Growing Ground

There is a certain habitual ease to opening each day just because the sun comes up, the family stirs alive, a work day has begun…..all these things and more keep us grounded in each day. Grounding in generations past is much different. Personalities with their beautiful and haphazard stories are seen through many a child's eyes.    

Relationships living in heart felt memory of sound, and touch, and smell are precious gems in our pockets. They are the people and places we have each come from. Each one crafting our own stories to be passed on to the generations to come. 

Often we talk about the present world as one that is scary and full of turmoil. But that is only the outside - brittle reflections of the global village that we live in. Governments and politics, finances and economics. The reality, sometimes safe and sometimes not so safe, is house and home ~ children, parents and grandparents ~ brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. Generations that soak into all the machinations of the world they and we have lived in. Each individual with a different, yet shared, commitment to live through the past, through today and carried into the future. 

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many 

dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and 

though in all lands love is now mingled with 

grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

~ J.R.R.Tolkein,  The Fellowship of the Ring

A Great Grandmother's Belief

Greater commitment to life and living cannot be found than when we welcome a new and very precious child into this world that seems only full of turmoil.

A precious new soul softens all the rough edges, only asking to be loved and cared for unconditionally

~ letting us know, 

in very plain new baby language,

when we go our driven adult ways, that we are needed and wanted. This commitment to life, a tiny precious life, depends on us ~ for love, for caring and for connection to this new world.

I say ‘us’, because the time worn statement that it ‘takes a community' to raise a child is true. My dear young parents need their communities and 

their families, to support them unconditionally in their new journey ~ this grandest of all experiments.

“I’ll love you forever, 

I’ll like you for always, 

As long as I’m living 

my baby you’ll be.”

~ Robert Munsch,

 Excerpt from Love You Forever

A 'Buzzy' Day!

Topsy turvy morning

retirement 'routine'

tossed in the air!

An early morning walk - reading and writing projects done but all askew. The cool, breezy summer air managed to float words to this keyboard before buzzing onto the next flower ~ 

   ~ commitments set in place 

within this unscheduled roll of the dice.

“Dare to turn life on its end, and you may find that 

topsy-turn is a truer perspective that turvy-topsy.”

~ Robert Breault

My Mom's Vase

My mom's vase:
From a drawing class I took in 2005

Engaging with life 

on a windowsill ~

fragile glass promises

a safeguard from this too busy world

Engaging with life

in heart, mind and soul ~

inner strength promises

stability within this busy world.

Engaging with compassion

for a life torn and broken ~

offers comfort and kindness

for a muddled walk in this too busy world.

“Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity…….”

~ Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin‘

Garden News

Welcome to one of my ‘gardens’! My goal was three fold: have an interesting garden, avoid setting a buffet for the deer, and leaving the soil empty of interesting spaces for squirrels to cache their peanuts in. So, I planted succulents. Most of us know they don’t really need water or fussing over. Hardy dry land or desert plants. What I’m showing you this morning is a Crinkly Leaf cactus and a Split Rock succulent. Both are native to arid regions of South Africa. Definitely not the damp of Victoria, BC! They have both been rained on significantly. They are protected from our wild west wind by the rock wall, some tall grasses and enjoy an east to west sun exposure. My little split rock was damaged, I’m sure, by a squirrel testing it to see if it was really a rock. My Crinkly Leaf cactus has sprouted flower stems? I have no idea what those flowers may look like but I’m watching them every day. Marigolds managed to make it into the little garden, hiding a painted stone cottage. They probably use up some of the water that my split rocks don't want. My commitment to having and keeping a garden turned me toward succulents. Deer and squirrels just don’t care for them!

“Garden design is all about concealment and surprise.”

~ Andrew Crofts, Secrets of the Italian Gardener

Sorted: For Good or Ill

Sorting out thoughts crammed into soft grey matter ~ 

a difficult decluttering task 

even if only for one day!

If a Sorting Hat were popped on our tops to clearly label:  
~ Thoughts 
~ Ideas
~ Emotional Content 
Put in tidy drawers, they could

to be retrieved much more easily. 

Thoughts ~ 

   most of them dismissed, 

     some uncomfortable, 

        some make us smile - 

but some important enough to be hung on the walls of our minds. 

Ideas ~

   Now there is a difficult one. 

     Are they any good? 

       Are they just horrible? 

          Is commitment to one a good plan? 

Emotional Content ~

   Wavering colours shine on them all ~

     Technicolour memories 

       buried deep or ever present 

ordered for good for ill.

Organization! Now there's the ticket.

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily 

the remembrance of things as they were.”

~ Marcel Proust

Listing

Whiteboard fridge magnet!

‘List’ is a word with sound like a hiss 

that snakes on tables, counters and desks

reminders for todo's to be done any day

on a scrap of paper that slithers away.

’til the search is done, that papery scrap

is the errand today in our circular trap.

chalk boards, whiteboards, recipe cards?

magnets on metal or tacks into cork?

No papery scraps for me, you or they.

Cell phones with notes save every day!

If the cell phone is lost, panic’s a stress

for lost is a list and everything else! 

“I can make another list because the choice is mine. 

A list of what to do. So I won’t be listless ever again.”

~ Johnny Rich, The Human Script