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How Does Your Garden Grow?

September 16, 2022 //
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I’m sipping coffee and thinking over my actual garden, while also entertaining the notion of the garden-as-metaphor. It’s a lovely summer morning. My Traveling Partner and his son are in the shop together, doing shop things. I’m in studio thinking about bulbs, roses, and garden paths. Nice start to the day.

This week I’ve been out in the garden more, now that the worst of the heat as abated (at least for now). First year in the lovely raised bed out front that my partner and I built (celebrating our anniversary, back in May). I love it… but my results were less than ideal.

  1. My melons all failed, mostly due to the neighbor’s cat using that side of my raised bed as a great new litter box. I think I’ve now successfully discouraged that bullshit. (Also, I’ve never had luck with melons ever, in the Pacific Northwest, but that could be due to being a fairly half-assed, kind of terrible gardener…?)
  2. My beans gave up a great little harvest. By great, I mean quite plentiful and tasty. By little, I mean just the one harvest.
  3. When it gets seriously hot, I am inclined to be absent from the garden when it needs my daily attention most. I gotta work on this!
  4. The container, grow bag, and hydroponic gardening are relatively high maintenance here in the this location, and a bit distant from anything like “convenient”. They are a poor fit to the gardener that I clearly am.
  5. I love fresh produce. I really like things that are “easy”. These ideas do not complement each other.
  6. My carrots, radishes, and daikon were awesome – until they bolted in the heat while I was sick, in July. I managed some further success by harvesting the resulting seeds. 😀
  7. My eggplants are doing super well, but they don’t have much fruit on them (see “heat” in item #3). The couple of fruits maturing on them now look like they will be excellent.
  8. I have a lot to learn.

I think that last item is my key takeaway; I have a lot to learn. Working in the raised bed is easier, for sure. Having the gardening all right out front is very convenient. No real excuse not to get the work done; I walk by the garden multiple times each day, and I think I need to rebuild old habits of deliberately visiting the garden each day, in the morning and in the evening, just walking, looking, and taking it all in. Being “present” in the garden requires me to be literally present in the garden. lol No surprise there.

In the heat of summer, I let the lawn die back rather than use the quantity of water to maintain it that it would require. It comes right back with the rain in autumn.

I spent the week tidying up the garden beds, and adding fresh compost before doing some fall planting. I find myself thinking over low-maintenance garden paths (reduces the amount of wasted space given over to lawn grass, too). I think about where the next raised bed could go, and what it might look like. I consider the question of whether to cover the raised bed to keep things going through colder months, and how best to do that without looking messy. I’m inclined to provide cover for winter… extend the growing season, and get a better start to the Spring growing season here in our chilly-Springs climate. There’s time to figure that out to ensure I also maintain a pleasant curb-appeal aesthetic (that matters to me).

I pause my writing to enjoy a break with my partner and step-son, then head out into the sunny garden to water and look over “next steps” – time to prune the roses, and there is some weeding to do. Probably a good time to sow more Russel’s Lupines in the bed under the kitchen window (I’ve apparently settled on lupines and nasturtiums for that one…).

Gardens are very much a “I get out of it what I put into it” sort of thing. The effort I make on things like weeding, watering, giving seedlings the very best start, and pest control, directly effect the outcome at harvest time. That’s just real. Being there, present and engaged, observing and aware, makes so much difference. I make a point of walking the perimeter of the garden and flower beds as I water. I look at weeds and reflect on pulling those out – but no amount of reflection or observation will change the number (or vigor) of the weeds in those beds. There are verbs involved. I’ve got to do the actual work required to get the result I most want. True in life and in gardening.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

It’s Always “Practice”

August 31, 2022 //
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I’m not a perfect person. (Who is, though?) I need practice – at most things, honestly. I have an idea who the woman I most want to be might happen to be. I can “see her” in my mind’s eye. I hear her voice as an echo; something I could have said better than what I chose to say, or speaking truth to power in a moment when I failed to do so. I hear her speak up for herself, when I don’t. I hear her set expectations and boundaries more skillfully than I often do. I have a sense of “who she is” and the values she embraces. Me? I’m still practicing all of those things. She listens well and deeply, with real attention and consideration. Her answers are thoughtful – and insightful. She’s clearly well-informed on the issues that mean most to her – and she’s kind about education and informing others. She’s patient with people, even when she’s in pain. She’s no saint, she’s lived a real life and she owns her mistakes. She takes time to reflect on her thinking, instead of following the crowd on commonly accepted opinions. She’s fearless about disagreeing – and committed to collaboration and skillful communication. She likes to be on time, but she’s not a jerk about people being a few minutes behind on plans. She’s fucking amazing.

…She’s the woman in my mirror – mostly. She’s who I see in my best moments. She’s my destination, and when I stay on top of my self-care, and committed to healthy practices for emotional regulation and communication, she’s my journey – walking with me, guiding me, picking me up when I fall and lighting my path. Of course I am “a work in progress” – we all are, if we are wise about being and becoming. 🙂 That’s my thought on it, anyway. I keep practicing. Keep walking my own mile. I’ve got choices, and there are verbs involved. I know my results will vary.

This isn’t an awareness that makes anything any “easier”. I am prone to being deeply disappointed in myself (to the point of catastrophizing, sometimes) when I fail to meet the rather high standard I’ve set for myself. Being practical and kind to myself, and allowing for my own humanity is all part of that journey, too. More to learn. More to practice. Keeping it real? I fail all the fucking time. LOL I’m very human. I pause to reflect. Begin again. Continue to practice. Seems a worthwhile way to spend a life. 🙂

Yesterday in the evening, for some reason I don’t recall right at the moment, tempers flared between my Traveling Partner and myself. Raised voices for a moment, a few spilled tears, some impatience, some anger, some frustration… we got past it, it was just emotional weather. My partner pointed out some things that matter to him a great deal. I swallowed my pride and listened; it’s always hard to hear I’ve failed as a partner or lover in some way (however small). Yeah, I still need practice. Even the fundamentals of living well and treating others well can easily erode and slip away from me without practice. Doesn’t matter at all if the speed and ease with which my habits quickly extinguish with even brief lack of practice is related to my brain injury; the solution is to continue to practice (and that includes self-compassion), and to begin again when I fail myself. That’s enough. It’s all there is. 🙂

Being between jobs is an interesting space to grow within. That 40+ hours lost to employment every week, generally, becomes time for study, for practice, for growth, for exploring the unknown, for trying things out… in that respect, it’s a wonderful opportunity. Today, I spent much of the day with my camera, and learning related software. What about you? What did you learn today? 🙂 It may keep you young to keep learning. It may keep you alive (depending on what you learn, and what life throws your way).

I notice that the interface here in WordPress looks… different. I find myself wondering what I clicked on, although it could be that the user interface actually changed, again. Not ideally helpful for folks who are “other than neuro-typical” (probably pretty aggravating for just about anyone who has mastered some software or other previously, and logs in to find it changed). It’s weird and annoying, and I let myself be distracted by music videos, instead, and wander off for a few minutes of conversation with my partner. Life. No pressure, just living. 🙂

It’s time to begin again; there’s so much to practice. 😉

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Big Plans

August 21, 2022 //
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I’ve got huge plans for today… sort of. It’s a lovely summer day, not too hot, and nothing much going on. Spent some time out on the trail with my camera in the morning. Enjoyed coffee with my Traveling Partner (already up) before I left – then again after I got back. It was a strange misty morning, lovely for walking.

The mist lent itself well to thinking thoughts.

Out in the marsh, the ducks and geese were also enjoying the morning, a bit out of reach of my lens. I’m okay with that; I just kept walking.

The ducks and geese took no notice of me as I walked along the trail.

I had the park mostly to myself this morning. A rare treat. I stopped awhile at a favorite spot for watching smaller birds was visited by quite a few swallows, and other birds I was less familiar with. Good times.

Few of my shots turned out this morning, but that hardly matters; I enjoyed the time.

The walk back up the path was well-timed; I passed a lot of other folks with cameras on their way down the path, talking about seeing pelicans? I didn’t see any pelicans. lol I marveled at the dewy spider webs that festooned the meadow flowers as I walked back to the car in the summer sunshine.

Like delicate lace.

…But the morning isn’t the day. The moment is not the whole experience. The time that has passed is not about future plans. lol So…what’s the big deal today? It’s not all that, really, I am just planning a (hopefully) delicious homemade meal for dinner… garlic bread, spaghetti with a favorite meat sauce, cooked slowly, with care. I enjoyed selecting the ingredients. Been thinking about the cooking all day. LOL So… yeah. I’m excited about an absolutely ordinary moment-to-come. 🙂 It’s enough to put a smile on my face. I don’t need more than that today.

It’s a lovely place to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Other Work, Other Practices

August 17, 2022 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and “getting caught up” – very much in the way I typically would on a routine work day. I check my email. Take a look at my task list. Take a look at my calendar and note the time of upcoming calls and meetings. Very ordinary work-type stuff. Today it’s a mix of working on a project for my Traveling Partner’s business, handling job search details (an interview, an appointment), and a couple calls to contractors for estimates on work needed at the house. Living life is filled with verbs. 🙂

Sometimes life has balloons, too.

I started the day the way I start most days (for awhile now…since June?) – out in a meadow or on a forest trail, camera in hand, taking pictures of birds, flowers, sunrises, small mammals… walking and breathing and enjoying the morning. I’m not sure how this routine developed, but it is a convenient solution to the need to stay motivated to get enough exercise for good health, and also the desire to let my partner actually sleep in some, at least now and then. I’m often the earlier riser of the two of us, and I’m rather stupid and clumsy when I first wake up, which can be noisy. Easier to slip away as quietly as I am able, as soon after waking and dressing as I can, and just enjoy that time with the camera and the rising sun, without waking my partner. I also just fucking love starting my day this way. 🙂

One morning, the location where I parked had quite a few bunnies enjoying the morning with me.

The sun had been up before 5:00 a.m. when I began slipping away first thing with my camera. Now the sunrise is starting much later, some minutes after 6:00 a.m. That trend will continue for some time, but lacking any early morning constraints on my time associated with employment, I can easily just “go with it” as the sunrise shifts toward autumn days. Super relaxing. No pressure. Sometimes I grab a coffee on my way, most often I don’t. It’s not an important detail. I’ve a couple nearby favorite locations – one is a forested trail I enjoy walking any time. The other is a vast meadow split down the middle by a park with some trees. On one side, that lovely meadow is filled with little birds as the sun rises. On the other side, the sun rise itself, trees and some distant mountains on the horizon. Convenient parking in all cases.

My Traveling Partner made a great ground pod for my camera. I take it with me most mornings.

One chillier than usual morning, I set up the ground pod for my camera, and sat in the car with a coffee and my remote shutter, taking pictures, occasionally repositioning the camera, until it was a bit warmer. Most mornings, I throw my camera bag over my shoulder, and walk. I pause here and there to get some shots, and then walk on. It’s lovely time, and I return home feeling recharged, calm, and centered. Is it the 100% reliable “cure” for stress? Nope. Nothing is. It is, however, time well-spent, and pleasant, fulfilling, and satisfying. Close enough.

Sometimes enough has to be enough. 😉

What will you do to take care of yourself today? It’s not too late to put yourself at the top of your “to do” list. 😀 It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Harvesting What I’ve Planted

June 20, 2022 //
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Yesterday I prepared a meal for my Traveling Partner and a visiting friend using vegetables from the garden.

We walked around the garden together, as I harvested peas and radishes, Swiss chard and daikon, and took note of which crops have been doing well, and which have been lagging behind. It’s been a slow chilly spring. Almost summer and the daytime temperatures are still generally in the high 60s to low 70s (Fahrenheit). The peas have been doing incredibly well. Radish, daikon, and bush beans appear to be doing very well, too. The recently planted peppers and the eggplant are doing well, but it looks like it’ll be awhile before I’m harvesting anything there; they need a few more sunny days and some warmer afternoons. The container garden, other than the peas, is not doing so well. Germination rates are poor, and this is likely because the first plantings were mostly “old seeds” that had been kept around from previous seasons, but stored in paper in a haphazard way. I find myself wondering is I might want to abandon those grow bags in future years for all but proven partial shade crops – like the peas, which are just exploding with eagerness to provide, and beautifully weighed down with young pea pods.

Veggies from my garden.

…There’s a metaphor here…

The planter box, so carefully built and filled, and planted with seeds chosen with care, is very successful… even the recently planted melons have sprouted in a promising way. Seems so obvious this is the way to go, right? Except I’ve got a wild “garden helper” fucking shit up out there, digging, and eating seedlings. LOL

What I’m saying is that even when we “get all of it right”, we may face some challenging circumstances in life, in love, in our professional endeavors. Just keeping it real. Do 100% of everything correctly, make all the “right” choices – still no guarantee of success. There’s a lot of “good fortune” involved in our individual successes, and a lot of help. We’re interdependent. We rely on each other. The well-chosen seeds planted in my garden? Yeah, I didn’t grow the plants that produced those seeds. I selected them from an online catalog from a vendor I felt I could trust. Interdependence. I didn’t built that planter box (although I helped a little bit, the design and effort were not exclusively mine). Interdependence. I was not the first to spot the handiwork of my wild garden “helper”; my Traveling Partner spotted the missing melon sprouts opposite the undamaged hill with healthy green seedlings before I did. Interdependence. We don’t walk our path alone.

A wee snake traveling through a flower bed. It’s easy to overlook fellow travelers as they make their own way.

…It is as important to choose our traveling companions on life’s journey as any other detail. Whether they are merchants who provide the goods and services we favor, or our friends, and even the loved ones we keep close and connect with frequently. These choices matter every bit as much as healthy self-care and wellness practices do. They affect our health as directly as the food we eat, and the media we consume.

I’m not telling you anything new. I’m also not telling you what changes – if any – you might want to make. I’m just saying; our relationships matter and affect the quality of our experience. Build good ones.

Like adding compost to my garden, it makes sense to cultivate healthy relationships. There is value in expressing gratitude and appreciation. There is value in participation and giving back. There is value in listening deeply, and checking assumptions and expectations. There is value in making choices with care – instead of free-falling through moments with strangers and shopping Amazon for every-fucking-thing. There are no “bootstraps” with which to pull yourself up, all alone and utterly independent of the goodwill and effort of others. That’s just… fucking dumb. Trace things back, you’ll find that you had help. 🙂

Never too late to begin again. To connect. To care. To choose. It’s a journey, and there are opportunities to take detours and choose another path. It’s your journey.

What might you see along the way, if you change the way you’re going?
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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being, Uncategorized
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