AdventWord::Glow

That glow, the one of littles expectant with story, the fiance at the asking, the first notice joy, is from an inner fullness in what we have. A deep kind of gratitude. A deep beauty. Contagious. It spreads the light to us, the witnesses. Knowing who we are and to whom we belong, we can glow in the exchange of that knowing love. May you glow.


Glow
As children of the light we have the opportunity to either squander God’s riches or to capitalize on them by being ministers of God’s light, life, and love for all people.

-Br. Jim Woodrum

August and Blueberries

I wish, wish, wish I could share these beautiful blueys from my garden, but they aren't mine to share. They're from a great page on growing them in containers. 

I planted four plants this year. Some early bloomers, some later and some late. All with plenty of acid soil amendment and food and so far, my sweet little bushes have not looked like those above. I'll chalk it up to a cool summer (our Catalina Eddy has hung out long past June gloom season has lasted into August) and a lack of bees. I miss my little garden friends and I'm as terrified as the next person wondering what's next. We had a horrid attack of wasps early in spring and had a couple of areas sprayed. The company promised bees don't live in the same places as wasps and, well, blah, blah, blah. I fear we may have contributed to the problem in hind sight.

On a nicer note, the 10 or so blueberries we have farmed have been delicious. I'm thinking of pulling them up into containers over winter. Really forcing the acid soil and hoping for a less bleak harvest next summer.

So how about you? How does your garden grow.

Joy at Christmas:: a birthday

I'm so happy to have the cake 

and the plate

 and the kiddo who wants to decorate

 even when she's called out of bed

as we celebrate 

one we love so very dearly

before and through the Christmas holiday

 

We continue to celebrate the day you were born my Dear.

Giving Thanks - November 30:: Gratitude

Many days this November, my gratitude list was long. My focus on Thanksgiving and giving Thanks shifted to a much greater awareness of what's around me and all I'm thankful for. Some surprising shifts included me being asked to sub in my daughter's advisement class where I shared the origins of the Mayflower's arrival and pilgrim's quest for our country, a great awareness of how bless I am to have the mom I have as she recovers from a broken arm in our home, and an enhanced dedication to the wonders of a winter garden. The list goes on.

So thanks Shannon at A Free-Spirit Life. I'm always joyful when I join your adventures.

Giving Thanks - November 16:: Brita for Inspiration

In the next town there's a beautiful garden store -- Brita's Old Town Gardens.

It's the store that inspires me to go beyond and seek new plantings and to love a mish mash of colors and always add this and that. (As long as they get the right sun and the right kind of soil.)

I doubt that Brita, a beautiful tall woman with joy exuding as she strolls the garden looking for just what you need, would remember our first meeting. I do. We'd moved into our first home. I knew a bit about gardening, but knew I wanted to know more. And there I was with a flower bed right in front of my living room window. All shade. I was determined to have flowers.

Brita helped find to helitropes and bleeding hearts.

I went to visit her this morning with a couple of tasks. First we had to pick a rose for a climbing wall, then, part shade flowers for beds to live with rooty birches. But the most fun was when I mentioned the Potager garden.

I have a very eclectic garden on the way there now, roses and strawberries and lavender.  But I'm ready to dive in with sweet peas and lettuces and cabbage, and, and, and. Her eyes lit up as we gathered from her stock and toured the lanes of her store grabbing the thymes, and mint and pansies and chard. She heard my love for the white rose next to the lavender, but not just for the color, for the uses and fragrances. She's the gardening friend, but really, the shopkeeper with zest and knowledge for what the garden can be.

I'm enthused about the next steps.

The best inspiration in film is Meryl Streep's potager in It's Complicated. Mine isn't quite this big and won't have the perfect rows, oh, and I don't look like Meryl Streep, nor am I married to Alec Baldwin - but you can believe the colors and joy of the mixture will be there. I love, love, love the tomatoes working up the frameworks. Tomatoes will have to wait while Sweet Peas meander up in mean time.

So, here's my Thanksgiving today: to Brita whose sea blue eyes sparkle and whose ideas breathe breeze into my project. And for the stylist who designed Ms. Streep's garden. To Alec Baldwin for standing there. And for my own Dear Husband, who keeps saying, "I'm glad your doing just what you want there, Dear."

I'm inspired and so grateful for the ones who join in.

Giving thanks - November 15:: A Time To Remember

I'm so thankful for this book and it's telling of the Pilgrim's true story. I got to share parts of it with my daughter's advisement class twice in the last two weeks. (I'm thankful for that too.) Through the book I'm reminded that it's impossible to be grateful and resentful at the same time.

I'm choosing the grace of gratitude.

The Gift of the Freeze

If you look to the upper left corner of the window, you get just a bit of the beauty of what the frost did to the Birch trees this year. I promise to get out there after the sun comes up today, and share the lemony luster of these luscious yellow leaves.
I love the way the leaves turn here in Southern California. I do understand that I'm not on the east coast.  I've seen the grandeur of that fall, but on my way home each day, I pass a row of about 30 Liquid Amber trees with their varying colors and then I turn onto a street lined, for the most part, with Ginkos.My neighbor Bob has one that's over 50 years old. Some days in fall or winter, it looks to be raining it's particular yellow leaves. So, I anticipate the visual splendor of fall despite the palm trees next door.
This year, with our weird weather (and by weird, I reference a very cool, sweater-wearing summer, a couple of days near 110 in late September, a warm October and a 37 degree low in November) we received the gift of a far more vibrant fall display.
So, beyond the pretty red of the Amaryllis in my window, I'm enjoying the brilliant mix of color this season brings to my world.

Appreciating

Rain yesterday. Today beauty.

The forecast? Gratitude with a bit of appreciation.