other potential customer had said. He replied, courteously enough, “I’m sorry?”  The Perfectly Miserable Man doesn’t have time for polite trivialities, and went on a tirade about the intelligence of the barista, his honesty, his work skills, then turned attention to the sorry state of the world, and his own misery that he could be treated so badly by one and all. It was damned eloquent. Part of me also found it… hilarious. It was illuminating. I could see The Perfectly Miserable Man building his exquisite misery in front of me, a word at a time. Escalating emotionally in the absence of any stimulus outside his own creation – highly efficient. Sad, too, because he could choose differently, and have a very different experience.

Once the barista understood that The Perfectly Miserable Man was asking for free half and half for coffee he hadn’t purchased there – actually, he hadn’t purchased anything on that day – the barista politely, and rather graciously, apologized that he didn’t have the stock on hand to give away half and half.  The Perfectly Miserable Man wasn’t satisfied with that and flung more than offered a dollar for some half and half. The barista asked how much he wanted, still being polite, and when The Perfectly Miserable Man indicated about a tablespoon, the barista handed over the carafe of half and half.

The story doesn’t really end there. I might not have been sitting around mulling this over if it had. The Perfectly Miserable Man accepted the half and half, managing to be rude, dismissive, and confrontational about it. Then he poured about 6 ounces of half and half into an empty cup, and put it into his lunch box, for later. He crossly muttered the entire time about the service, the cream, the day, having to pay for cream as a customer, the weather, the timing of the bus, and quite a few other things it never occurred to me qualified as complaints. He doesn’t mutter quietly, either. His words are obviously intended to be heard – and any overt recognition, eye contact, change of expression, is likely to result in a more directed bit of misery. He is so completely miserable.

I don’t actually get it, and I’ve started to look for him on the way to work. Some qualities and characteristics can be difficult to study, to understand, because subtleties require some prerequisite knowledge. I’ve certainly been miserable. I’ve grown to understand how much choice is involved in that.  Growing further, and learning to make different choices and not live an experience steeped in misery is worth doing. The Perfectly Miserable Man gives me some interesting life curriculum – he works really hard at misery, and is clearly very successful at it. I don’t need to know why to appreciate the rare opportunity to see it, study it. Seriously? This guy’s misery is on a level of real craftsmanship! Without fail, every time I see him on the way to work, he is miserable, and acting on it with his will, and demonstrating it for his community… I wonder each morning that I don’t see him, if perhaps I can’t recognize him if he isn’t miserable, and I overlook him when he’s having a good day? lol.

Not judging; it sucks to see him suffer, and I want to share that it doesn’t have to be that way.  I also recognize that he’s his own being, on his own path. He gets to make his own choices. I hope he gets some good days. I appreciate that his misery is a powerful demonstration I can study from afar.

I’ve been miserable. I don’t like the feelings that are part of misery. When I am not miserable, I can see quite clearly how much will and choice go into maintaining misery. When I feel miserable, I find it very hard to make choices that free me, even when I can clearly see it is a matter of choice. Misery is some nasty shit. I definitely want to learn the skills, and build my will, to improve my ability to be resilient in the face of moments of misery. It doesn’t look like The Perfectly Miserable Man enjoys life.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Words

OMG – It’s AWESOME!

April 6, 2014 //
1
Did you see that house?? Wow – check out that car! Designer clothes…limited edition printings…specialized or customized decor…exotic rare flavors, places, experiences… What do you aspire to? More? Much more? Go big or go home! Dream big! Shoot for the moon! More…further…better…
A wow moment on an ordinary day.

A wow moment on an ordinary day.

No wonder I feel so pushed sometimes. It’s a very big world, and there are so many opportunities, so many wonders, and challenges, so many things to try or experience – I guess I’m not surprised that so many folks chase some dragon or another, looking to fulfill themselves, or achieve one goal or outdo some standard or expectation, hit a noteworthy benchmark, impress someone, or climb some mountain, ladder, or heap.
Soap bubbles are also 'real'.

Soap bubbles are also ‘real’.

I know a man with a spectacular home. He bought it for his own reasons, perhaps because his last home wasn’t ‘enough’. He shopped a long while before he found what he was looking for. I still don’t really understand his choice. He bought a mammoth home, worthy of being called ‘an estate’, well off the everyday beaten path, and far out of view of any sight of ‘economic distress’ in a place of exquisitely preserved nominally natural loveliness… it’s huge. Quite large. Well and good, of course, for his substantial family… wait… no, he lives alone, generally. He has just one child (living far away), and no likelihood of grandchildren, not even a dog by his side. Many rooms, much square footage, and more than much else, it boldly states ‘here lives a man who is economically successful’. It’s very fancy. His own tastes, as a man, seem quite simple. He has worked hard and as much as his understanding of the world permits, he is an ethical and good man. He seems mild of temperament, professionally competent, and decent. He tends to be modest and self-effacing when confronted directly, or in conversation, by ‘someone better’ than he sees himself; it is clear that the superiority in question is a matter of financial success. He treats a man with more money as likely to be simply smarter, wiser, more right more often, in a word – better.  If success is measured in dollars, square footage, rarity, or exclusivity, then perhaps a very grand house is an excellent value in communicating that success to the world.
This says something about who we are.

This says something about who we are.

What does that house mean? Oh – not to him, because how that house meets his needs, or what value it has for him, isn’t really relevant to me at all. Not my house. Not my family. Not my measure of success. It’s just an anecdote about a guy with a house.
The basics, walls, windows, a roof, a door.

The basics, walls, windows, a roof, a door.

When I was much younger, in my 20s, I loved shoes, and clothes, and traveling to destinations; most of my disposable income went to those opportunities. I aspired to all sorts of ‘greatness’ and hit the mark once in a while, and struggling and suffering when I didn’t. I pushed myself hard and continuously to ‘succeed’. I defined success based on a number of things that were economic in nature, and certainly each of us is free to define success in our own way… only… I wasn’t doing that, at all. I was defining success as I had been told to define it, based on someone else’s measure of success. (I think we all start there.) Many of us find our own way to re-defining success in our own terms. (I did, eventually.) The discovery that ‘clothes don’t matter’ was an important game-changer for me. I came home from war substantially changed of mind and heart, and on the scale of clothes and shoes it was obvious.  It took a while longer and a house to teach me why ‘clothes don’t matter’, and the nature of sufficiency. I’m still learning.
"Kuwait; Oil Fires" 26" x 48" oil on silk.

“Kuwait; Oil Fires” 26″ x 48″ oil on silk.

Funny thing, though… that house… You see, having a home, a place of my own, somewhere I could always come back to, however far I strayed, somewhere to count on… that has been a measure of success for me, for a very long time.  I get excited about fancy big homes with ‘tons of features’, so much so that I recently allowed myself to be entirely de-railed from a thoughtful, reasoned, careful house-hunting process by the dangled temptation of something bigger, better, fancier… more. More than I need, for sure. I noticed when it happened, but the pure addictive delight of the daydream in front of me was intoxicating, and fully distracting from something far far more important to me – ‘enough’. An important lesson in attending closely to my own needs, my own goals.
It's a trap!

It’s a trap!

Sufficiency. Contentment.

Sure, I suppose a million-dollar home in an exclusive gated community of like-minded individuals surrounded by landscaped scenery, safe behind efficient alarm systems, and deeply invested in society by way of a hefty mortgage would be one way to shout “I am a success!” to the world. Having a big house with plenty of room, and rooms, and features, and space, and customized to suit my taste for color and design would be very aesthetically pleasing, and potentially very comfortable and satisfying. It might satisfy some wants, fulfill some desires, even meet some needs. It would answer a very different question than “What is enough?”

For me, a grand house could not be described as ‘necessary’. It would not be about ‘meeting my needs’, and however often words about needs might be spoken by someone with the money to buy such a grand house, a house like that is not likely to be about needs. A house like that is about wants, and wanting, about craving, acquisition, and fighting discontent with possessions, and communicating status to the world. What need does one human being have for a house of many rooms, many bathrooms, many many square feet, broad expanses of lawn, yard, or acreage, neatly landscaped, arranged, and managed in accordance with the community covenants and homeowner’s association guidelines? I firmly assert again, it is not about needs, or meeting needs, at all.

I know what I need. I need enough. Sufficiency. Safe, secure, sheltered from inclement weather, adequate protection from the unknown intentions of those who might wish me ill, a place where I feel nurtured, at ease, content, and ‘at home’. I need a home, far more than I need a house. I’ve lived in reasonable comfort for months in a tent, in good company, well-provisioned, and feeling both safe and secure. I’m pretty sure ‘my real-estate’ in that circumstance measured something like 20 sq ft. The more-than-dozen of us sharing that tent had about 500 sq ft together. It seemed, at the time, rather generous. Most of the time it felt like ‘enough’. Clearly ‘enough’ isn’t about square footage, stone walls, expanses of lawn, HOA by-laws, elegant roof-lines, granite counters, upgrade appliances, or gated communities. What is ‘enough’? What is ‘home’?

One of the flavors of 'home'.

One of the flavors of ‘home’.

Home. Yeah. Home is high on my list of priorities. Getting there is just starting to peek over the horizon on my vast to-do list of personal growth, and desirable achievements…and I don’t even know yet everything I ‘need’ to measure my success there… other than ‘enough’.  Excess is a burden. Delighting in excess is a fast track to being a shitty human being. lol.
What's your pleasure?

What’s your pleasure?

I probably wouldn’t be a really first-rate minimalist. I’ll be honest about that. I like some luxuries, and my aesthetic preferences result in the possession of the occasional object or two without purpose beyond beauty, but there, too; I call the shots on my idea of success, and only I truly know what meets my needs, and what those needs are, and why. I recognize the possibility that some solitary person with vast wealth might truly ‘need’ a huge grand house of many rooms filled to the rafters with carefully placed exquisite objects that reflect their taste and experiences, reminders of other things and moments, and perhaps such vast wealth truly results in a life so well-lived that the accumulated possessions truly fill such a grand house in a predictable and commonplace way. It’s possible. I have books, paintings, paperweights… having space to display them might seem a necessity from some perspectives, and certainly practical objects like books lose value when they are boxed up, labeled, and put into storage. I would be less satisfied to be without books, and the wee library space I have put together in my current house satisfied my heart when I finished that project. If I had more books, I’d ‘need’ more space. It’s not quite the sort of ‘need’ I’m really on about, though… and the small library I have is just bookshelves along a wall in a mostly unused corner. It meets my needs. It is enough.

I’m spending some time reconsidering my discontent in all manner of things, and the questions I am asking myself are ‘What do I really need?’ and ‘What is enough?’ I have never found contentment – or happiness – in ‘more’, ‘bigger’, ‘better’, or ‘further’. I have found it in sufficiency, in appreciation, in gratitude. I may want ‘more’, I only need ‘enough’.

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Categories Anxiety, Art, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Uncategorized, Words

Slug Life

February 23, 2014 //
0

My work in the garden continues. It’s mostly ‘winter work’; tasks that get the garden started in spring, like pruning, getting beds ready for bulbs, cleaning up this and that, making room for my hopes and dreams, and seeing my vision of the garden come alive as the weather warms and the days grow long. I spend so many gray winter hours leafing through garden catalogs, scribbling on graph paper, asking partners odd questions about colors, forms, scents, and placement. I garden all year long.

Gardening has a lot in common with self-growth. This year I explore so much more of this with my eyes wide open, aware, observing, learning. I’m not going after some illusive standard of perfection; I love having my hands in the soil, connecting with living things, and simply enjoying the timeless wonder and delight of the garden. I have roses, herbs, bulbs, vines, trees, things for sun, things for shade, things that bear fruit, things that fill the air with wonderful fragrance…and two little chairs and a small table. On pleasant days I love to sit with my morning latte as the day unfolds, listening to peeping little frogs, chattering squirrels, the strident cry of the neighborhood hawk, and the songs of assorted little birds. It’s all very ordinary, I suppose, certainly the words don’t tell the tale with any power to really connect to the experience.

There have been years of my life when my garden was the entirety of my fragile hold on sanity. It isn’t fair to make a small plot of earth and a few vegetables and flowers do the heavy lifting involved in keeping me connected to what is good in life, but my garden has been there for me when I needed it, and never failed me. The garden connects me to my Granny, a woman of incredible will, wisdom, and humanity. It connects me to my Dad, too. I have no idea how old I was the first time I pulled weeds in the garden, but the first summer I did so for my Dad was early in 1973, I think. I remember sitting on the recently tilled ground, fretfully crushing clumps of dirt, instead of weeding, when I thought no one was watching – and mumbling about indentured servitude. I wasn’t exactly a fan of manual labor, and preferred the quiet of my room, and the excitement of a good book.  When adulthood hit me with tsunami-force after I joined the Army, it was the gardening that I yearned for, it was the gardening that I sought out for solace, and time and again even my life overseas found me with my hands in soil – potted plants on apartment balconies, tiny window box gardens, or a tree in a pot on a patio.

Seeds, like ideas, begin so small. They sit quietly, without evidence of their future size or usefulness, and wait. They wait for their moment. They wait for conditions to be right. Timeless and impersonal, they are still and small, all potential.  I love planting by seed.

The front garden is nice. Trim and pretty tidy, with a bit of brick path, another bit of slate path curving around the side, some shade, a lot of sun, and the small patch of lawn that is the suburban hallmark of home ownership. I brought in more (and different) roses, colorful wildflowers, pots of herbs, more roses, and feeders for hummingbirds and songbirds.  I love taking a garden space, and seeing it change over time as plants, and ideas, are added.  This spring I started big. Along the brick walk has been a low evergreen hedge of heather, and I like it ‘well enough’ I guess… perhaps not in that location, or maybe not so much of it, or…

Heather. Lovely, evergreen, not what I want in that space.

Heather. Lovely, evergreen, not what I want in that space.

As pretty as it is, it’s rather taking over that space, and just isn’t what I’m looking for in that spot. So… it’s out. I had a plan, before I got going…

Change presents so many opportunities.

Change presents so many opportunities.

In the dim light of dawn, early yesterday, I looked at the bare earth where the heather had been, and I felt just a bit sad for a moment, thinking of the experience of choosing to cull some living thing from a less than ideal circumstance, for lack of aesthetic, usefulness, or quality of character. I thought, too, of the experience of being culled…laid off from a job, fired, divorced, or any number of similar unexpected changes of life that I’ve faced. How easy it can be to take it very personally.

I considered my plan for that garden bed, clearly no longer ‘a hedge’ of any sort at all. I selected flower seeds with care; a variety of colorful California poppies, hybrids and fancy ones, and I chose some dark leafed kale for dense green vegetation – pretty and useful – and planned groupings of gladiolus with their bold colors and ‘reach for the sky’ approach to life. I’m hoping the new plantings are light-hearted and fun, a playful foreground for my Graham Thomas rose in the background. This year he will begin to stretch out in the front bed, reaching for his full size. I enjoyed putting down the earliest seeds in the afternoon…and like a little kid, I’ll check every day for seedlings, even though I know it will be days. 🙂

There is always more to do in the garden. Each year I get started at the end of February, thinking for just a moment “am I starting too soon”? It seems to work out just fine, though, and surely the slugs are already busy… they know spring when they feel it. lol.

Slug life... there's probably a metaphor here.

Slug life… there’s probably a metaphor here.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, grief, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Words
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