Bouquets for the Wedding

I was on the flower committee for a neighbor's wedding. She choose dahlias and zinnias from a local flower farmer, plus a scattering of celosia, dianthus, and even spider flower. Five of us spent the morning arranging flowers into 30 vases for the dinner tables. They were beautiful.

Sunday morning, the flowers traveled to the post-wedding brunch. And then, they dispersed. I brought one bouquet home with me.

The flowers, the wedding, the preparation, and all those worker bees created a beautiful setting for the wedding, the reception, and the brunch. The wedded couple launched into their married lives. All around me sat divorced women, widowed women and men, a young woman married two years ago and now separated. In the moment, we rejoiced in the happiness of the wedding and ignored those other feelings.

Red Malabar Spinach

In July, i bought Red Malabar Spinach to spruce up the flowerpots on my front step. Even though the name sounds like a vegetable, the plant looks very decorative--shiny green leaves on a red-stemmed vine with small white-pink flowers. Best of all, the spinach continues to grow happily during the hot days of summer since it comes from Malabar in the southwest coast of India.

My green, leafy vegetable is waiting for me every time i walk in the front door. Mindfulness is waiting for me every time i walk from the garage to the front step.

Snake Skin

Last evening was cool, so i fired up the woodstove. In between the first two logs i pulled out of the woodshed was a snake skin. Which gives the word "woodshed" a whole new meaning now that a snake has shed its skin in it.

I am shedding my summer clothes in favor of long sleeves and corduroy pants and fleece vests.

A change of seasons. A change of skins. From warm bare skin to cool.

Summer changes slowly, quickly to autumn. Wriggle out of warmth into a new day of freshness.

Sweet Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I came home to a pile of cherry tomatoes, and, yesterday, i finally got around to drying them. I particularly like grape tomatoes for their meatiness. They are okay in salads, though i prefer the sweetness of sungolds. But the grape tomatoes make very flavorful sun-dried tomatoes.

Some of us are sweet when young; some of us learn to be even sweeter when we are old and wrinkled and dried out.

Sweetness happens when we stop resisting the flow of Life.

Departure Time

Hummingbirds are still here, but they will be leaving on a jet stream any time now. They arrive in my garden around May 10 and usually leave on September 10. That's 3 short months of hummingbird joy.

Sometimes, our dear ones leave us before we are ready. We want them to stay around longer. But it's time for them to go. Early departure is especially hard when friends younger than we leave this life.

But they are migrating on to a place we cannot go with our physical bodies and cannot know with our physical minds.

Trust the spirit, trust Life to know exactly what to do. Life knows far more than our little birdbrain minds ever can.

Butterflies on Boneset

While i was in North Carolina, my sweetie broke a rib. When i returned home he excitedly told me that he had seen 10 monarch butterflies on the Joe Pye Weed. "The common name for that flower is boneset," i said. "Bone-set."

He's not complaining much about his broken rib. When his car crashed, the seat belt and airbag jolted a few other parts of his body, and he feels those aches and pains more strongly.

Our physical bodies surprise us with various breakdowns. But i feel confident that my sweetie will heal. After all, he seems to have 10 monarch butterflies on his side.

Okra. Well, Okay.

I'm visiting family in Georgia, and on Saturday we go to the Farmer's Market. All the vendors are selling okra. I am a true Northerner. I have no idea what to do with okra, but my niece buys a batch and fries it up for our fish tacos. Okra is delicious.

Okra has a reputation. People who love it, love it. And people who aren't so sure about it are relying on word-of-mouth instead of taste-of-mouth.

We don't like it when someone sullies our reputation. We want a fair hearing, and we want people to like us for who and what we are.

Let's give okra a fair hearing, a fair tasting. We might even like it, just as it is.