Ants before the Picnic and Other Experiments.

Ants before the Picnic and Other Experiments

Experiments. We experiment with our hair, our clothes, our ideas never knowing what the results might be but we are always continuing to change in some way if we are lucky. Having said that, I started a small experiment in the confines of my small house which of course, did not completely turn out the way I expected.  It was a study involving my husband, completely unknown to him which in the way of husbands was not a new thing as he often does not know what his wife is planning from moment to moment but as a model husband he simply goes along cheerfully.

For example, I had voiced to him my need for a piece of a good quiche by letting him know that he was going to be driving for hour to the valley for the lovely quiche on Saturday morning. He nodded his head in silent agreement. Two days later, I let him know that a good friend was coming along, he brighten up replying to me, “You did not tell me that A was coming.”  That is when I knew that he was hooked plus the idea of eating at one of our favorite places was a closing point.  At any rate, I knew that he would take me without little or no argument because my happiness is his happiness.  After all, he had over thirty-four years of close study and observances to determine how to please his woman. Fortunately for him, he is a wise man and paid attention. 

The quiche was delicious.  Afterwards, we traipsed forthwith to a bookstore practically next door, my little friend A was delighted and soon found her nose deep in several books. She opened a book and inhaled deeply, stating you can’t get that from a tablet. I agreed wandering off until I found myself things to drool over as well for the future, finally settling on a couple of treasures to take home for latter musing.

Back to my household experimenting, after returning home, it was back to the routine of household duties, a simple salad that was filled with fresh tomatoes, sweet red pepper, sunflower seeds and cucumbers with the sweet smell of summer clinging to them. All was placed on a bed of green romaine lettuce.  I had been good with my eating just the quiche and a bite of my husband’s chocolate mousse at lunch.  When driving home, I had a nice hot green tea latte to continue the festive feeling of going out of town and to top off the day’s events. I sipped on the tea while I gazed at the soon to be glorious display of fall colors.  The trees were just turning.  It had be a good day.

We watch our usual shows on the computer that night until my eyes and mind started closing down for repairs.  Sunday came with the same things that we do, taking our early morning walk which was interrupted by a friend struggling with her two dogs.  My thought was that it was wrong to let an old woman struggle that way and I went to help her.  So the friend and I walked and talked until we had walked back to my house. My husband had left for home earlier from our walk.

 Okay, time for a speed up.  We got ready for church, picked up grandma, went to church, went out to eat, went grocery shopping and went home.  My husband watch his Roosevelt’s OPB show, went to the Recreation Center, came home and worked in the yard and went to take his bath.  Bored, yet? My tongue would be tired tripping over all of these if I was actually verbalizing it all.

Well, here we are back to the great, awesome experiment.  Husband is in the bathtub taking his well earned bath after working out at the gym and working in the yard.  I strolled in to visit and the experiment was gone.

 My response after entering the room was, “Where is it?”

 His answer from behind his book as he sprawled in the tub, “Where is what?”

  I remained speechless and pointed to the counter, the empty counter.

“What?” he said.

“My experiment,” I replied. Now he was looking at me with a rather bemused look on his face, the thoughts were drifting across his face, while he was thinking, I have done something wrong, I might be in trouble, I better find the answers but I need more clues. 

I explained to the man that I love that I was conducting an experiment. That the carefully lined up tubes from the toilet paper by the splash board in the bathroom was an experiment in the making so I asked him where they were and his face lit up as he realized that he knew the answer to this question. 

“In the recycling.” he replied. 

“You must get them out,” I cried. “I have not taken my picture, a picture for my blog.”

“I crushed them,” he replied warily.

“Then I must find more,” I said over my shoulders as I darted out of the room to the other bathroom. I was in luck. Clutching the two brown rolls that I had found on the floor, I placed them on the counter and ran for my camera. 

Well, the experiment worked. I had placed them carefully on the counter to see how long it would be for my husband to take them away for recycling. It was a much better experiment than the one that had involved me flat on my stomach on a hot late summer day waiting to see what seeds the ants would take into their hill.  Seeds from various grasses that I had hand-picked and sprinkle about the ants’ hill, I had been bored and discovered the ants before the picnic that was being held close by.

The results, scratchy legs, dirt under my toenails, and the joy of a light breeze tickling the fine hairs on my arms, watching the ants scurry here and there picking up some of my seeds and ignoring others.  I think that it was a matter of ripeness. Everything seems to have its own time, its ripeness.  My experiment had come to its end while my thoughts had about how long before the rolls were harvested and were put away was answered. About eight rolls.  

                  

  

Mystery in the Garden and in the Life of a Wandering Soul

Mystery in the Garden and in the Life of a Wandering Soul

The world is filled with mystery.  Sometimes it presents itself in the simplicity of an unknown plant growing in a pot with the plants that were planted.  Take for example, my pots of potatoes were expected to grow potatoes as I prepared the soil, fertilized, and placed in the deep rich soil carefully a potato that had sprouted in the cupboard.  I knew that one pot would grow the purple potatoes that the purple potato had been planted in, the red potatoes would have red potatoes hiding deep in the soil and the tan potato would hopefully produce tan replicas in due time.  But as in life, everything is not pure and when you use rich compost that has been cooking for years it is not too surprising that something that had been dormant would start to grow once it was given a chance just like our minds when planted with the right thoughts start giving us the opportunity to do pretty well and grow as we travel through our life. 

In our case, one day we discovered a mystery plant growing in a pot with the potatoes.  We were excited and quickly prepared another pot for the intruder once my husband and I decided that the plant was not a weed.  It survived the transplanting. Soon the two of us were heading out the door in the early morning to gaze in the new light of day to see what the plant had done.  “Is it growing?  Do you see any flowers? I think it is a cucumber or a squash.” I declared to my husband that it needed to be watered morning, noon and night just like the potatoes then we hovered like new parents by the newly growing green plant that was reaching out its ever growing vines out of its black pot onto the concrete porch. Fortunately, we had other things to occupy our time so we did not camp out by the plant taping the sounds of its growing, and measuring the one quarter inch of growth or more in a day. Life is always just too busy to really enjoy listening to the world around us.

While I wait for the mystery plant to show me what it is besides being green with small yellow flowers that are attracting the honey bees, I am working on rediscovering myself.  Somewhere along the way, I lost most of my optimism, confidence, and joy in living to be saddled with fears.  Not necessary my own but I do tend to grab onto the emotions and woes of others just entirely too much.  So how do you regain the lost, the unseen, the intangible feeling of well being that comes naturally to us when we are newly arrived on this plane of existence.  I don’t have a ready answer, I am struggling every day but I think that I am gaining on the answers for myself.  I am working on kicking those unwanted thoughts out the back door of my mind.  I am reverting to the young woman that I was who read daily uplifting affirmations, adhering to daily prayers of gratitude for what I have been given and looking more closely at the great joys that I have in my life.  I told a friend the other day that I had found my happy thought.  She looked at me with puzzlement on her face.  I asked her if she had ever seen “Peter Pan” with Robin Williams when she said yes then I told her that she was my happy thought. For that moment, for that day, she was my happy thought.

Perhaps, the God or Goddess, the Great Spirit, the Divine Mother and Holy Spirit have been listening or just perhaps I am paying attention more closely. Because I am unwinding the tension in my body or trying to by remembering that I am a spirit in a body experiencing the moment.  Today was a good day because our minister reminded us that the news media like to push bad news because it sells copy. But we can focus on the positive instead of the negative. It is our choice. 

The mystery that is in my garden and in my life as a wandering soul has a common theme of unfolding into something grand.  Meanwhile, I am in need of gathering more of the mystery of the glorious things to help the flowering, fruiting of myself as I wait for the final harvest.

Regarding the mystery plant, tonight, my husband declared, “I know it is not a lemon cucumber, it is too big.” The mystery is still in the garden.

  

Watering the World

Watering the World

           I am always looking for ways to save money though I don’t often use coupons except for yesterday while we were shopping. My husband was determined to use all of the coupons that a supermarket had given us as long as they were for products that we used.  Most of the time we can’t use coupons as we use fresh produce and fresh seafood or chicken and turkey preferring to cook so we can regulate the sodium, sugar and additional things that are generally found in the prepackaged foods.  If we can’t spell or pronounce the words, we figure that it probably should not go into our bodies without a written prescription from a licensed doctor or dietitian.

No, we are not purists.  I can testify to that having just eaten spoonfuls of chocolate chip cookie dough followed by several cookies to help chase them down my gullet.  But we did grind oatmeal to use instead of having all white flour in the recipe with whole wheat pastry flour as well as some of the regular white flour in the cookies.  Plus walnuts, chocolate chips and real butter.  I will stop here with what we do within the mixing and baking but the cookie recipe is not a secret one.  At least it is not one that a spy will hang around my windows in hope that we will recite the recipe out loud, “Did you put the cup of ground oatmeal in? Did you remember the extra flour? How hot did you say the oven was?”  Nope, no secrets here, just keep on walking by.

I can easily say that we are lucky and don’t have to skimp on the food bill as we cook our meals from scratch with dry beans, lentils, rice, etc.  So what is a girl to do with trying to find ways to save money? Cut back on our allowances which we get every two weeks?  Twenty dollars to each of us does not seem unreasonable. My husband will testify to that.  About twenty-five years ago, he came to me and asked for an allowance, he said that he did not care how I did it but he wanted ten dollars every payday.  I said, “Okay.”  About two years ago, I raised his allowance to twenty dollars every payday. Generally, I use mine for the Farmer’s Market, though earlier this year I used my twenty dollars for payments on a new purse that I bought at a friend’s shop here in our town.  I have a drawer for my desires at her place which by the way is filled with lovely lingerie, slippers, pearls, earrings and limited amount of wonderful purses.  I have a total of four now. Two are tiny things to fit into the bigger purses that I already have. Two of the other purses from her shop are pieces of art with beautiful artwork on the outside. My attitude about works of art is to have them if I like them and if they are purses.  

Well, back to the idea of saving money.  I have decided that one way that I could cut back was on the water bill which has gained momentum and seems to be increasing as the summer season continues with hotter days than we are use to here on the Oregon central coast.  I had increased the little pots of potatoes that I have growing on the porch plus the mystery plant that volunteered growing in the pot with the potatoes.  Therefore, we used more water to water the potatoes morning, noon and night to help my little crop grow.  The mystery plant, well, we are waiting to find out, but the little yellow blossoms seem to be attracting honey bees so that is a definite plus. 

One morning as my husband was taking his bath I announced to him that I would like him to save the bathwater for the roses, the butterfly bush and the lilac tree.  He worried about the soap in the water but I let him know that since we did not use much soap that it would not be a problem on those plants but we would need to use the pure water for the potatoes and the mystery plant (it is looking more and more like a cucumber plant).  How to get the water to the roses, the butterfly bush and the lilac tree was not a problem as I was planning on hauling it out myself.

I want to applaud my husband for his great support in the various odd things that I seem to do to fill up our lives on a day to day basis.  Therefore, I was not too surprised to hear yelps coming from our bathroom on Sunday just a bit of concern though I had a fairly good idea of what I would find when I ran to the bathroom.  I was right, as a rule, I generally am right that is.  As I went into the bathroom, my very naked cold wet husband was sponging off in the very cold water from our morning baths. It was the water that was waiting for me to drag out to the plants in the yard.  He had just finished mowing the yard and had worked out a really nice sweat in the hot afternoon and really need a nice hot relaxing bath but what he got was a very cold tub of water. He is my hero. A cold water hero but a hero nevertheless.

So far, it seems to be working as I pour out  the water from the tub into a pan or large bowl and trudge out the back or front door with my water.  The roses are looking good with lots of new buds coming on.  The water in the kitchen that we catch from rinsing fruit, lettuce, and other vegetables goes to the potatoes and the possible cucumber or squash plant.  At the rate that I am going I will be watering the world.

  

ALS - Footsteps Without Knowing

Footsteps Without Knowing

There is a strength hidden in the shoes we wear, a desire to continue our living in the day to day things we do for who knows what tomorrow might bring to us.  We might change the food we eat as our body slips away from us as our days are clocked with the timing of the pills we take. 

Still we dress ourselves, place the pearls around our neck, earrings in our ears, gaze in the mirror and head out the door until the next time we get knocked down. There is grace in our prodding on, our face does not mirror our heart, our ache, our fear instead we smile.

There are times that we share our fears telling the story of sitting in a doctor's office and reading the symptoms in a magazine,  I can imagine you feeling your heart stop as the sounds of breathing ceases from your chest from the realization that the article in magazine was talking about you.  Somehow walking out the doctor's door until reaching home and crying alone. You said that was when you cried, you didn't when the doctor gave you the diagnosis of ALS.

I told you one day that I had a new list of worries since I came to visit and when I listed them to a friend she responded wisely, "What good things did you have?" so I listed them. Cows lowing in the fields seeking their calves, the hooting of a Great Horned Owl, yelping of coyotes in the fields of green surrounding your house, seeing the The Milky Way Galaxy in the night sky above the roof of your home. We walked out onto the porch onto the deep cool grass, skirting the droppings of swallows on the white painted wooden boards of the porch, past the birds who were nesting close to the eaves. We walked out to see a Galaxy millions of miles away from our imagined living. There were fresh plums, Japanese cucumbers, yellow summer squash and green zucchini from your garden to nibble on throughout the days that I lived part of your life.

Should I thank you for taking on the burden of something that I hope never to do?  In some beliefs, we chose our paths, our joys, our trials and pains to experience while we walk upon the earth with others. Then you are extra-ordinarily brave to follow down the road of our mother and while my heart aches, I can finally see our mother in your face and eyes where your bravery shines.  I had lost her.

On my flight home, I saw another good thing, the great peak of Mt Hood shoving through the haze of smoke from lingering forest fires. My delight was tremendous and I watched the mountain stay behind as I flew away.  Tomorrow, I will take my footsteps without knowing in each day, breathing, living and hoping for that is all any of us can do until the next day comes upon us.