good

I know life is good when most of my days can be summed up by the number of oranges I ate warm off the tree,  successful irrigation projects completed in my backyard, and pages read in my latest middle school novel.  No complaints.

balancing technology with life

Oh so very many posts on the internet have been dedicated to this topic, I'm not about to rewrite any of them.   It's been an interesting twist of fate.  My laptop has been slowly dying.  It has gotten to the point where it's just not worth my time to upload pictures, try to go on the internet, pretty much do anything because if I spend more than 15 minutes on the laptop it will eventually do the whirligig dance of death, spinning the colorful pinwheel for hours until I finally close the screen in frustration.  At the same time, I got Jed's fancy smart phone and, though I'm not paying for service other than phone/texting, the wifi at our house works just fine so I'm spending WAY too much time checking email, texting, etc on my phone while we're home.  It totally snuck up on me, too.  It wasn't until Nate pointed out to me about a week ago- "Mommy, you're always looking at your phone," that I realized I have a serious problem.  So I'm working to scale back.  And not being too successful at it.

But, luckily, like I said, spring is here and there is SO much going on in our garden and in the world in general that I'm finding ample distractions from the lure of the screen.

I do still want to consistently post here as it's a good place for me to chronicle my thoughts and have some form of 'memory' as my own functions much like a sieve.  We'll see what happens.

of trees and change (now with pictures)

I waited and waited to post this entry as I wanted to have some pictures to go along with it.  I took said pictures and patiently (ok, not so patiently) tried various cords and configurations but, alas, the pictures will not move from my camera to my computer.  Ah well, perhaps that's for the best as the pictures are not for the faint of heart.  Enough with preambles, though.... Got the camera working!

This weekend we cut down three of our fruit trees.  It's hard for me to even write that, to put it out there to the world that I purposely led to the death of three healthy trees.  But the decision was not made lightly.  I had been mulling the idea over for some time.  Years, actually.  You see, we cut down three trees on our second level of property.  We cut two grapefruit and an orange tree.  For years we had been dealing with growing issues on our property- we just had too much shade. We put raised beds wherever we saw that there might be sun for at least 4-6 hours out of the day to grow vegetables in.  But 4-6 hours is just not enough sunlight for most vegetables to thrive.    We (by which I mean Jed) spent hours climbing the orange and grapefruit trees each spring to cut off growth on the north side to try to keep a minimum of sun on our veggies below and even more hours collecting uneaten fruit that inevitably dropped to the ground and rotted.  We contemplated adding veggies to our front yard and while I'm all for the Food Not Lawns movement, we don't have a lawn in the front (or the back for that matter) and I am too in love with the natives garden we are slowly but surely creating in our front yard to dig it up and start over.  I thought hard about water usage, accessibility, land use, hours of sunlight, what foods I wanted to grow, etc.

So, the other day, the stars aligned and I realized that three of our trees would have to go.  I saw that we weren't eating enough of the fruit, nor were we around enough to pick fruit to bring to shelters or food banks, we didn't have enough sunlight in our garden to grow anything more than kale and chard, and so the decision was made.  Within a couple hours the trees were down and land was cleared.  Another few hours later and all the ripe oranges and grapefruit were loaded into 2 cars and an SUV and hauled down to the food bank in San Marcos (all 1,057 pounds of it).  And now there is possibility.  I have ordered some drip tape for irrigation, some seeds for planting and we've found some local compost that we hope to get this weekend.  Eventually the wood will be chipped and used as a mulch for the new growing area.

But I have to admit, every day I wake up and look out any of our north facing windows, my heart still drops a little.  There was something comforting about being able to look out into the canopy of mature citrus trees and feel sheltered by the greens and oranges and yellows.  Our yard is more of a wide open space now (granted, we still have 15 other fruit trees) but, while I'm so excited about the possibilities of gardening with sun again, I'm still feeling the loss of those trees.

I love when seemingly small actions become huge metaphors for the way I live my life.  In this case, the loss of these trees (particularly a loss that I intentionally caused) reminds me how difficult it is for me to deal with change.  I like things to stay the same, I enjoy the comfort of the familiar.  Yet, as time has gone on, I'd like to believe I've gotten better at determining those things that would be best left as they are and those things that might need to change.  I doubt I will ever really stop wondering if I made the right decision- I will always wonder if I should have just found some sunny spots and planted seeds where they were, spent more time collecting the uneaten fruit and shuttling it around town to those who are hungry, and on and on- but at this point none of those options were realistic.  My desire to feed my family from my garden is realistic, but only if I had a sunny area large enough, and now I do.  So, I feel that soft spot in my heart when I look down into our yard, but I can see it being transformed into something new.  The possibility of a working vegetable garden and the hundreds of pounds of food we can grow, eat, preserve, share...the hope of something even more amazing.  It will just take time, and patience, and lots of sun.

There's the passage from Ecclesiastes that was turned into a song.. .a time for everything, a season for everything, and all that.  I'm not going to quote that again.  But shortly after that passage, it is written "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil- this is the gift of God." Ecc 3: 12-13.

And perhaps that's the point of this all...that I'll always be making decisions, some easy and some hard.  But I hope that I 'do good' and work to remember that to 'find satisfaction in all [my] toil- this is the gift of God."

a shift

I almost didn't write this post because, quite honestly, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to write about.  You see for the past couple weeks I've been feeling something shifting within me.  I will come to write a post and I'll be stuck.  I'll begin to type and then I'll erase the letters on the screen and start again.  It's genuinely hard to put into words what I'm feeling, it's not even an actual feeling that I can identify.  The only way to actually put it'into any kind of terms is I feel God shifting my life: shifting my priorities, shifting my thoughts, shifting my reactions, shifting my view of the world as I've known it.  And the reason this seems so hard to articulate is because it's subtle this work that God is doing.  It's not an earthquake-sized event that shakes who I am and what I know.  It's a feeling of anticipation of the path that our family is walking and the different opportunities that are presenting themselves.  It's a true celebration of the fact that as I am slowly learning to release this life as mine and so much more peace and clarity and opportunities are presenting themselves.  It's a shift in my perception of the world and my place in it.  It's a shift of my priorities and where I let my mind wander throughout the day.  It's a shift of that is so small it's monumental at the same time.  It is truly the mustard seed that can move mountains, as one incredibly wise man said.  And I look forward to sharing this path with you as it presents itself.

embracing it all

 

I went outside today with the express intent to take a picture of the beautiful camellias we have blooming outside our sliding door.  Part of my reasoning is that the flowers are just amazing to look at and the other part is so  I would have a reminder on these pages of why I should keep that green bush that's totally out of scale and drives me crazy the other 11 months of the year.  By the time I got outside, though, most of the flowers were in shadows and only the 'not so good' ones were in full light.  Shrugging my shoulders I lifted my camera and took a few shots anyway. 

At the time I thought I might not post them or I might do a little photo editing/cropping to only show the good parts. But once I sat down to write this post I realized that I really wanted to post the pictures in their honest form.  Because this is really what my garden looks like right now.  I bit  sunburned by the intense January heat, a bit brown around the edges from lack of rain and yet it continues to grow, thrive and give me pleasure, no matter how little time I spend tending it. 

I'm not going to add some cliche about life here, though  you may certainly extrapolate that way if you'd like.  I think I'm really taking a pro-honesty stance these days and this is my honest picture of the day.  And, goodness, I still find it a sight to behold. 

same old patterns of thinking

traveling as fast in one direction as she can go before she has second thoughts & goes back to doing the same old stuff~ storypeople~ brian andreas

resolutions, revelations

I gave up resolutions long ago.  The perfectionist in me has a hard time with goals of any sort.  When I resolve to do something, that pretty much means it's good as done.  And when it doesn't happen exactly the way that I thought it would, or in the time frame that I thought it should get done (generally that means immediately), then I become frustrated and down on myself. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about goals in general and how goal setting isn't something that generally makes me feel content. 

I've begun to realize that that doesn't make me unmotivated or have less of a passion for getting things done, accomplishments, etc. it's actually the opposite.  I find that if I set an intention, rather than a focused goal, an I am instead of an I am going to I am much more open to different outcomes and timelines. 

I find it gives me so much more peace of mind to say I am creative  rather than  I am going create more art.  It allows me the opportunity to see myself as the creative being I want to be, thus freeing my mind to actually create, dream and ponder, rather than keep my mind spinning about how I will create more art, what kind of art that may be, become frustrated that said art isn't original enough, expressive enough, true enough etc. 

And perhaps it's the word nerd in me that feels that there's such a difference between a resolution and an intention.  I honestly don't even want to look up the definitions of the two because it may spoil the differences I have in my own mind. 

So, if no resolutions...what then?  I came across the idea of choosing a word or phrase to live into in the coming year.  I haven't done that before but I know that if I had a phrase to describe last year it would be let go.  I had a lot of letting go that had to be done.  Mostly paradigms and views of the world that were all in my own head.  Most of the letting go was done in pain, sadness and with such the valiant fight.  But when I finally embraced that phrase- let go- I realized what it really meant- step out of controlling every situation, let go of my belief that I know what is best for everyone in my life, including myself, and, most importantly, let go to something so much more vast and amazing and bigger than I could ever understand.  So I did.  And I found peace.  I found comfort.  I found that I had oh so very much to be thankful for. 

But for this year?  I've decided it is I am here.  That means so much to me.  And I'm sure what that phrase means to me now, on this the second day of the year, may be quite different from what it means to me 364 days from now.  But see, even by my saying that, I'm proving my own need for that phrase.  I like to look forward- I like to have things to look forward to, activities planned, places to go.  I enjoy being busy, knowing what the next thing will be.  But it can make me anxious, it can make me miss the sheer magic and brilliance and unexpected amazing-ness of what's happening right now.  And I'm tired of missing that because I'm pondering some what if.  

I am here.  No where else.  This is the only place I can be, this is the time and space that all of the events of my life have led up to, be in that place, really see what it's like.  Much like my phrase from last year, it's about surrendering the idea that I truly know it all.  It makes me acknowledge that I only know what's happening in exactly this moment and I better darn well absorb as much as I can to move into the next.  Oh, I am so excited to be here!  Here is a wonderful place to be.  Thank you for joining me here.

let it rain, let it pour

We had the most marvelous couple days of rain.  It was drizzling, it was raining, it was cloudy, it was wet.  And it smelled so good and it felt so good and, oh, did it ever put me in a holiday frame of mind.  But, I will admit that in the whirl of this fantastic holiday season, I didn't slow down for one picture.  Not-a-one of Nate dressed up in his rain gear (oh that boy loves rain gear, from his fireman rain slicker to his Lightning McQueen rain boots to mama's old J.Crew rain hat), nothing of jumping over, around and into puddles in our driveway, nothing of trees dripping fat drops of water to wet ground below, nothing of rose petals on the ground, pushed by those first drops of rain that so rarely seem to make it this far south.

Yet, I take heart that I saw it all.  I took moments here and there to notice.  But I was so focused on getting to the next thing that I couldn't take time to pull out the camera.  And be still for the amount of time it might take me to take a picture that I loved, or at least liked.  And, yes, I finished all of the gifting on my list, I was able to get together with some of my favorite ladies for a brunch, chat it up and work at my volunteering gig and enjoy Nate's first play(!) but, in hindsight, I see what I may have missed in the between moments too.  But there will be more rain (even here in the southlands) and even more moments and that is the lovely part about life.

Here's something that came to my inbox today that got me thinking about those 'in between' spaces...a reminder that even though I am reveling and enjoying and am having way too much fun being busy, to remember to really see what's going on- even during the pauses may give me a glimpse into another world.  I like the question it asks- Can we see better?

We miss a lot, almost everything, in fact, in our world. Our task-focused filters take care of that, selecting only what we need.  We need to get to work. Have some lunch. Find that report. Water the garden. Go out on a date. We see what we need to see, often for purposes of survival -- or survival of the species. Gregory Bateson, speaking of beauty, said aesthetic judgment is selection of a fact.  We create the sight even as we become conscious of it. We do not simply see it. In our daily lives, who or what is doing the selecting? And why? Is this predetermined? Can we -- in the here and now – make a change?  Can we see further?  Can we see better?  Can we  even better our world?

Opening our vision is a first step in Everyday Creativity.  

--Ruth Richards, in Everyday Creativity

I'm glad for the reminder, smack dab in the middle of this busy time, to really ask myself: Can I see better?  Can I see further?  And along the way, try to remember to bring the camera.  

outside my window

One of the pear and the persimmon tree have almost done with their change into fall leaves, the persimmon has lost most of hers.  But they just continue to shine in their autumn glory every morning and afternoon that I look out my window.  There are times when I'm sweeping up the living room and I catch a shimmer of gold downstairs and I am reminded of those beautiful trees.  The cold nights are here at last and are slowly but surely transforming my garden into a winter garden.  I've left most of my native blooms on the plants for bird seed but I noticed the birds aren't gathering under the bushes so much anymore...almost time to prune I suppose.  The tangerines are in.  Just barely, a little sour for some but just right for many.  Can barely pick them fast enough before they're gobbled up.  We have so very much on this little plot of land.  So very many blessings. 

essential question

Are we destroying the essential for the superfluous?  

This is a question posed in a video I watched this week.  It's a beautiful video about the importance the forest and trees play in all of our lives, realized or not.  I've begun my holiday crafting, another year, another promise to stick with handmade and local.  I always seem to make it to the final week before Christmas, feeling good about all the things I've made and then I start worrying.  Is what I made nice enough?  Is it something that the recipient wants or would they rather I bought something?  Shouldn't I get them one more little thing? At which point I end up over spending, buying things that I wouldn't have even considered in the sanity of November. 

So, here I am in November, making a pledge to myself to remember the essential above the superfluous.

To remember what these holidays are really about and to spend time being thankful each moment for everything I am so very blessed with. 

People are essential, relationships are essential, gratitude is essential, love is essential..oh I could go on and on. And they are all free.  And they are all accessible.  And they are all possible if I just remember to take the time to pause, breathe and look at the trees.


Video from KarmaTube

a busy october

I'm still catching my breath from the whirlwind of events, celebrations, get-togethers, crafting, projects and what have you that took place the last couple weeks of October.  I can't believe it's November yet I'm so very excited that it's November at the same time.

Our garden is still going full swing...this month brings with it avocados, persimmons, oranges, almost ripe tangerines, watermelon (!), lettuce, potatoes, squash and carrots.  Looks like it's going to be a yummy month :)

things I never want to forget

That Nate has replaced 'really' with 'super-sonic.'  As in:

"Mommy, are you super-sonic sure that the library is closed?" or "Macaroni and cheese is super sonic good."

If something is really, really good- then it's super, super sonic.

Goodness me, that KID is super sonic.  I have no idea where he got this, when asked he said "It's just something Logan and me say to each other when something's super sonic good."  So, there you have it.

***

Also, we had my brother-in-law's (Matt) birthday at Bucca De Beppo in August.  Since then, Nate, Logan and Sarah talk about the place constantly.  Clearly they are still trying to wrap their minds (tongues) around the name as it comes out differently each time.

While driving down the road: "Look, there's where we had Uncle Matt's birthday party: Boo Boo di Becco."  

Talking in the backseat to each other:
"Don't you just love Boo Poo di Beppo?"  
"Where?" 
"That place with the fish outside where we ate pasta?"  
"Oh- you mean Boo Coo do Becco?" 

Or just walking down the sidewalk, singing to herself (this is usually Sarah):
"Boo boo di Becco, Boo Coo di Beppo, Boo do Bidecko." 

I hope they never get it right...their names are way more super sonic.

***

Finally, that a stapler is a stabeler and a staple a stable.  "Mama, please get me the stabeler, I need to stable this paper together."

And no matter how many times I call it a stapler or a staple, he is sure that his pronunciation is correct. And maybe he's right.  It doesn't really matter much because I still know what he's asking for.

remember to look in the mirror

  The other day we were getting together with friends and plans had to be changed.  It wasn't a big deal, errands were shifted around and it was great to hang out with them, albeit at a different time than was arranged.  I bring this up, though, because of the conversation I had on the phone with my friend as plans were shifting.  She apologized because 'she knew how much I didn't like last minute changes to plans.'  And she's right.  I really do have a hard time with changes in plans.  But it's something I've slowly and consciously have been working on the past year.  Letting go of those things outside my control and figuring out how to use the new information to make things better. 

A large reason that I decided to work on shifting my focus was because I saw how it was manifesting in my son's life.  Nathaniel hates changes: to schedules, routines, plans, you name it.  We've had complete meltdowns when something is mentioned in passing but then fails to manifest itself.  Those around him have learned it's best to not let him know that there is a possibility of something fun until the possibility becomes a reality.  But I've realized that this type of inflexible thinking was serving either of us.  It left us frustrated, upset, and emotionally worn out.  As my incredible yoga teacher likes to quote from Hellen Keller at the end of practice: When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but we often look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

So, I've been working on modeling flexibility. Letting Nate see first hand that plans may change and it's truly not a big deal- sometimes it can lead to even better things.  And, slowly oh so slowly, I've begun to see a difference in the way he deals with change.  It seems much easier for him to take things that would have been quite dramatic in stride nowadays.  Of course, I know a lot of that is developmental and the fact that he's just getting older, but I also know that he's watching me and learning something everytime he watches.

My child is a watcher.  I see myself mirrored in so many of the things he says and does these days.  And while I can find this terrifying some days, on others, I can take this mirroring in stride and see it as a challenge to my own personal growth.  It's not every day that we have a mirror following us around through life, I suppose I best embrace it and see what I can learn.

must read

I just finished reading the most lovely book and I just had to share.  I'm not one for remembering titles so unfortunately lists of must read books and friendly recommendations often tumble from my brain when I get to the library.  Luckily, Vista has some awesome, on top of it librarians who will select their own ideas of must reads and prominently display them for those of us types who surely do choose a book by its cover.

The book is The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna.  Not a new book, it was published in 1975.  But one of those universal truths kind of books that hits you in the gut with a 'yes, that's exactly how I experience the world' kind of feeling.  The author of the forward to the edition I read, Pico Iyer, expressed it beautifully:

There are many ways of catching this carpe-diem spirit and the liberation that comes from waking up to one's limits (and therefore one's possibilities), and philosophers for centuries have expounded sonorously on these themes.  I love The Year of the Hare for not taking anything too seriously (least of all itself) and for sounding, in its freedom from received ideas of what is and isn't important, a bracing declaration of independence for the enlightened truant inside each one of us. 

First grade book summary: Man leaves job, wife, house, 'life' as he knows it to befriend a hare.  Finds his real life in the meantime.

On to find my real life in the slowly melting days of summer...

a little thought

trapped mainly by wanting things to be exactly as they are, only better ~ Brian Andreas

a curious case of missing animals

Nate and I have been documenting an interesting phenomenon in our neighborhood this past week.  It began last Thursday when we saw this notice taped to a stop sign:

As a little background, our neighborhood seems to be fraught with missing animals.  Weekly there are new postings of missing dogs, cats, birds, and found turtles.  It could be wily pets, negligent owners or stealthy coyotes but the result seems to be the same- a lot of missing animals.  Nate will often point out the notices, commenting on the pictures, what kind of animal is missing, speculating as to what happened to it.

But then we saw the Mammoth sign.  Just one day after we had been to the zoo to see the new elephant exhibit which focuses on prehistoric animals- namely the Mammoth.

Nate was beside himself.  "Mommy, do you think we'll find the mammoth?  We should go driving to help find him.  Do you think he'll come back?  How do you think they lost it?"

I was torn.  On the one hand, I loved that he was so concerned about Helga the Mammoth.  I loved that in his four year old brain he still believed that dinosaurs and mammoths were a possibility. I loved that in his mind we may have been neighbors with a mammoth for quite a while.  On the other hand, I was loving this notice.  Some amazing child (assuming child based on the artwork but those assumptions should not be made as my own drawing would be quite similar to that one) had decided to create a parody of the hundreds of lost animal notices we saw over the course of a year in the neighborhood.  I liked her (or his) style.  I felt responsible, in some way, to let Nate 'into the joke.'

So, I posed the question, "Mammoths are like dinosaurs.  We've talked about dinosaurs and read lots of books and we learned that they aren't around anymore.  Do you think someone may be playing a joke?"

To which he replied after maybe a 5 second pause, "But mommy, crocodiles were around when there were dinosaurs and they are still here.  Maybe mammoths are too."

Damn smart kid.

And then, the next day, we came upon this notice on another street on the way home:

And we all know that spiders are real.   And that people have them as pets.  At which point I realized, I couldn't 'explain' the joke to Nate at all.  I just had to roll with where this was going to take us.  That afternoon he asked if we could look for the missing animals.  I suggested there may be more notices for missing animals (I had spied a piece of paper stuck to an electrical pole down the road and had my suspicions) and that we could go photograph them before the city took them down.  

So, that's how we spent a 90 degree afternoon.  And here's what we came up with (in addition to the two above):

So, if you're in our neighborhood and you have seen a mammoth, poisonous spider, fish, or tiger, please let us know.  We will be the mama and boy searching under bushes, up in trees and in small puddles for some very unusual (and not so unusual) pets.

I LOVE 4 year olds named Nate.

smell

I have a good sense of smell.  Maybe even great sense of smell.  As I am unable to compare my actual sense with other's, it's hard to really come up with the right descriptive word to apply.  My grandmother had an amazing sense of hearing.  She could hear conversations being had at the other end of the house, secrets whispered under bushes by the pool.  Perhaps we're all given one sense that is dominant, maybe mine is smell.

It's an interesting thing, having a great sense of smell.  I will be sitting in my house on a summer's day and immediately jump up from the chair and run outside to look for smoke clouds on the horizon from a wildfire out of control.  Those around me will get a slightly panicked look on their face, wondering that the fire must be a block or so away if I could smell it so clearly.  Yet there are times where I can't even see the smoke on the distant horizon, the fire is so small or so far.  It's never close enough to see flames.  I can also identify what kind of fire it is- grass fire, house fire, car fire, fireplace, barbeque, fire pit.  Each has a distinct aroma from my memory and I can recall past instances that I've smelled that smell or memories associated with it.

When I was pregnant with Nate my ability to smell the slightest odors was even more profound. If Jed had celery in his salad at lunch, I would be livid when he came home 5 hours later because the smell  of it lingering on his breath made me nauseous. I couldn't get in a car at the time because when we drove past a diesel truck our car instantly smelled worse than a gas station and I couldn't breath until we had passed it and aired out the car.

Even now, the smell of sage will immediately bring me home.  The whiff of a certain perfume and I'm instantly five years old in my kindergarten classroom.  The smell of diesel and I'm on the ocean, crossing the channel yet again.  Certain laundry detergents remind me of old friends.

Maybe that's why I eventually came back to the country- it's alive with a whole different world of smells than the cities I spent my college and post-college years in.  It's the smell of dirt and water and plants and smells wholly separate from those created by humans.  When I choose something to plant I almost always take a leaf and crush it in my fingers before purchasing...often choosing what to buy or where to plant it based on smell alone.  When wandering my garden with a visitor, that is how I often introduce them to plants, "Try this one, rub your fingers over the leaves...stand over here, just downwind, do you smell that?"  It's the smell of life, of home, of growth, of things unseen.