Starting From Scratch

I have a favorite guided meditation that I like to use when I am starting a project from scratch, or starting one over again after some hits and misses. The meditation is called "Starting Anew" from meditation teacher and author Davidji. The words of the meditation assure us that each of us deserves second chances (Note: Oh! Second Chances just happens to be the title of the second ebook in my Third Age Trilogy ... more on that to come). In the case of the job I am about to undertake, I'll need all the second chances I can get ... and third ... and fourth ... well, you get the idea.

Just like I admit to the fact that the baking gene skipped me and went to my daughters and my two granddaughters, my youngest daughter missed out on the gardening gene. In our family, she is known as the Black Thumb. We don't even let her babysit plants while we're away. She did manage to create a beautiful little fairy garden in a pot for me for Easter. Luckily it only had to stay in her house for a short time and my granddaughter kept watch over it. In any case, since I have moved into an apartment with no garden space available to tend this year, and windowsills not big enough for both plants and cats to sunbathe, I have decided to tackle my daughter's yard and turn it from an unidentifiable jungle into something pleasing to look at. It will be a place where the kids can play in nature and learn about growing organic food. This will challenge all of my gardening know-how and "thinking-outside-the-box" creativity. The garden has not been touched in years. Some things are unidentifiable and others have been so savagely hacked backed instead of pruned that they may never recover. Still, I am not deterred. Sometimes it takes starting again from scratch to give us an opportunity to sharpen our skills and see what we can create out of nothing.

I know there are times in our lives when we have to start over from scratch. We grow up and leave home requiring us to set up housekeeping for ourselves for the first time. Or, we get married and start a new life. We move to a new state, take a new job, go back to school, become a parent for the first time; so many ways in which we have to go back to basics and either learn something new or relearn something old. The thing to remember is that life gives us all what I like to call "Do-Overs," just  like the extra turns we got as kids when we were playing with our friends. When we start from scratch, we can create what we want the way we want it, not the way someone else said we should, or we can try something new and exciting. Life is nothing if it's not filled with adventure and exploration.

I invite you to find something in your own life that you could start from scratch to stretch your imagination and creativity. It's a wonderful feeling when we see our creation come to life and can say with pride: "I did that!" Of course in my case, a garden, even one as bad as this one, is easier to create than a batch of cookies, especially ones that could qualify as hockey pucks in the NHL ... word of honor! Happy creating.

And so it is.

P.S. About those ebooks. Keep your eyes open for an announcement soon of a sale on books One and Two of the Third Age Trilogy in anticipation of the release of book Three in the coming weeks. All are available from Amazon Kindle. I'll be posting the links and info soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to take a peek, just type Barb Parcells in the search and they will come up, along with my first book of favorite Flower Bear's Garden blog posts called: "Staying Rooted." More to come! Stay tuned!