Today’s post is by request of my faithful commenter Carolyn, who asked for photos of the wildlife that I see when rowing. Truth be told, I haven’t taken many photos, chiefly because I am afraid of dropping my phone in the river, so I generally don’t bring it in the boat. I saw an interesting duck parenting scene last weekend, though. Mama Duck and her babies looked a lot like this image I found online:

Wood duck swimming with her ducklings.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)

Most of the little ones were behaving themselves and staying close to Mama, but one kept wandering off. The river was so big and exciting, he just had to explore. Although Mama kept chasing after him and quacking, she couldn’t get him to stay with the other ducklings.

After a while Daddy Duck had enough of that, and the next time the youngster got too far away, Daddy went and bit him! The little guy tried to hide behind a rock, but it looked to me like he got pecked pretty thoroughly anyway. And that goes to show—it’s best to listen to Mama, even if you are a duck.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

June 27, 2016 · 6 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

My husband ordered new rowing shorts for both of us last week because the ones we had were getting past their useful life. After being washed so many times, the padding in the rear end (for sitting on those hard little seats in the boats) was getting squashed in some areas and bunched up in others. They were riding up all the time, and I kept having to tug them down. Not fun. It’s much nicer having workout gear that fits properly!

Two pairs of black rowing shorts, women's and men's.

We kind of realized the old shorts didn’t have much life left at the start of the season, but because they wore out so gradually, we didn’t know how much better the new ones would be until we put them on. That’s often how it is with many things, and why it’s important to look around every now and again, paying attention to what might need to be replaced.

* Good Things is a weekly series featuring the many unexpected joyful things that show up when clutter and stagnation have been cleared away. It’s meant as a reminder that life is always full of happy little surprises, when there’s enough space for them!

Although the modern world is full of amazing opportunities that the people of past generations never could have imagined, it also can be more stressful precisely because we have so many choices. We procrastinate because we feel overwhelmed by all the things we ought to do. Instead of acting on opportunities when they arise, we fill our minds with imaginary scenarios of everything that could go wrong.

Word-art that says "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." -Harry S. Truman

This afternoon I got something taken care of that I’d been putting off for a while. I thought it would be hard to do; but when I actually got around to doing it, I found that it wasn’t nearly as difficult or time-consuming as I had imagined.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

June 20, 2016 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

On Wednesday, I tidied my daughter’s room because we are getting the house refinanced and the appraisers were coming on Thursday morning. The room wasn’t too much of a mess, but she does tend to leave shopping bags and other stuff on the floor when she visits from Cleveland because she’s often in a rush. The room looked much neater with the bags in the closet and the carpet vacuumed.

Blue carpet, just vacuumed, with closet doors and a corner of a bed in the background.

Because our existing mortgage dates back to before the recession, we’d have done better to refinance before now, so as to get more benefit from today’s low interest rates. But when the house was full of clutter a few years ago, we didn’t feel as motivated to get things done generally. There was so much that needed our attention, it left us feeling overwhelmed. Now everything feels like it’s going much more smoothly—not just a better-organized house, but tidy finances too!

* Good Things is a weekly series featuring the many unexpected joyful things that show up when clutter and stagnation have been cleared away. It’s meant as a reminder that life is always full of happy little surprises, when there’s enough space for them!

June 18, 2016 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Just before waking up this morning, I was dreaming about time travel. In the dream it felt like I could step out of bed and then I’d be in another time and place. Maybe I’d find myself in a place where I lived as a teenager. I could end up anywhere!

When I finally woke up, I wondered for a moment if I had somehow chosen this time and place from many possibilities. It didn’t seem farfetched that I might be able to wander freely from one timeline to another, like a child discovering the magical entrance to fairyland in a storybook garden.

Trumpet vine on my backyard fence.

And then I realized that it’s a fact—we really do choose the time and place where each day begins. We can start the morning with happy memories of good times. Or, we can “wake up on the wrong side of the bed,” full of grouchy thoughts and old stale grudges!

We revisit the past whenever we look at memories in light of new experiences, sorting them into more useful patterns and updating our mental maps. Sometimes that can be hard to do, but it’s better than getting stuck in outdated thought loops like a computer with obsolete software!

The willows in my backyard (shown in this post last summer) have been somewhat neglected the past few years, I have to confess. Some small branches died in the frigid winter of 2014, and I never got around to pruning them off. My husband carefully maneuvered the push mower around them for the past two summers without complaining, and finally he said, “Hey, Meg, can you prune these willows, there’s always dead stuff poking me when I walk around them.”

So I’ve been going outside to work on them every weekend when he’s mowing, and it makes quite a difference! The ones that have been pruned so far are looking much better. Instead of having small dead branches sticking out all around, they look neat and tidy.

Willow after pruning off small branches.

Walking around them feels much better, too. There’s an inviting sense of openness that wasn’t there before. The air seems to circulate more freely, even if it hasn’t really changed that much, and it feels more comfortable in general. Sometimes pruning away old dead stuff can make a big difference—both in the yard and in life generally!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

June 13, 2016 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

My husband and I rowed our double scull in a regatta over the weekend. This is only our fourth season since we learned to row, and we still have plenty of room for improvement. But, we were happy to come home with bronze medals from our race.

Two bronze rowing medals from Midwest Masters Sprints.

It’s always fun to go to the regattas with our friends from the rowing club, and we like comparing how we do each year and seeing how we’re getting better. Whether or not we notice much change from one day to the next, regular practice always leads to improvement as time goes by. And of course, the most important thing is simply being open to new adventures!

* Good Things is a weekly series featuring the many unexpected joyful things that show up when clutter and stagnation have been cleared away. It’s meant as a reminder that life is always full of happy little surprises, when there’s enough space for them!

Often when people are too busy, it’s because they’ve gotten the idea that if they don’t do everything, then it won’t get done. Of course, that is not really true. It’s not all on us. Lots of things happen whether we’re involved or not. Most of us are nowhere near indispensable in our jobs and other obligations, however much we might like to think we are; and Mother Nature does as she pleases.

I planted snapdragons in my garden next to some that had survived the winter, as I mentioned in a post a month ago. Here’s a photo showing two large plants on either side (the survivors, now blooming) with the freshly planted ones in between and smaller plants from last year’s seeds popping up all around.

Snapdragons in bloom with two plants larger than the others.

If I hadn’t gotten impatient for a bit of color in early May, I could easily have waited, and the garden would have filled in with snapdragons naturally. I see it as a good reminder that even though we always have things we want to do, the world is not going to fall apart if we don’t happen to get them done!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

“Hello,” said Tiny Leaf, her voice low and pleasant, a rich contralto that harmonized beautifully with the distant jingling of sleigh bells in the library program’s soundtrack… [This is Part 19. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]

June 5, 2016 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Yesterday, while I was sitting around the house enjoying a lazy Saturday morning, I started to wonder what I could write about for my Good Things post this week. I looked around, but didn’t immediately spot anything new and fresh. Surely there had to be something. After all, the whole point of writing this series was to appreciate how often good stuff shows up.

And then I realized that I was wearing it! Not long ago, my husband had bought me a pretty new sleeveless dress for the warm weather. It’s very comfortable, and that’s what I put on when I got dressed on Saturday.

Dark purple sleeveless dress with white floral pattern.

This just goes to show—there’s always something to be happy about because life is full of abundance, and it’s likely to be right on top of us even when we don’t notice it!

* Good Things is a weekly series featuring the many unexpected joyful things that show up when clutter and stagnation have been cleared away. It’s meant as a reminder that life is always full of happy little surprises, when there’s enough space for them!