The Waiting Game

Summer is in full swing. The sunflowers shake their yellow heads in the warm wind, tomato plants are heavy with yet to ripen fruit. I have waited for the summer blooms that arrive in such a blaze of color. Along with the floral treats comes the realization that summer has passed its longest day.

The vegetable growers have also been playing the waiting game. The hot days and warm nights push their produce forward. Now is the time to enjoy the true fruits of their labor. The seeds planted in early spring survived the windy days and buffeting rains. Every summer the story is repeated. The seeds grow, the perennials come back and the cycle continues on. All that grows is once again giving back.

In a former life I tried to be a vegetable gardener. I planted the seeds and looked forward to having fresh vegetables. Along with this I planned on teaching my children about the positive aspects of growing our own food. I had been told or heard somewhere that a garden taught children about work, pride in that work and satisfaction when they picked and ate what that had grown. No so! I learned about the hard work because children whine when they are in the sun on their knees pulling weeds. Not only do they whine, but they have poor eyesight and cannot see the weeds. Children also waste large quantities of time doing nothing.

Gradually the garden began to shrink in size. Grass seeds replaced green beans, beets, carrots and the corn stalks became perennials. I have found more joy in picking flowers than beans. The flowers just sit on a table in a pretty vase and make me feel good. They don't scream at me to can them. I will be forever grateful to those individuals born with the gardening gene. Thankfully these hardy souls plant large gardens and find joy in the caring and nurturing of their gardens. Not only do they find joy in growing vegetables, they love to share them. I wait for their patches to give forth and hope that they have grown more than they will ever be able to eat.

Summer is a short season in which much happens. It is a period of waiting and watching. Everything about summer is good. I love the flowers and the gracious people who so willingly share their summer harvest with the lazy and inept.

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always a summer delight

I picked a large bunch of lilacs and brought them in the house. The bold scent filled the kitchen. I love the strong smell they emit. Lilacs stir childhood memories of the overgrown bushes in the backyard. They were never trimmed or cut back, but allowed to grow and send up shots from their roots. Always profuse bloomers, the blooms begged to be pick picked. My mother kept a vase of freshly picked blossoms on the kitchen table, replacing them as they wilted and dropped their purple flowers.

Mom and her sister worried about the lilacs blooming too early in May and not being bright and new for Memorial Day. They had to be part of the bouquets that were assembled to take to the cemetery. Iris, peonies and snow balls were packed into buckets along with the lilacs. The metal buckets were filled with water so the mason jars could be filled when the flowers were arranged in them. Coat hangers were an import part of the equipment because they were bent and inserted in the jars and  the opposite end was pushed into the ground to anchor the bottles.

Mom and Aunt Myrtle never missed a year even if the early blooming flowers were less than perfect. For them it was the carefully tended flowers from their own gardens that carried love not plastic wreaths or flowers. As a child I could sense the importance of this ritual. It was a shared duty they faithfully fulfilled. They took their bouquets to the cemetery rain or shine. Memorial Day could not be missed. I remember rain, wind, and cold and yet they carried on.

When I smell lilacs I remember buckets of colorful flowers, mason jars. metal coat hangers, and me in the backseat of the car. It is my own little bush that stirs these memories and reminds me of the lessons I was quietly taught by my two favorite women.

Hitting the Road

crab apple blossoms in Hagerman

We've had the tear drop on the road again. It seems to be our obsession to spontaneously hook it up and hit the road.  Not always very far, but far enough to feel like we have been somewhere new and different.

sometimes early spring trips are very quiet

The draw to venture out comes from a desire to change scenery and just have a change of routine. There are always places to visit and new people to meet. RV travelers love to talk and share their experiences. They enjoy comparing stories good or bad. We are babies in this broad RV world and not because we  pull what could be described as a bed on wheel. Simply, we have not ventured as far a foot as the people we meet.

Mexico is not on our to see list, but we meet a couple that has pulled a trailer to Mexico for eight winters making a round trip of 6,000 miles from British Columbia. Nor have we driven to the coast of Texas like the couple we met in Hagerman, Idaho. They had one more day of hard driving with 15lbs. of frozen shrimp to reach home in Washington state. Sharing a campground with only one other traveler, afforded us the opportunity to park next to a retired school bus turned motor home. It sported a bright red paint job and Maine license plates. A long trek form Maine to Idaho.

interesting travel mode--home on wheels

There is simple and elaborate, either will get you from here to there and that is the ultimate goal. So far simple is working for us and gives us as much opportunity to explore as we choose. You'll never see us boon docking in a Walmart parking lot, but you might find us in Death Valley, along a river or in a RV resort in Nevada parked beside the 'Big Boys.' If you do we'll be sitting in our new red chairs reading or checking our email.


 

Spring Throw Away

The sun is shinning and very few clouds are across the sky. At 6:30 this morning it was 21 degrees. The weatherman, who is often wrong, is predicting a high of 50. Spring could actually be wining its way to southeastern Idaho. There is something about sun that changes attitudes. I suppose that is why spring brings a frenzy of cleaning and clearing our homes. For me it is not cleaning and scrubbing and painting that excites me, but throwing things away or handing them over to someone else. I have STUFF!! Most of this stuff hides in my closet. Just because I have a walk-in closet there is no hard core rule saying I have to fill it. I am not obligated to bring half of the Gap or Dillards merchandize home to store.

There are items I have not touched or moved in months. Apparently, I must not like them, don't feel good in them or I bought them just because I could. Thank heaven for big black garbage bags. I heard no cries of pain or sadness as I pulled sweaters, shirts, pants, and shoes off the hangers and shelves and deposited them in the bag. It is time to move on for the clothes and me. They need a new live in some other closet. I will be happier if they move on and so will another person who falls in love with my no longer wanted clothes. It will be a new and refreshing beginning. When items are no longer used they have no value and just become stuff. Owning stuff is cumbersome and in the long run we turn from owner to being owned. Why would I want to keep a sweater I wore on vacation Three years ago? It served its purpose at the time and for a period after, but now I have four sweaters I bought for two other vacations and love none of them enough to see them occupy space just for the sake of occupying space. I keep walking into the closet to see the empty spots on shelves and the spaces between hangers. It makes me feel good and reminds that I am in charge! I am liberated.

A Winter Gift



Ice slowly melting in the January thaw


This has been a strange winter. It has been mild with only moderate snow fall. December roared in with temperatures below zero and then mellowed and allowed warmer air to move in. The heavy snow from Christmas Eve and Christmas day is mostly gone. Only a few patches remain along the fence and shaded areas of the yard. No piles of shoveled snow line the edges of the driveway. The grass creeping out from under the melting snow is green. What a tease--I wonder if my perennials in the flower beds near the fence are feeling an urge to poke their noses out.

 

This reprieve is definitely not the norm and most likely spring will still arrive in late late April. There have been days when the sun has chased away the gray sky and on those days the spirit sings in gratitude. The darker sky always returns but just interspersing it with blue sky and sun makes winter more tolerable There is a beauty that winter shows on a bright clear day. The sky seems bluer with the billowing white clouds adding soft accents, and the sun more intense

This winter may be a reward for enduring many long, cold and snowy winters in the past--sixty six in all. Or it could be Mother Nature's way of teasing. Reward or tease--I gratefully accept the winter package and count this season of change a welcome gift.


 

Looking Toward a New Year

There is always a lift and  renewal after Christmas. Perhaps it is the aspect of anticipating a new year  with a feeling of newness and hope.  We look forward to fresh starts, new experiences, challenges and growth. Not one to make New Year's resolutions I look forward to beginning a new year with renewed energy and enthusiasm. I might plant fruit trees this spring and forget the mess they make in the fall. Or I could write more, explore more non fiction books, learn and remember the names of the flowers I plant, enjoy the now and throw out what ifs.

There will always be things we can not control or change, but the option to decided how we will accept the adversities is ours. Moving forward slowly or aggressively we begin the climb out of the deep spaces we encounter. The best of life is found in movement: learning, finding new places and people, going beyond what is comfortable, and in giving ourselves permission to try without worrying about failure.

A new calendar year is not yet filled with regrets: only possibilities, opportunities and anticipation.
  

A wish for the new year

Difficultly Breathing

I am having difficulty breathing. I can still function, and my oxygen levels are normal. The problem seems be the lack of deep refreshing breathes. In becoming aware of this problem I have noticed one thing in particular that has made my life less than pleasant--too much information. Perhaps I don't need to know so much about what happens hourly in the world around me. While not all media information is negative, the majority of what we hear daily is not what makes you feel warm and fuzzy.




The bombardment of information we expose ourselves to each day is an overload to the senses. A one time exposure is enough for us to understand that the world is not in a good place. I like most people, only need to hear the story once to get the drift of what is taking place.  So why do I listen to news reports several times a day. Am I afraid of missing something important? So far that hasn't been the case. If I watched the news one day a week I would have all the information needed to be news literate.


If I want to increase my ability to take deep breathes and change my environment the TV has to take a hike along with news apps. I am reminded of the sayings, 'too much information is dangerous' and 'a little bit goes along way.' It is time for me to change my news dosage. One dose a day should be enough to make me aware of the world situation and whether or not anything has changed, improved or degenerated.


This is a good decision for me, but not for everyone. I want to take time to enjoy the things around me that have a positive influence in my life and feel good about being in this moment. The ugly will never go away, but we should never forget there is more good than bad--we just have to look harder to find it. Now that I have shared my perspective I am taking a deep refreshing breathe. Ah, I feel so much better.