Tri-Color Kalanchoe

My tri-color kalanchoe is blooming. It's an ornamental plant i put in my flowerpots at the front door in the summer, where it pokes along, but doesn't bloom. Until now, when snow is on the ground, and it's 12 degrees outdoors.

Somehow the conditions are right in my solarium with radiant heat in the floor. Passive solar gain through the big windows tends to bake the plants in the solarium.

What are the conditions that help meditation bloom in your life?

One friend is thinking it's time to get back into the meditation groove again, so she's taking a half-day Zoom retreat this weekend.

There are so many Zoom opportunities for meditating with a group or going on retreat--for 3 hours, for a day, or a week.

Let your meditation practice bloom with an additional sit. Your heart will feel warmer.

January Thaw

The entire month of January has been a January thaw--freezing at night and melting during the day. It's more like March weather when the freeze-thaw cycle starts sap running in the maple trees. 

How are the maple trees doing in this weather anyway? It's been nice for the two-leggeds to walk outdoors--with their grippers on their boots and walking sticks in their hands.

Ice. Water. Snow. Snow melting into water. Icicles. Water dripping.

Freeze. Thaw. Freeze. Thaw.

Change and more change. Including climate change.

Welcome and Unwelcome

 This morning i meditated outdoors on the deck at 6:00 a.m. The temperature was balmy and the breeze light. The sun didn't rise until after meditation ended at 7:00.

Welcome December.

I haven't meditated outdoors for more than a month, but if it's over 50 degrees, i sit on the deck and meditate with the birds and the squirrel. (They are doing eating meditation.)

It's too warm for December, and that's unwelcome, but the day was delightful. So easy to spend it outdoors doing some more last-minute chores. Putting up Christmas lights was fun.

We welcome even the unwelcome.

The Wind

 

Just before the rain, the wind  blows beautifully. A cool warm wind. I lie in the hammock and watch clouds skid across the sky. 

It's heaven out near the vegetable garden, surrounded by red- and yellow-leaved trees. I'm wearing long sleeves, but the temperature is just right. 

The wind blows the Cheryl-ness out of me until i can feel the clouds skating across the sky also skating through my chest. It's wonderfully wild in the great outdoors.

Tulip Surprise

Tulips surprise me every year. I buy them half price after Thanksgiving and force them in pots in the garage. By early March, their green shoots poke up out of the dirt, and I bring them indoors to warm up. As soon as one blooms, I take it and its pot full of sister tulips outdoors to the front step. Soon, a dozen pots of tulips decorate the front door.

Left in the refrigerator of outdoors, the potted tulips bloom for about three weeks, though this year, they held their color for nearly six weeks. Then I dig a hole in a flowerbed and plop the spent tulips into it.

A year later, a few tulips survive and surprise me. The chipmunks did not eat the tulip bulbs. It feels like a miracle, and I am grateful.

A Tu-lip Kiss

Yesterday i delivered 4 pots of tulips to friends.

One friend has a terminal illness and is jumping through the medical hoops so he can take "the pill" if he so desires--probably within the next 2 months. One pot of tulips to my masseuse. Oh, i could really use a massage about now. I stopped by to visit an extrovert couple who love company. We sat outdoors on their deck, about 10 feet apart. And the last one to a neighbor.

I've never been good at "dropping by" anyone's home, but yesterday i had the time to go out of my way and meander home. It didn't really take that long to stop and deliver some flowery cheer and exchange a few words--from a distance. I rather like this slowed-down pace.

The tulips have to serve as my virtual hug and kiss on the cheek.

My Tulips are Blooming

The tulips i forced in pots and brought indoors are starting to bloom. So outdoors they go, because they will last longer in the refrigerator weather out there.

The bulbs, which have been hiding out in the gloom of the garage for 4 months, are out in the open air. I think that's a good sign for me, who has been quarantined at home for less than 2 weeks.

Today i was out in a neighbor's woods, cutting down saplings with a friend. We stayed at least 6 feet apart from each other's saws. We are clearing the understory to allow more light and air.

That's what we all need: more light and more air.

Tulips in Flowerpots

In December, i planted tulip bulbs in flowerpots and set them in the garage. Now, they are six inches tall, so i'm bringing some inside to hurry up their blooms. The others are sitting in the waiting room of the front step.

Some of us bloom early, some late. Some of us zoom through school and hurry into adulthood. Some of us lag behind. Some careers take off, and some don't. Some bodies die faster than others.

Patience is the name of the game. Trust that Life (or whatever you may call it) is taking care of us.

Even the outdoor tulips will bloom eventually.

Houseplants in the Tropics

The very small garden (4' x 4') at our vacation condo's front door is crowded with plants that i have in my solarium at home. Banana tree, variegated scheffilera, agave.

Here in their native habitat in the tropics, they thrive and look lush. My houseplants at home--banana tree, plain green scheffilara--look pathetic in comparison.

During their summer vacation outdoors, my houseplants perk up and look lush. Then i bring them in doors and they start to decline and look piqued.

I have houseplants in the first place for the joy they bring me. Ahhh. Green and growing plants. Some, like geraniums, with flowers.

When the mind compares my housebound North Country plants to the tropics, i and my houseplants always lose.

The comparing mind can't help but compare. That is its main job. And the comparison? Useless. Really useless.

I'm sinking into the beauty of what is. Right here. Right now.

CHRISTMAS TREE REDUX

We took down the Christmas tree and carried it outdoors. And there we set it up again in a snowbank, known in other seasons as my white garden. Now that garden is well and truly white--with snow. For the next ten weeks, we have a tree standing near the front door, sort of defining the white garden with a bit of vertical greenery. Instant landscaping!

We did this while the temperature was still above freezing and the wet snow could be shoveled and

then banked around the base of the tree. Two hours later, the temperature dropped below freezing and

now the tree  and its stand are frozen solidly into the icy snow for the next three days as

temperatures drop back into the single numbers.

We think of our words and actions as changeable, pliable, melting away on the next breath.

Yet, if we repeat the same thought or the same action over and over, the neural pathway forms a rut,

and a habit becomes frozen in place. A habit becomes part of our inner landscape, and we start to

believe that's who we really are.

Let's watch our thoughts and actions carefully and make sure that they are in accord with our highest

intentions. Let's plant mindfulness right at the front door of our mouth.

 

Climbing Rhododendrons

The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina are thick with big old rhododendrons. When i stopped in Blowing Rock, a woman told me that she and her sister used to climb rhododendrons as kids. What a great place to play!

I don't spend enough time outdoors, and i don't spend enough time playing. My do-er likes to be doing something in the garden. That's my adult form of play--rearranging and neatening up the flower beds, trimming branches off shrubs. All to make a more beautiful landscape, which will soon enough revert to its wild state when i can no longer care for it.

Rhododendrons grow tall. Children grow up. And i grow old.

Fresh Air Daffodils

Spring is just around the corner in London. Walking through Covent Garden yesterday, i saw a pot of daffodils on an outdoor table at a restaurant.

Many restaurants in London have outdoor tables with people sitting at them, bundled up in their coats, enjoying their meals, or perhaps more often, their drinks or cigarettes.

You'd think that the outdoors would mean a breath of fresh air, yet that's where people go to pollute their lungs with cigarette smoke.

The little daffodils silently remind us to breathe and enjoy this breath. This breath of fresh air. This breath of city air. This breath of smoky air.

Bringing the Flowerpots Indoors

It's time to bring the flowerpots in from the front step and the back step. The first frost is coming in a few days. I have so enjoyed the luxuriant "welcome home" this summer.

Bringing the pots indoors is like putting them in a nursing home or a rehab center. Several of the plants get weaker and weaker over the winter, and finally give up the ghost. But many will survive in the solarium.

My gardening friend Ruth had a hip replacement 5 years ago and a knee replacement 3 years ago. She's working outdoors in her garden every hour that she can.  She knows what the rehab center looks like--cooped up indoors for months.

Let's go out
to our garden now.
Today.
And feel grateful for every minute we spend outdoors.

A Banana Tree Grows in the North Country

I'm moving my houseplants outdoors for their summer vacation. It's a good opportunity to divide and repot the houseplants or at least to refresh the potting soil.

The 5-foot tall banana tree, as usual, has a one-foot tall sucker in its pot, so i divide the little one off, into its own pot. Then i keep the little one, and i take the tall banana tree down to my neighbor Connie, so she can plant it at the corner of her driveway and the private road we live on.

I like the visual joke: a banana tree growing in New England. I like to imagine the neck-snapping moment of visitors driving on our road: Is that a....? No, it can't be. Banana tree?

Generosity freely offers a gift from the heart. The donor reaps joy. Well, in this case, it feels more like glee, but joy comes in many different flavors.

What's your favorite flavor of joy?