Too Much Of A Good Thing

Let us go back for a moment to that golden day in October when the moving truck pulled away and I was left to soak up the beautiful, peaceful, nature-filled atmosphere of my new home. Even though the sun was shinning, I was aware of a faint chill in the air and remembered that cold weather came early up here. I pictured myself spending the winter curled up in the recliner with a hot cup of chai tea at my elbow, a warm blanky covering my legs, an even warmer cat on my lap, and a good book in my hands while I enjoyed the crackling sound of my virtual fireplace (God bless DVD's), and the aroma of soup bubbling on the stove. Outside, the landscape would be a picture from Currier and Ives, a snow covered beauty. Ah, hibernating at its best.

Fast forward to today. It is 7 degrees outside with a windchill of -13. This is warmer than last Monday when the windchill was -31.It has been at or below zero for the majority of February so far.  I have eye strain from all the reading I have been doing. My cats prefer to sleep on my bed instead of my lap because I have to get up every 20 minutes or so to make sure my legs are still working. I can't stand to look at that blasted virtual fireplace one more minute, and if I have to eat one more bowl of soup, I will vomit! What I need is a creative solution to having had too much of a good thing.

For those of you who know me well, you know that I have what my teachers used to refer to as an active imagination when I was a kid. At the age of 65 my children think it's more like delusions. Still, I can make myself believe almost anything if I work at it. So here is the agenda for today:

First: Put on every light in the apartment to simulate sunlight.

Second: Turn up the heat enough to grow tropical plants.

Third: Put on shorts and a tank top.

Fourth: Go shave my legs (well, they've been sleeping under sweat pants for

5 months and my cats really don't care one way or the other).

Fifth:  Pull out the fireplace DVD and replace it with the one that reads, "Relaxing Ocean Waves," complete with sea gulls.

Sixth:  Make a nice, fruity drink with rum and a little umbrella.....

Last:  Curl up with the drink, the ocean, the sea gulls, and a travel guide to Maui.

Somebody wake me when the snow melts and the ground dries up enough to garden. See you then ... now this is hibernating at its best!

And so it is.

Making Room for the Unknown

“I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”

Elizabeth Gilbert

The above quote came to me one day as I was restlessly flipping through Facebook looking for something to inspire me to some sort of productivity. It jumped off the screen and caught me squarely between the eyes. So, of course, I had to find a gardening analogy to fit the quote.

As I have been sitting here beneath several feet of snow that seems to keep replenishing itself the minute so much as an inch melts, I have been warding off the winter blues by making plans for my brand spanking new garden. One of the things that I have to take into consideration when laying this plan out on paper is to remember to leave room for the unknown. What I mean by this is that since this is my first year gardening in this spot, I have no way of knowing how well some plants will do as opposed to others, which ones will pretty much fill the space where they’re planted and which ones will take over way more room than I had anticipated. Sometimes that is a good thing, and sometimes it overtakes other plants and chokes them out. Then there is the drainage and runoff of the piece of ground I’m working with which will affect whether the plants get enough water or hold too much water and create root rot.  As much time as we put into gardening, in the end it is really nothing more than a crap shoot, having faith that what is supposed to grow will grow, and what is not, won’t, and along the way knowing that surprises await us that we could never have imagined. Like the time I once pulled up some well-established grass in order to dig a new garden bed only to discover a beautiful vine that had been struggling to come up through the sod where it had been seeded over by a previous gardener.

No matter how well we think we have planned our lives, we always need to leave room for the unknown. How dull life would be if we didn’t allow room in our lives for surprises, those unexpected occurrences that tap us on the head and remind us that the magic is in the unknown, the unexpected. Instead of weighing ourselves down with schedules and to-do lists, or worrying about what “might” happen, why not leave a nice, big space for the unknown. It is never too late to incorporate a little adventure into our lives, a little spark of creativity and childlike belief. Even if the unexpected turns out to be something that threatens to overgrow your space and choke your roots, you can always pull it out and make space for something new. That’s how you choose happiness over suffering, by making space for the unexpected, yet-to-come surprises in our lives.

So what are you going to choose?

And so it is.

From My Heart To My Plate

For the last year or so I have been working on becoming a vegan. I use the phrase "working on becoming" because this isn't something one does on a whim. This is an extreme change in lifestyle and beliefs, and I knew that if I just dove into it, I would be overwhelmed and feeling like I was denying myself in the same way that starting a new wonder diet leaves us feeling deprived after a few days. Becoming a vegan is about more than just what is on your plate. It is also about what is in your heart.

I find it curious, now that I think about it, that my interest in going vegan began to surface about the same time  I discovered my love of gardening. If this isn't all a masterful example of synchronicity, I don't know what is. It is only in the last year, however, that I have taken the time to really do my homework. I have spent countless hours on YouTube watching haunting videos and reading the latest books and research on the subject. I've perused every online vegan recipe site I could find.

Yes, there is some measure of feeling like I have to give things up, especially things I am fond of. I do love a nice serving of grilled salmon, a yummy, cheesy egg dish, and my all time favorite - ice cream. So I am still looking for ways to satisfy the desire for those taste experiences, but like anything else, if we want to create new habits, it takes time. Rome wasn't the only thing not built in a day. A lifetime of beliefs and traditions wrapped around food aren't changed over night. We were all raised with: "Eat your meat, drink your milk." My religious upbringing, such as it was,  never asked me to think of animals as thinking, feeling, sentient beings. You just did what you were told because that was the way it was done.

For those that might be asking what changed my mind about eating animals and the products they produce, I won't go into lured details about the unthinkable cruelty that goes on at factory farms, or the health benefits of eating a plant based diet. If you want the gruesome details, go on over to Netflix or YouTube and take a look at some of the documentaries (Forks Over Knives, Food, Inc.) or read the New York Times article about what goes on at factory farms. All I will say is that it is my wish that no other living thing should have to suffer or die for my benefit when there is another way. I may not be able to change the world, but I can change my participation in it. Evolution didn't stop with Darwin. As my mentor, Louise Hay, is always saying, a belief is only a thought that you think over and over ... and thoughts can be changes.

And so it is.

Casting Your Own Shadow

The only way the groundhog is going to see his shadow today is if someone shines a spotlight on him!

The northeast is getting hit yet again with a massive snow storm. The snow drifts are so high outside of my apartment that I can barely see out of the kitchen window. I was smart enough to stop at the store yesterday on my way home from church to pick up a few things in case I couldn't get out for a while. The last time I looked outside, I was thinking I should have picked up more  - I could be here for a week.

So what do you do when you're snowed in yet again, can't make yourself knit or crochet one more item (unless it's a pair of wings to fly to Florida), can't read one more book, and your hand hurts from surfing through Facebook for hour after hour? You start thinking. I always try to think about things like when to start seeds indoors or maybe adding a small water feature to my garden this year, but that doesn't always work. Sometimes your inner critic (I call mine Cyril) temps you down that path known as What's Wrong With You. Before you can say tulips you're casting a shadow of your own: what you did wrong, what you will continue to do wrong, and why you will always be wrong. Often being stuck inside for long periods of time feeling as if you will never see sunshine or grass again can play tricks with your mind, but there are lots of other paths you can wander down without making yourself the bad guy in a grade B movie.

So let's cut to the chase here and get right to the point. We are never wrong. We are always doing the best we can with the knowledge and experience we have at the time (thank you, Louise Hay, for those words). We make choices. If those choices don't work out, we make new choices, and we keep making them until we find ones that work for us. I don't care what Cyril says, I am not responsible for these endless snowstorms, or for below zero temperatures, or for not living in warmer climates - okay, that I'm responsible for but it's a choice, and I can always change it. We aren't wrong. We're just cold, in need of sunshine (both inner as well as outer) and some new, more uplifting choices to choose from.

So today I'm looking through my yarn bag for yellow yarn because I found my old daisy makers and I want to make a spring inspired pillow. I'm also scanning through old pattern books to find something inspiring - wow, look at that! I found a pattern for a baby sweater ... with wings! Sorry Cyril, you have to go back into your corner. I've chosen a better path to walk down today.

And so it is.

When Life Gets Backed Up

In the wee hours of this morning I was blissfully dreaming of colorful spring flowers cascading down the edge of the outside cement stairs and spilling out like a waterfall into the garden bed. It may have been the association with water that woke me up for that inevitable middle-of-the-night trip to the potty. Half asleep I took care of business and hit the handle only to discover that the pump never shut off, the water was not going down with its regular speed, I hadn't put on my glasses so the entire episode was fuzzy, and oh, by the way, it was 3:43 A.M. I pulled the plug on the pump (my bathroom hookup is very strange and requires a knowledgeable adult about these things, which I am not, except that my Dad always told me if something wasn't working, pull the plug, so I did), and went back to bed. I was sure that I would hear the landlord, who lives above me, moving around as he got ready to go to work and I could inform him of the situation before he left. Imagine my surprise when I awoke again much later to discover that I had overslept (that's what I get for staying up past my bedtime to watch the Pro Bowl) and he had already left for work. My options were to have a hissy fit  and let this episode "back up" my whole day - a little potty humor here - or I could "go with the flow" - more potty humor - and be creative until he got home.

How many times in our life do we let something that is totally out of our control get the best of us and back up our whole day? You know, the traffic jam that makes you late, the snow storm that shuts everything down, the power outage that turns your half-baked birthday cake into a half-raw pancake, and the birthday dinner becomes a PB&J with a candle in it? Like my backed-up potty we can either let it ruin our day, or challenge ourselves to be creative and find another answer to the challenge. It all begins with taking a nice, deep breath and reminding ourselves that we are not responsible for these acts of nature  (traffic jams are human made but that's another story for another time). All we are responsible for is how we react to the situation and whether we blow it way out of proportion or try and find some humor in it.

In my situation, I decided to pretend that I was back on a camping trip I'd taken with my sister years ago where the campsite was very primitive and we had to make due with what nature offered us. As I recall, we survived the ordeal and it didn't take anything away from enjoying our beautiful surroundings. As I write this I am toughing it out, flushing with a bucket, and watching the approach of an impending snow storm blowing up the valley. Guess I'd better fill some buckets up with snow to melt for water just in case my landlord gets stuck in a traffic jam, in the snow storm, with a power outage, and can't get home for a while. While I'm out there, I think I'm make a snow angel!

And so it is.

Color My World

I always said that when I turned 65, I would stop coloring my hair and let myself go grey. Well, I turned 65 this past July and I did, indeed, stop coloring my hair and let it go grey. However, at the time I was laid up and working on recuperating from the injuries I suffered in June. My hair was the very last item on my list of things to concern myself with. Then it was October and I was all involved with the move to my new home. Before I even had time to turn around, it was the holiday season and I was swallowed up in that. So imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror at the beginning of January and saw this old, grey, washed-out looking woman who not only had not colored her hair in 6 months, but who hadn't had a hair cut in that long either. Somewhere along the way I lost tract of exactly who I was and how I felt about how she looked, not to the world, but to herself.

It came to me that it was time to stop referring to myself as the woman still trying to "recuperate," and start moving beyond that. Looking at my reflection in the mirror I understood that my decision to go grey had something to do with embracing my age except that now, 6 months later, I wanted to redefine exactly what that meant. At that moment all I knew was that I wanted some color in my life, not only in my hair, but in my life in general. So off to the hairdresser I went. My, but she cut off enough hair to stuff a small teddy bear. By the time I was ready to lay my head on the pillow that night, I finally looked, and felt, like me, truly me.

Sometimes going with the flow isn't always the best idea for you on a personal level if the flow isn't going in the direction you want to go but think you should. In fact, I agree with Louise Hay who says that the word "should" needs to be dropped from our vocabulary because it always makes somebody wrong. The more I thought about things, the more I realized that I don't live in a black or white world, or even a grey world. I live in a world full of vibrant color and I want my life to reflect that. That even extended to the plans for my new garden this spring. I tore up the original plans and, instead, starting looking up pictures of gardens that exploded with color. Surrounding myself with color is an act of self love because it speaks to who I really am ... love.

Like the old song says, "color my world with love." And so it is.

When Humans Plan, Heaven Laughs!

Yes, it's snowing again. They are calling for another 5 inches. In years past, this would be starting to get on my nerves by now. However, this year is different for two reasons: First, I am not experiencing this very snowy winter in a third floor apartment with a view of the brick buildings next door. I am looking out of the window in my new home at the vastness and beauty of snowy slopes, valleys and trees decorated like powdered sugar on cookies. Second, underneath all of this snow, for the first time in 15 years, are the bones for my new garden!

While other non-gardening folks are going into that post-holiday funk, gardeners are pouring over seed catalogs and drawing up diagrams and graphs of how they want their gardens to look come spring. In the old days of my gardening life, I would have done the same. This year, however, I going about it a little differently. My reasons come from years of experience and the hard worn knowledge that when humans plan, heaven laughs.

Even the most skillful gardeners who have been gardening in the same place for years will tell you that there is no way to anticipate everything that Mother Nature can, and may, throw at you. So the garden bed of tomatoes that have done so well in that spot for the last 3 years may do very poorly in year 4. Or, the roses that were so spectacular last year, may languish this year.  Anyone who tells you that their garden is always 100% abundant and problem free is probably pulling your leg (or living in their own little world).

Since this will be my first year gardening in this place, I have to give myself time to become accustomed to how and where the sun rises and sets, how much sunlight my garden will get - which can change from spring, to summer and through the fall - how much rainfall I might expect, and what will do well in an area where I will be doing most of my planting on a slope which I have never done before. So while I can certainly make some preliminary plans and educated guesses, the truth is that I just have to wait and see what Mother Nature has in store for me and adjust as I go along.

As you might have guessed if you have been following my posts in the past, you know that there is a life lesson here as well as a gardening lesson. By now, in mid-January, we may have already fallen off our New Year's Resolution wagon, or at the very least are questioning our sanity at having made them. The truth is that while we can have a overall idea of how we want to live our lives in 2015, and what changes we'd like to make to improve how we experience the world,  we can't always be 100% positive that things will work out according to plan. There is no way to anticipate the unexpected: an illness, a divorce, a death, a job loss, or, even the good stuff like a raise, a promotion, finally meeting your soul mate, and so on. The point is that we need to leave room to be flexible so that instead of being knocked over when the unexpected happens, we  can make some adjustments and re-think our goals. That way 2015 is certain to be a year with less stress and a lot more happiness.

As for my garden, I think that I will start out by putting things in pots and then moving the pots around until I have a better sense of what does well in each spot. That way there will be less dying back and more growing, and really, isn't that a better plan for living anyway?

And so it is.