Breakfast on the Go

As I’ve said, I walk very early in the morning; just before daybreak in the summer months is best. Air quality has become another qualification to the time and day I walk. I also walk best on an empty stomach. Somehow, digesting breakfast of any nature slows me down so I wait until I get home for food and coffee. I know many of you have to have coffee before anything. I prefer my coffee with company so I wait until I turn on the laptop.

Yes, I still have to drink my coffee through a straw.

August has its own supply of breakfast on the go. As I’m rounding the next to last turn on my downhill trek to home, there are bramble bushes that are laden with ripening blackberries. I found I could have a few on my way back to the house and feel quite satiated. Some are quite sweet and some – not so much. They are free, organic and have lots of microbes for a healthy gut. A perfect meal. I don’t stop long but it feels so good to eat fresh from the bushes. Someone from the park cut them way back the other day. I’m struggling to reach high enough now to feed myself.  I’m still looking for the donut tree.

Some may ripen for next weeks breakfast

Breakfast on the go

I’ve been trying again to grow a tiny bit of a garden in a raised bed. The cucumbers were prolific in the short run they had but something has had its way with most of my tomatoes. I’ll keep hoping to get a few more this summer. Most of what I grow is for the bees and birds anyway.

So many good cucumbers this year

The only good Roma’s I got.

It’s either like this or a giant hole in them.

There is one less thing growing in the back yard right now. A very determined tree that was unfortunately left in a very bad spot. It began to push the terrace retaining wall forward probably as soon as it was erected long before my time in this home. I loved the tree even though I worried at each storm if it would come down on the shed or house. When park maintenance looked at it after the ice storm, they determined it had to go. I posted the photos back in February of it leaning over the shed. Watching the crew that was hired to take it down last week left me drained and relieved. It’s hard to lose any tree.

It grew back after being topped off.

Did I break the curb?

Through the neighbors yard to figure out how to get up there.

Need to get a stump grinder in there now.

­I recently received a surprise gift from a special gardening friend and was inspired to create a fresh new fairy garden from it. We are big fans of fairies and the little garden had me looking up the proper spelling of the word. What a surprise I got thinking it was just a difference in spelling.

http://www.differencebetween.net/language/words-language/difference-between-fairy-and-faerie/

It’s been quite blistering out on many days so I’ve been able to hide the little garden in shadier spots to keep it from burning. I do that for myself as well.

I think a fairy would be quite comfortable there.

I had a lot of boulders and stone waiting to be used

Can you see the little pagoda hiding behind the bush?

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul. ~Alfred Austin

Are you a breakfast person and would you share it with the fairies?

From my heart to yours,

Marlene Herself

Walking Backward

We ended  another month! How does that happen and why am I  always surprised? We are all sheltering from something we can’t see so our activities are limited.

Deep purple Lily on my walk

My walks were getting a bit routine. I usually start up the hill, go around the first left corner and text my quilting friend that I’m on her street. Since she is being extra cautious, she comes out on her front porch to wave and say good morning. We have a little conversation the whole neighborhood can hear from six feet apart and she sometimes shares what she’s been quilting. It’s more fun when you can show your work to someone that appreciates it. I get there early in the mornings. (For her)

Emily likes making smaller things now. She has plenty of big and beautiful quilts

There are 3 panels to this set.

Applique flowers in a pot

Bird houses are a favorite of mine

A gift for my daughter’s birthday in April

Then I walk up another steep hill and finally start down again. I decided yesterday to go the other way since I’d left even earlier and stop at Emily’s last. Maybe she’d be awake when I got there. Changing my routine had me noticing things I had not seen going the other way. I think that applies to life in general. If we keep doing things the way we have always done them, nothing changes. Going backward changed my perspective on the neighborhood. Now I am carrying that idea into other areas of life to see what I can shake loose.

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Today I finally finished the leftover quilt and the binding is attached to the front. I’ll hand stitch it to the back while I watch TV or listen to Ted talks or YouTube. I already have a project halfway done that I can’t show yet until all of our group are ready to share. I’ve also turned over the two charity quilt tops I finished first. Emily gave them to me already cut out. I did make some changes in the fabric since some went missing. It happens.

Quilt for Tech Support.

Very much like the one I made my son 2 years ago Christmas

It’s like wrangling cats to quilt it on a home machine,

Charity quilt top done and passed on to Emily

Faces Charity quilt passed on to Emily

These pillowcases have been waiting 2 years for me to make for my daughter. Done.

I’ve learned how to use Zoom to connect with our PF support group and wave at my sister at her house. We have learned to zoom together since we can’t get together. So many are using all kinds of media to connect. It feels a little backwards too. They kept telling us before to stay off the social media and spend more time in personal contact.

Metal sculpture puppy

While I Zoom, I do what I always do when listening a long time without speaking, I work on my embroidery. I did a lot of this at PF group so I don’t fidget. Embroidery keeps me focused on what I’m hearing rather than what’s playing in my head.

slow work in progress

#6 Hoping to start #7 soon.

The weather dried up enough to get a lot of weed pulling done. I filled the green waste can up and my daughter took it off the hill for me. It gets composted by the city and I’ve worked until everything hurts and yard looks almost nice again. As the rain comes to an end here, my list of outside chores goes up.

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I’ll be posting less in the summer due to other demands. You really don’t want to see the list. Bored is not in my vocabulary. In a given day I go from one thing to the other until sleep claims me. I spend my sleep hours thinking up more things that need to be done.

I am…enjoying the moments

Do you like to change up your routine to gain new perspective on old habits?

From my heart to yours,

Marlene Herself

In Search of the Handbasket

The week has been quite busy for me doing not very creative things. Just more of the same old stuff like cooking, laundry, holding boards, and packing. The buyers are having some difficulty but we aren’t giving up yet. Either way, the work still needed to be done. My feet are giving up though. They announced their retirement at 5:30 yesterday and said enough. If I had a nickel for every time we have gone up and down those stairs, I could take us out to dinner. I never want to see stairs again.

The tiny shrubs I planted 2 years ago are big but gangly.

We have no TV channels here at my son’s house and don’t have the time to watch anyway. At the end of the day, the computer takes care of business and I don’t want to look at bad news anyway. You’ve heard many people say over and over in different ways for many generations that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Well, I’m wondering what their handbasket looks like. From where I sit here in front of my laptop, I see substantial evidence of a different world and a different handbasket.

One handbasket coming up.

I was reading The Contented Crafter latest post on her blog and once again am totally enthralled by her ability to take little bits of this, that and nothing much GIFTED to her by fellow bloggers from all over the world and turn it into an amazing work of art. Even if you are not a blogger, you should pop by and see some of the wonders of her mind. Her stories of Siddy and Orlando (fuzzy family) leave me giggling for hours.

If this is what a world going to hell in a handbasket looks like, sign me up for one of my own. I see things I could not have ever imagined before I started reading blogs. Who knew what wonders lurked out there? Sweet, kind and caring Gardening Nirvana introduced me to the world of Fairy Gardens that are just delightful. I want one of those baskets too. Add that to her introduction to Little Free Libraries and I was all in.

I shared with you already the delights I received from the hysterically funny and creative Boomdeeadda. When you drop by you will see her magical creations from little else other than paper!

The handbasket I’m carrying these days is filled with a collection of blogging friends who fill my day with mirth, entertainment and motivation when my spirits are lagging.

Lavender is huge but refreshes the soul. Grabbing a handful for my basket

My friend at To Breathe is to Write writes stories that make me laugh or get my mystery fix satisfied. She can spin a yarn or tell it like it is. When I find someone’s blog I like, I check out the people who leave comments or follow her or him. That leads to a lot of great blogs and enlarges my community. This list could go on and on, so maybe I need a larger handbasket?

It’s still not big enough for all the kindness I’ve seen lately

Bells Palsy normally only lasts a few weeks or months for most, just like Shingles. Same virus, different expression. I’m heading into the 5th year with this.  I was under extreme stress when I got it and it expressed itself very much like a stroke. Balance is a continuing issue as well as the visual disturbance it caused. Huh, what did you say? I don’t hear as well either. No one knows why it won’t go away or how to fix it. It really doesn’t matter anymore. I now have a life full of friends in town and online that are constantly motivating me. When I see their creativity and thoughtfulness, there is no time to wallow. I just roll up my sleeves and get busy.

Roses, like good friends are treasures.

 

You can’t tell me the world is all bad. It’s like picking flowers to put in your basket from the yard. Which flowers do you want in that basket? I’ve found the flowers with the kindest energy out there. My basket is filled with beautiful blooms.

What are you putting in your handbasket? It’s always your choice.

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the States.

From my heart to yours,

Marlene Herself

In Search of New Friends

My brain has been on stuck mode the last couple of weeks. Author Mccloskey Speaks wrote in her post last week “I Got Nothing”, I had to commiserate. I’ve been in that same frame of mind. It’s like swimming through Jello. My mind is mush.

Two weeks ago, I started two new writing classes at a neighboring senior center. My local center didn’t have one. On Wednesday afternoon, it’s a creative writing class and I’ve discovered that I don’t do well with 3 minutes to write on a prompt. It’s the Jello again. Even the weekly assignments leave me with a vacuum where my brain once resided. The second is a memoir writing class. Should be easy enough, right? The prompts once again left me struggling for any memory of that particular experience.

Turtle looking at the pond

The challenge is good for my brain that is slowly repairing itself from years of intense stress that ended with the Bells Palsy. For the first two years after I came down with it, I could not complete a simple sentence. Everyone around me played charades. I pointed like a two-year old or beat my head looking for a simple word. These writing exercises are just that; brain exercise.

Fairy garden back

The other reason I signed up for the classes is that I am new enough in the area that I have yet to make friends. There seems to be a large turnover of young people in my apartment complex and though I’ve become acquainted with my neighbors, four of the apartments right by mine, have been vacated. Winter is over. Spring is making things lush and lovely once again. Here in Oregon, it’s really lovely all year. I’m hoping warmer, drier weather brings everyone out to get acquainted. I met one lady here who seems nice enough. She asks a lot of favors and doesn’t say thank you, so I’m giving the friendship some thought.

Chicks & Hens with Buddha

Buddha close up

In the meantime I’ve done a little container gardening trying my hand at a fairy garden. The outcome is irrelevant to the process. I got hooked after reading Gardening Nirvana’s post on Fairy Garden Frivolity.It has been so much fun and next week when there is real sunshine once again, (I can hardly wait) maybe I’ll do a little more playing in the dirt. Hopefully, I can then sit on my upstairs deck and see more than ducks go by. It really is hard making new friends when you are old, single, quirky and have moved too much. But I will persevere. My daughter needs a break.

Tumpta reading a book

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” ― Mark Twain

From my heart to yours,
Marlene Herself

In Search of Imagination

It’s a new year and I must decide what to make of it. I want to write my stories as well as make things to give as gifts. Something tangible to say ”Yes, I was here”. While I’m at it, if there is a magic genie out there, I want to be thin, rich, and beautiful. Guess who the genie has to be?

Reading other bloggers writing has recently left me totally blown away by the level of creativity and imagination that they possess. My blogging friend at Gardening Nirvana writes about her garden and her fairy gardens. The imagination that goes into her fairy gardens actually left me breathless and stunned. I have no concept of how that level of imagination works. Another blogging friend at Boomdeeadda writes about her crafts that are so fun and delightful, I feel as though I have been sitting under a rainbow while I read.

I, on the other hand, write “just the facts ma’am”. Life for me has been real and tight. Budgets were tight, shoes were tight, emotions and rules, tighter still. Imagination was not something that was encouraged in our home. We colored in the lines at school and not at all at home. I was once given a paint by number set by someone other than my parents, somehow managing to get paint on my clothes in the process of completing the picture. Getting paint on my clothes created a crisis in our house since I had so few. I had to get work with neighbors to raise the money to buy new clothes. I was 12 at the time.

How do you go from paint by number to fairy gardens? I wish I knew. All of my projects have directions and if I don’t understand the directions or do them incorrectly, everything comes to a grinding halt. I’m afraid I may have passed that on to some degree to my children. We all graduated from the “Do it right and do it well” school. There is a place for that but I see now there is a place for imagination to rule the roost.

For those of you who are not sure if your writing makes any difference in the world, I can guarantee, it does. You’ve probably touched more lives than you know. I know I question mine every week. I’ve learned how to be happy with less from livingsimplyfree and the difference between Miracle Whip and Mayonnaise from Texana”s Kitchen. Now, she can write funny and serious. Every day, I learn something from you wonderful bloggers and I just have to let you know.

I’m trying to write happy and funny stories but I have so little experience with them. It’s not even in the realm of my imagination. Another blogging friend writes about reducing her life to the smallest footprint possible. I’ve lived that most of my life. I know it well. I want to imagine a big life, filled with joy and toys and happy experiences. Why didn’t anyone tell me that imagination was the most vital key to a fulfilling life? Now, how do I develop one? That’s what I want to learn next.

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ― Albert Einstein

From my heart to yours,
Marlene Herself