Primroses cont…. There are so many variations and nuances about primroses that I simply get lost in them. The dark green ruffled leaves are wonderful and rich and the yellow and pink colors on the petals of this variety change as the petals develop, making them a joy to watch.

I have another Wendell Berry quote to share with you. It deals with how we need to consider our perspective in looking at our world and our place in it. I hope you give it some thought.

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”

― Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

Blue Wildflower…March 18

I met a most interesting man the other day as I was simply sitting in my car with the motor idling as I waited for a friend to run in a grocery store for some white grape juice. As some of you know Zelda, my 02 Mustang, sports a bumper sticker that has a reference to Louisiana. Well, an older gentleman, working at the grocery collecting carts approached my open window. He came from behind and startled me. He started our “conversation” with ………

“Louisiana! Baton Rouge! LSU Tigers!” The exclamation marks are necessary grammar nerds because he said this in an exclamatory manner.

What followed was a quick exchange where I named a city in Louisiana and he named their football team. He knew them all, even Lake Charles, responding correctly with McNeese Cowboys. This exchange lasted several minutes and then he wandered off to gather more carts.

Our meeting was so brief and yet so much fun. I realized he was a special man who enjoyed his job and life. Our chance encounter left me smiling.

A few days later I was gathered with friends and we were exchanging witty stories. Just as I took a breath to tell my tale my friend Mike begins his tale. Now Mike has been a live aboard here at Holiday Hill Marina for two winters. His home is down in Norfolk and he drives a car with Virginia plates. He told a story about an elderly man he chanced to meet in the Food Lion parking lot. This man simply started naming cities in Virginia and their football teams when he noticed those Virginia plates.

I have since discovered that this delightfully jovial man knows everything there is to know about college football and enjoys meeting people and sharing his vast knowledge. I was told that he is not able to live alone and still lives at home with his mother. She drives him to work each day and picks him up.

He is a treasure and I am reminded that each of us is special in our own way and I am thankful to have made his acquaintance.

“If you celebrate your differentness, the world will, too. It believes exactly what you tell it—through the words you use to describe yourself, the actions you take to care for yourself, and the choices you make to express yourself. Tell the world you are one-of-a-kind creation who came here to experience wonder and spread joy. Expect to be accommodated. ”

― Victoria Moran, Lit From Within: Tending Your Soul For Lifelong Beauty

Natural Healing ….This is the center of a Gerbera Daisy I chanced to meet today.

Take no revenge that you have not pondered beneath a starry sky, or on a canyon overlook, or to the lapping of waves and the mewing of a distant gull. ~Robert Brault

Today I woke up thinking about resentment and how harboring resentments can lead to anger and anger often likes to find its way down a river of pain that hardens into revenge. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this will destroy the resentment. It will only be destructive to the soul. It will turn you inside out and when looked upon directly it is obscene and ugly. Banish resentment with forgiveness, forgiving first yourself. Zahn

Greenhouse Primrose…Light, Love and Laughter to all of you….

“People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

I tend to stay away from politics on FB because I have little desire to enter into arguments with my friends and I know from experience that most people are not willing to entertain the possibility that their thought processes could be faulty and they close themselves off to open thinking and change.

That said I do want to write about a subject I think of often.

FEAR:

It has always appeared to me that the most powerful emotion of mankind in these days is fear.

Fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of abandonment, fear of loss of loved ones, fear of flying, fear of being in public, fear of being alone, fear of not having enough money, fear of becoming homeless, fear of loss of your stuff, fear of not having enough to eat, fear of having too much to eat, fear of war, fear of alien invasion, fear of aliens (of all kinds), fear of loss of status, fear of looking like a fool, fear of not fitting in, fear of spiders, fear of the unknown, fear of snakes, fear of the known, fear of close spaces, fear of wide open spaces, fear of ………………..FEAR

Many religions have used the fear of hell very effectively over the centuries. When people allow fear to dictate their actions I think it often clouds their judgement. Should we not live through love instead and allow that to motivate our actions instead of some notion that we will face eternal damnation if we do not follow the dictation of some religious doctrine?

Politicians are particularly adept at using fear as a motivator. They tell us to hate or to fear specific groups: conservatives or liberals, Republican or Democrat, Muslims or Jews, immigrants or the poor, people of a race different from ours. Do they do this to help the public or to protect us? I don’t think so at all. They do it to divide, to profit or to get elected. Do not be misled by the rhetoric of the powerful who wish to control through fear. Fill your heart with positive thoughts and trust it to guide you. You cannot see the path where it might lead you, but I believe it will be a brighter and more beautiful one than the darkness and chaos where fear and hate will take you.

Pink Greenhouse Cyclamen… “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” ― Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back The world of man often confounds and confuses me. We have so removed ourselves from Love that we act and react from FEAR. We create illusions and invent truths and call it Honesty. I do not have the mental fortitude, nor the stomach for the meanness and the hate I see being flung around like mud from a mired tire as it spins for control. May we come to understand that we are all connected to the Universe and indeed what affects one of us affects all of us. May we be liberated from our fear and face one another with Love and Hope. and may I never stop believing…

Yesterday…Shadows of tree trunks on the snow….

It has happened again. Sometime yesterday I lost my oomph, my punch, my vitality, my gusto, my enthusiasm. Hopefully it is simply misplaced and if I don’t panic I will find it.

In the afternoon I thought for a moment it had returned, only to discover it was just a caffeine overdose from a double shot of espresso masquerading as my vim and verve.

This has happened before and sometimes it isn’t so much I lost it as it connives with my zing to take a holiday. When this happens there isn’t much I can do but hibernate and wait. Sometimes, when it returns, it has a renewed sense of snappiness. I imagine it lounging on a beach in some delightfully warm latitude, soaking up the rays of a sun whose ambition it is to rejuvenate, and sipping a lovely fruity drink with chunks of pineapple and lots of maraschino cherries served in a frosted glass and adorned with those marvelous tropical drink umbrellas.

After these kinds of sojourns from me my oomph has been known to return with a delightful vibrancy and make me jump up and do a jig, the kind where I snap my fingers and dance in triple time. When that happens I am grateful.

Other times my oomph comes slinking back like an old dilapidated jalopy that has traveled hard and is low on gas.

Even though I wish it had come back like a souped up roadster, maybe a bright red XKE Jag, I am always glad it’s back and not crashed on some lonely mountain road over a cliff, lost to me forever.

I have a couple of ideas where I might have lost it yesterday morning and I think it is worth revisiting those places where snow covered the hillsides and cold creeks babbled though the woods and the world was magical, the sunrise casting soft pink onto the banks of snow. That was before I arrived at my job substitute teaching classes of miscreants with no desire to learn. If I don’t find it there I will assume it has indeed escaped for a respite from the short days and long cold nights and I will go back to my boat and sleep.

Winter Wind Chills!!!

Gotta love Hothouses!!

“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

February 9…Prayer Plant I chanced to see in the corner of a greenhouse. I only spotted it because light was streaming in and illuminated parts of it while other parts were almost hidden in shadow.

I love the mystery I find in nature. Sometimes when I wander I see things that call to me and I realize that if I didn’t stop I would miss something wondrous and marvelous and totally mysterious, something beyond understanding. And so I stop.

When I was a young woman I yearned to understand and to know all the secrets I knew were out there. I held my breath in the presence of the tiny glimpses I was given and hoped and prayed for understanding and knowledge. It never came. I could scream and beg the Cosmic Forces for Enlightenment all I wanted, but to no avail, and I had to settle for simply knowing there was so much more.

Then somewhere along the line I stopped trying so hard to understand what cannot be understood. I used to call it being weary, but maybe weariness just slowed me down and was a good thing. I discovered that it was only by exhaling and letting go would I get just enough of a sense of the Divine to make me smile.

It is almost as if I am a child who wonders without panic. Some days I forget and feel lost but there are enough of those moments of “ah ha” to sustain me. It is not about having faith that all will be revealed, or finding just the right Book to search for the answers. It is about having faith that I do not need the answers. I just need to let the Divine in and feel the joy and the love.

That is enough.

That is everything.

“Ah, but I was so much older then,

I’m younger than that now.”

Bob Dylan

February 5, HOPE…Hyacinth from greenhouse

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

I am full of HOPE and something deep inside of me tells me to HOLD ON. Life is an unfolding and yet even as it unfolds it merges, layer upon layer. It is a melding of moments in constant change and surprise and the revelations are of unimaginable beauty.

May we open ourselves to the possibilities ahead with faith and not fear. Z

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

– David Hume

I often struggle with feelings of inadequacies, guess they call it low self esteem these days. I know intellectually that I should feel good about myself, but I often don’t. I do know I have been gifted with sight to see the beauty in nature around me and so I go there when I find myself “in times of trouble”. I often like to take you with me. This was a lovely blossom I chanced upon in New Orleans last month. Hmmm… maybe I didn’t “chance” upon it at all. 💜💜

I took a walk in the woods on a snowy morning and found an old building with a small pane of glass still intact. I was mesmerized by the reflection of the sky and trees in the glass.

January 10, 2014

Many years ago my aunt wrote a poem about the loneliness we often feel and the darkness that sometimes surrounds us. She suggested that we may be selfish in thinking only of our own loneliness. I have thought about that poem countless times in my life.

A good friend recently told me to continue to be a Queen of Hope and to keep the Faith. That is really the key isn’t it, the greatest gift of all. Hope is really everything.

As I wander this old world and wonder at the marvelous moments that unfold I cannot say that I have had epiphanies, but I have had thoughts. In fact I am full of thoughts every day and sometimes this thoughtfulness brings me peace and comfort, if not understanding. It is as if I find myself contented with just a glimmer of purpose, enough to restore my faith, enough to allow a slow inhaling and this deep breathing is joyful.

So I have no real answers for those who too often find themselves walking down long dark roads alone. What I do have is Love and Hope, and a belief in the Connectiveness of us all.

I used to think there would be one moment of acute awareness, you know the “ta da” moment when Enlightenment would wash over my soul and the Cosmos would share all her secrets with me. But that would be the end of the Journey and I do not believe that the Journey ends.

That just isn’t what I have found. I have discovered that the Path is not a straight line and that there are all sorts of dance steps and sometimes I can fly and sometimes the music is all in color and sometimes the fog weighs my body down and it is all I can do to see my hand in front of my face. Within all these moments there is possibility, and the horizon goes on forever, and that just past the limits of our vision is Magic.

So if you feel alone and forlorn just reach out to someone else whose heart is bending low and walk a while with them.

Remember to keep putting one foot in front of the other with occasional side steps and backward dips and leaps and twirls. Keep dancing cause “the beat goes on”.