Archives for posts with tag: I'll be in the garden

Rainy Day Contentment

April 9, 2023 //
0

Some days “enough” really is enough. Today is like that. It’s an ordinary Sunday. I slept well and deeply and woke to my Traveling Partner’s gentle touch. My coffee is good, and the morning is pleasant. It’s a rainy day, and I still managed to spend some short time in the garden, planting early germinating cooler-weather seeds. Nice morning for it.

I hear the washing machine in the background, and the steady whir of the computer fan, even over this video of rain sounds I have on in the background. It is raining, today, but I rarely hear that from inside the house unless there are open windows, or it’s rainy wickedly hard. In the bathroom, the rain falls hard enough to sound like a small steel drum perched on the roof, or a distant wind chime. Pretty.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a good day for relaxing. I mean… Easter Sunday, you know? I’m for sure not planning to go to any retail spaces; the few that open will likely be quite crowded. Why bother with all that? Home is cozy and warm, and the companionship is genial. No stress, today, just quiet joy.

Shrubs removed, blueberries planted – but still so small they are barely visible against the fresh compost.

I spent yesterday in the garden. I got a lot done – like, everything on my list for the weekend, really. 😀 My Traveling Partner cut down the shrubbery I disliked, and even dug out the roots. I feel very cared for and supported; it’s a busy week for him in the shop and he still has time for me. I loosened the soil in the bed, pulled out what remaining tangled shrub roots that I could, mixed in generous amounts of well-aged compost and good quality soil and planted the blueberries I’ve been planning for since we moved in. So exciting! It feels like a milestone. I’ve got roses (8). I’ve got blueberries (6 bushes, 2 each of 3 varieties). I’ve got a raised bed veggie garden. I’ve got a plan. It feels good.

My wee balcony garden, in 2011.

I think back to my Traveling Partner and I moving in together. Our apartment had a balcony, no yard. I had a handful of roses in containers. He helped me build my garden, there, surprising me with deck-rail pots, and soil, and then too… I felt so thoroughly loved. Love can endure. Like a thriving garden, it needs care, attention, effort, and good quality “seeds” and “soil”. I smile thinking about my many small container gardens over the years, and my one previous, long ago, “garden at my own home” – a garden built in the midst of terror and chaos, stressed by Texas heat and lack of skilled care. It didn’t do very well. I wanted to force it to thrive but that’s not how gardening – or love – works, at all. I learned a lot… sometimes that’s the most we can get from an experience.

I’ve got a long-ish list of things to do today. Chores. Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, that sort of thing – nothing at all fancy, just routine shit I need to get done to prepare well for the upcoming week. All good. I’m not vexed over it. Not fighting the necessity. It’s just the day ahead of me, and I’m enjoying it as it is. That feels pretty wonderful.

I smile thinking about my rainy day garden, and the robins out there enjoying the freshly turned up earth and easy-to-reach worms. I wonder if this is their favorite time of year, and whether they have any sense of our human “seasons”. Things I think about over coffee on a rainy pleasant Sunday, before I begin again.

…I’ve got a list…

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being

It’s Still Not “Personal”

October 1, 2022 //
0

I am sipping my second coffee of the morning, listening to garden videos, and reflecting on a recent profoundly pleasant compliment a colleague paid me. I realize I am allowing myself to maintain layered distractions, which doesn’t really work well for me. I pause the video to sit with my thoughts and focus on my writing. The coffee? Not much of a distraction, really, although I must admit I am not being especially mindful to juggle my coffee and my thoughts. Would be more mindful (and focused) to do one or the other (and I often sit silently sipping my first cup in a quiet room, or out on the deck, with that in mind).

Compliments feel really good. They also, rather oddly I think, feel like “validation” – as though indeed I had “earned” whatever lovely words came my way. It’s hard to get comfortable with the idea that these lovely words and pleasing compliments are no more personal (or “real” or “true”), than the unwelcome slights or criticisms (or trolling) I may be exposed to in the course of a day. It’s all very subjective, and tends to say more about the person giving the compliment (or insult) than the intended recipient. It’s an opinion. Often an unsolicited opinion. It’s for sure much nicer (even welcome) to hear pleasant compliments than to have to deal with insults, just saying; there’s nothing personal in either one.

On the other side of the interaction, it sometimes feels very gratifying to savage someone with words when we are hurt or angry. It’s reliably unkind. Generally unnecessary. Rarely actually useful. Certain to damage a relationship (if any exists). I know, for myself, the wiser choice is to consider my anger and hurt, discover the source of my pain and deal with it myself honestly, and let go of lashing out at some other person. Even if I feel I have been “wronged” in some way, it’s rarely worthwhile to seek some kind of paybacks or punishment, however emotionally satisfying it may feel to do so in the heat of the moment.

Compliments are altogether different. They feel just as good to give as they do to receive. Giving someone honest positive feedback, or offering a pleasant observation, and seeing them light up (because it does feel good to be appreciated) is a lovely mood booster. I tend to choose to give encouragement often and quite freely (while also keeping it authentic and real). I avoid adversarial or authoritarian sorts of criticism or negative feedback, mostly because it feels pretty shitty to receive it, and rarely gets put to any sort of good use as a result. There are better ways to communicate concerns, boundaries, needs, and expectations than through negative feedback and criticism. That’s my own position on it. Obviously, you do you – but if you explicitly prefer negative feedback (sometimes called “painful truth”), let’s not hang out, shall we? LOL It’s just not fun. We both have better things to do with our time. 😉

Every sunrise is a new beginning. What will you do with it?

I woke early-ish, but pretty near to the sunrise. I dressed quickly, and was surprised when I noticed my Traveling Partner already awake and up for the day. Generally, half the point of my morning camera walks is to give my partner a bit of time to sleep deeply without having to endure my snoring! He didn’t-quite-invite-me to stay home this morning, pointing out that since he was up I didn’t have to go… I really enjoy my camera walks and time out on the trail or alongside a meadow in the mornings, though, so I went. For me. It was nice. Chilly, though, and it is clearly autumn. There are fallen leaves on the street. The air has “that fall smell”. It wasn’t raining, though… I thought about driving out to the nature reserve to get pictures of water birds and nutria on the marsh, but changed my mind as I drove when I passed a flipped over wreck of a one-car collision that must have happened sometime late yesterday. I lost my enthusiasm to drive any distance – and almost turned around to return to the safety of home. Instead, I went to the nearby meadow trail that I favor on weekday mornings. The sunrise was lovely.

I am focused on the garden today (at least for now). I’ve got plants to plant. Seeds to sow. Beds to clean up for fall. Seeds saved from earlier crops to clean up and put in labeled packets for later planting. …I’ve got a list…

New roses waiting to be planted, and seedlings almost ready to be planted. There’s probably a metaphor here somewhere. 🙂

I guess what I’m saying is that this coffee has gone cold, and the garden isn’t going to take care of itself; it’s time to begin again. 🙂

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being

What Makes it “Home”?

April 27, 2022 //
0

I’m sipping an iced tea. I took part of the day off due to lack of sleep and waking up on the edge of a migraine, and struggling with pain somewhere around my sciatic nerve, between my spine and my hip. Uncomfortable. Tired. I was not up for a day of heavy cognitive workload, and would have been irritable and error-prone. No one needs that shit. Not me. Not my colleagues. Not my Traveling Partner. Light duty – just the essentials – and an early out made so much more sense.

The day is an odd one. Not “sunny” or “rainy” in any definite way – certainly a considerable portion of both, without a theme or pattern to grab hold of. Spring in the Pacific Northwest.

…Damn, my Traveling Partner makes a wicked good iced tea, I must say… 😀

I’m very fortunate. Not just for the iced tea, but for this life, this job, and this house in the suburban countryside on the edge of a large-ish small town. I sip my tea and think grateful appreciative thoughts, reflecting on the distance traveled in this one lifetime. I’ve certainly had it worse at other times in my life.

I think about “home” – and how very much at home I feel here in this place, secure and safe and wrapped in love; it’s not just a building. It’s not just a place I reside. It is “home”. It’s not perfect. It’s not spectacularly large or unusually luxurious (beyond those luxuries my skilled Traveling Partner has added to enhance our comfort, ease, and quality of life)… just a modest little house in a commonplace suburban neighborhood. Still home. Our home. My home. It’s comforting to feel so settled and secure, here. I yearned for this for so long… I’m grateful that it has more than met my (probably ludicrous) expectations of what “home” could be.

This morning there was an attractive earth-tone pottery planter half-filled with soil in a stand by the front door. It used to have my creeping thyme in it. That thyme has traveled with me awhile (one might say “a lifetime” lol), and it was a small sort of big deal to plant it into the front landscape, in the flower bed, on the other side of a favorite rose, near the large river rocks that used to be in my aquarium as décor. Doing so left that planter mostly empty of soil, and definitely empty of obvious life. Today, I planted a geranium in it – one with showy leaves that will have merry orange and red flowers. I don’t think I’ve ever grown a geranium, before. It wasn’t that I disliked them, I just… never did. I’d thought to plant a begonia in that pot… but the plant I saw, that pleased me most in that moment was a geranium.

So here I am. Settled and at home, on a rainy-sunny day, sipping iced tea… smiling about a geranium in a pot by the front door. 🙂 These are the sorts of things that make “home” more than an address. I mean… sure, I could have had a geranium in a pot on my patio at some other place/time… It’s not even about the geranium, itself. For sure it’s not about the pot. I’ve had plants in containers for a long while. It’s the choice. It’s the ability to plant into my garden, just anywhere I’d like, and know that it is mine, and will be mine tomorrow, and the day after that, and next year, and on into an unpredictable future. At least for some unmeasured while. That’s enough.

What matters most?

…This is good iced tea…

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being