Just like the Proclaimers, I have something to announce:
Today it is exactly 6 months since I started tracking the amount I walk each day. And today, I passed the 500 mile mark!
And a glorious walk, it was! Sunny with a pleasant wind full of beautiful plants, the sea, and friendly neighborhood dogs.
My mom was recently bemoaning the fact that she has never been able to get a picture of a hummingbird. She said that a friend of hers had informed her that he had gotten many photos because they just sit in the bushes next to his window. My mom was dubious about the image of a resting hummingbird. I told her that hummingbirds do sit still on trees and bushes for a little bit but that her friend was probably sitting in the same spot for a long time in order to get his photos.
Lo and behold, the next day I found a resting hummingbird! It even stayed on it’s branch long enough for me to take some photos.
Okay, not a great picture but it is a genuine photo of a hummingbird, right in the middle.
I can’t tell you how many times in the last six months that I have tried to take my phone out of my pocket to get a hummingbird shot only to miss the split second opportunity before the bird flew away.
Victory!
Protected: Afternoon with Don Draper
Before I go into today’s post, I have an announcement.
Elvis lives! My ‘Velvet Elvis’ water iris started blooming today.
Isn’t he pretty?
Okay, back to the main topic. By “Dirty Harriet”, I refer to myself. I have become a vigilante in search of justice, justice against the weeds that encroached upon my garden during the surgery years.
What weed could be so bad that it would inspire an organic gardener and peace loving person like myself to seek vengeance?
It’s what my neighbor calls, “the worst weed of all.” It is lawn grass.
I would much rather have flowers than lawn so most of my front yard is garden rather than grass. But there is a strip of grass on the west side of the house that remained and vexed me all through last summer when I couldn’t weed, continued in the fall, when I still couldn’t weed, and just laughed at me during the early spring right after my TRAM surgery.
But, like Arnold, “I’m baaack.” (Oops, wrong movie reference.) I can lift, I can dig, and after endless furniture shopping for my new office, I had tons of cardboard boxes.
Behold my handiwork! I put down cardboard over all of the remaining grass and put down a cedar mulch path. Tomorrow, I will lay down compost and mulch to build a planting area for shrubs. I won’t plant anything back there until next year, to give the card board a chance to work on the grass underneath.
Planting bed in progress.
“Follow the Cedar Bark Road, follow the Cedar Bark Road.”
Velvet Elvis approves of the changes and said, “Thank you verra much.”
Protected: Memorial Day Weekend
Based on the responses to my post, Elizabeth the Spy, I learned that a lot of you out there also like to engage in harmless spy games. For example, Helen likes to guess what people are like based on the contents of their grocery carts (“trolleys” in her country). Mogatos and her husband like to guess at life stories while they are people watching at the beach.
This morning, I took some pictures of homes around my neighborhood. Let’s play a game. Based on the photo, do you have any clues as to the personalities or life circumstances of the inhabitants? Let’s keep it light hearted, though and avoid criticizing.
I’ll start off with the first one.
Okay, this house is owned by a very fun couple. We meet through mutual friends. They keep saying to me, “Elizabeth, you need to come to our house and help us with our garden. It’s a weed patch.” I visit and make some suggestions, none of which are taken because they are too busy with work. We become great friends anyway because they are such good company.
See? That was easy. And don’t feel like you have to insert yourself into the story. I did so in this case because I think it’s such a funny idea to put a sign in the yard to mark “dandelions” that it made me want to meet the people who live in the house.
Okay, here are some photos for you to try:
A. House in the city with three car garage.
House B
House C
House E
House F. Help me figure out this house. I have been working on it for years! What doesn’t show in the picture is the rest of their collection of vintage vehicles, the boat, or the horse trailer.
One of the things I’ve noticed since doing regular mindfulness practice is that the plants I encounter on my walks are pulled into the foreground rather being just sort of around, like visual white noise. (Hey, if sound can have a color, sights can have a sound.)
The maple trees have leafed out in the past couple of weeks. One of them stuns me every time I see it, if I really, really look at it.
First off, look at the overall shape. It’s so round! And although they don’t show well in the picture, there are airy spaces throughout the foliage that lighten the look of the tree and provide beautiful visual texture. And the color! Look at the contrast between the dark red and lighter red. Now look at the trunk. It has three divisions to it and they are beautifully shaped, like an up-ended tripod. Unfortunately, you can’t hear or see the rustling of the leaves. There was a light breeze when I took the picture.
This tree didn’t announce it’s splendor loudly like showy flowers do. (And I have nothing against showy flowers.) In the past, I may have just thought, “Nice tree” and kept walking. Certainly that not the end of the world, but I did enjoy the experience so much more when I took half a minute and most of my senses to “see” the tree better. I imagine that there are people, far more advanced in mindfulness meditation who could have been with that tree for a much much longer time. (And I tell you I am not yet ready to go on one of those mindfulness retreats where people go long periods of time without talking.)
If you would like to try a mindfulness exercise this week, here’s a common one. (Meaning, I did not invent it.) Go outside. You can sit or walk. Spend a few minutes noticing with all of your senses, look around, smell the air, listen to the sounds, and feel the way the ground feels beneath your feet and the air feels on your face. If you are lucky, you can also notice the way the sun feels on your face. When you are done, notice the way you feel and what you are thinking.
I am a beginner at mindfulness practices. But even as a beginner, the meditation and other mindful experiences have brought a great deal to my daily life. A street tree was revealed to be an extraordinarily beautiful living thing.
My Eyes Are Up Here 