Purging the Mind and Starting Fresh

This week has been about clearing the air, brushing cobwebs from the mind and getting centered in the soul.  It’s been about living in a state of renovation chaos once again and somehow dodging flying shingles and dropping nails.  It’s been about avoiding rain, covering up holes as clouds drift from white, to silver to grey.  But what a happy state to say “I’m writing again” and feeling pleased with the output.

Experiencing some mini-adventures this week include a birthday lunch, a belated brunch and family time without bickering.  Remembering loved ones who have gone away and anticipating the return of other beloveds coming home from a year’s worth of adventures.  Watching the young hens start to nest and lay their mini eggs with a bemused expression in their yellow gold eyes.  Looking doubtfully in empty nests where little ones had certainly been nesting, has she got the disease?  Hmmm.  Try not to think about it.

Early morning walks around the park, inspecting the very barren flower garden and wondering if fall will happen as early as August.  Is that a chill in the air or is it just a morning breeze?  Is that an unusual amount of premature yellow leaves on the trees or is it normal?  Are there farmerish signals that I’m not aware of or should I just listen to the weather channel and try not to believe in global warming?  Relax, it’s 6 a.m. and the dawn is barely dawned.  Don’t think, just breathe.  Walk, just be.  Enjoy the stillness.

What are the little rascals up to now?  How easily the tranquility breaks as one of the hens scoot past me, loose from the coop!  Skeddaddle!

Fixing the World

Just a crazy little question.  Does anyone outside of America trust the USA to fix the rest of the world? 

Falling Down and Getting Up

This week seems to be a theme of learning about one’s self.  In the few years that I have been blogging I find myself coming back to several topics time and again.  I get passionate about politics, enraged at injustice, introspective when I’ve read something meaningful, laugh at myself when I do something ridiculous and take delight in the absurdity of Mother Nature’s finest.  I love to lecture on quality life, and quality retirement and quality this and that. 

Or rather, I love to lecture.

So I take to heart when I am criticized, or more gently, critiqued, for writing repetitiously or dully or boringly.  But I’m living in the country with a small social circle and aliens don’t land in my backyard every day.   I can only write about what tinkers around in my mind, what revelations occur as I watch the news, read the papers, listen to the radio, observe life or muse over philosophies that have gone awry.

The other day my mother asked me “what are you getting out of reading the Bible” and I turned to her and said “what are you getting out of reading Familie Journalen 40 times”?  What we both get out of reading is knowledge and whether we put it to use or not us up to us.  What we get out of talking about it is a big laugh.

C’est la vie.

Patience, Patience, Patience

It’s much easier looking into the window of someone else’s concern than looking in the mirror at your own chaos.  Now that analogy can make you do some somersaults as it is not quite the normal way of saying “don’t throw stones in a glass house”.  That is how my mind works some days, jumbled but seeking the order which I know is somewhere in the misty depth of my brain.

Retirement can be a double edged sword when it comes to thinking.  My readers will recall that I set out in late winter, early spring working on my thinking by using the wonderful little book “Jumpstart Your Thinking” which indeed worked wonders until, you know, Mother Nature created bitter chaos in my chosen summer pursuit.  At least, that is the excuse I kept giving myself as I failed to write, I failed to keep up my daily Bible reading (playing catchup every Sunday) and mundane things like exercise fell through a very large chasm.

So here is what I know for sure, one must first and foremost cut one’s self some slack.  A must.  Then one needs to understand what exactly is crippling the mind and causing all this stuck-ness which in turn is making one feel guilty.  It will be a different answer for everyone but at some point one must pull out the handy metaphorical mirror and examine one’s own troubles.  Without overcome this profound dullness of the mind it is impossible to have a joyous, meaningful life.  Retirement (and life) should not be humdrum or doleful.  Mother Nature or a bad work situation should not cripple a person’s overall lifestyle and only you, yes, you, can fix it.  No white knight or holy savior will fix things for you.  The onus to discover the problem and the cure rests squarely on one’s own shoulders.

Oh, but the world can be heavy some days but recognition of what life has been and will be again is like a sip of cool water.  Refreshing to behold.  And then, go break that mirror and get on with it Girl!

A Refuge in Books

Instead of pulling the blanket over my head to avoid thinking about cannibalistic hens I reach for the solid feel of a book, plump the pillows behind my back, turn on the reading lamp and plunge into a good book.  This month has been spent paddling a river and communing with a woodpecker in “The Lord God Bird”, riding over New Mexico’s desert in “Death Comes for the Archbishop” and fighting for liberty with Abigail Adams and her sisters in the wonderful book “Dear Abigail”.  Without conscious thought the books that came into my hands this past month were so in tune with my struggling farmer self that it was almost scary.

Books serve a multitude of purposes and while it may not be the highest form of praise, escape is a universal favorite reason to read.  If along the way you also learn history, become enlightened with new ideas, find a path to understanding yourself better, have a laugh, a cry and a wringing of the heart along the way then you have some added bonuses in the pursuit of reading a good book.  Not just any old book a good book.  How rare to find that combination of good writing, a lovely story and the bonus. 

This month while I was bemoaning my losses and hiding my nose in a book my head was also going around and around in the pursuit of worthy topics to write about.  Setting the right tone (not being a Debbie-downer), being mindful, meaningful and humorous all at once is a challenge that does not always come easily to the fingertips (or the mind).

The latest 21 Day Meditation with Deepak and Oprah is about “Getting Unstuck” and entering week 3 I find the lightbulb in my mind has turned back on and I am ready.

Ah, the relief.

A Month on the Farm

Originally I was going to write a day on the farm, then a week, and lo now it has become a month on the farm.  The summer has not slipped away except insofar as writing is concerned.  Daily tasks can sometimes take on a life of their own even the relatively simple task of collecting eggs each morning.  How, you may wonder?  Imagine a year and a half of bringing in a half dozen or so eggs first thing in the morning and then a couple more trips to produce almost two dozen eggs per day suddenly being reduced to one or none.  Then begins the anxiety of discovering the reason for this shortage and when one discovers cannibalism has struck the fold sleepless nights ensure in attempt to stop or curb the habit.  All to no avail.  Then resignation sets in, then resentment and one swings between the two emotions until the thought of The Colonel almost becomes a walking nightmare for the farmer as well as the chickens.

Meanwhile the rains come and the vegetable garden begins to prosper.  One bright morning the farmer walks out to her field to discover the deer have played havoc with the winter’s harvest.  Creative begins with netting, sticks, rods, stones and so forth to set up a barrier of protection for the remaining sprigs of lettuce, radish and slow growing carrots.  A walk to the other side of the garden to inspect the fruits causes another stab to the heart as the deer have nibbled the berry bushes to a stub.  No cherries, blueberries or strawberries this year.  The new apple trees have had a similar fate but the tops are still green and hope struggles to stay alive.

In the greenhouse the cabbage butterfly has nibbled the cabbages to death but the peppers and tomatoes are unscathed.  The pumpkins, like last year, bloom madly on but no fruit appears despite a constant supply of water and anxious watching for bees to pollinate.  Again hope burns eternal as the zucchini appear to be prospering.  No flowers yet but the leaves are strong and healthy.  Potatoes begin to bloom and young potatoes are only weeks away.

This is the life of an apprentice farmer experiencing a first true summer of “farming”.  While my heart is sad for farmers whose livelihoods are destroyed by Mother Nature in all its forms and while experience all the disappointment of finding hard hopeful work destroyed overnight by pretty little animals I strive to keep my sense of humour alive.  So this is why farmers are always complaining?  Pshaw, after all, there’s always next year.