Meg Evans

While doing yard work this past weekend, I noticed that two boxwood bushes planted under my garage windows had grown tall enough to cover part of the bottom pane. I hadn’t paid them much attention before, mainly because the sunlight they blocked wasn’t very noticeable. Whenever I was in the garage during the daytime, plenty of sunlight came in through the open door; and at night I turned on the overhead lights.

Because my garage is side-entry, its windows—and the bushes under them—are on the front side of the house. In fact, they’re closer to the street than any of the house’s other windows. I realized that letting the bushes along the garage wall get overgrown like that gave the house an untidy appearance to anyone passing by. So I trimmed them back, and now they look much neater, with the tops of the bushes just below the windows:
 

But I should have cut them back last year when they got above the height of the windows, even though the neighbors probably wouldn’t have thought they looked overgrown then. Even though I don’t often look out the garage windows (which have white blinds) or think about how much light should come through them, when windows get partially blocked they’re still noticed subconsciously. And because whatever surrounds us in daily life shapes our view of the world, a simple thing like bushes growing too high in front of a window can cause us to perceive the world as slowly getting darker, gloomier, and full of obstacles.

From now on, I’ll keep in mind that to allow more light into our lives, generally, we first have to pay attention to whatever little things might be blocking it.

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.

Before we had supermarkets with computerized inventories and PLU produce labels, cherries were put in a bin at the grocery store, instead of being pre-bagged as they are today. Shoppers had to pick through the cherries in the bin to find the good ones. They were then weighed on a balance scale, and the cashier would determine the price by looking at a paper list posted next to the mechanical cash register.

Because I loved cherries and other fruit when I was a child, my mom gave me the task of picking out the best cherries (or other fruit in season) when she did the grocery shopping. That way, not only did she finish the shopping more quickly, but she also kept me occupied so that I wouldn’t pester her to buy other things that were not on the list. Very wise!

Earlier this week, I bought my first bag of cherries this summer and thought about how much easier and quicker it is now:
 

Although today’s supermarkets are more efficient than the grocery stores of the past and have a much larger selection, which often includes fruit out of season shipped from other parts of the world, I still enjoy the seasonal changes. Fruit just doesn’t taste the same when it is picked before it ripens and sits on a boat for weeks. So my “cherry picking” for the modern world consists of carefully picking foods that give me the most enjoyment, such as cherries fresh from the orchard in July.

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.

Once upon a time, when I was a little girl in a world that felt like it was made of stories, my mom would call me away from playing make-believe when it was time for lunch. Usually, lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich with a glass of milk, or a cream cheese and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk. My mom was always a big believer in making sure little girls got plenty of calcium to build healthy bones. She gave me milk with every meal all through my childhood.

She didn’t have as much success getting me to eat my veggies, though she found some creative approaches like telling me artichoke leaves were a special treat because they were so fun to dip in melted butter. (People didn’t worry much about cholesterol and fat in those days.) Of course my tastes changed when I grew up; now I often eat a sandwich on a bun, along with a salad or fruit. But I decided to have something different for lunch today—a grilled cheese sandwich cut on the diagonal, like my mom made.
 

I never knew why she cut sandwiches like this—maybe so that my sister and I would be more likely to eat the crusts? The grilled cheese sandwich shown in this picture isn’t quite the same, of course. Wide loaves of bread weren’t popular when I was a child, so the bread would have been square; and it would have been white bread, not the whole-grain variety I ate today.

But even though it wasn’t exactly the same, looking at that sandwich on my plate gave me a comforting feeling that all was right with the world. I had a sense of being well cared for, along with a lighter, playful mood. Although it’s not literally possible to go back to childhood (and most of us wouldn’t really want to do that anyway), finding the little things that trigger those memories can go a long way toward bringing feelings of love and nurturing into our present-day lives.

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.

To freshen up our bedroom for spring, my husband and I bought a new comforter and sheet set at the end of March. We didn’t replace the pillows, though, because we had been sleeping just fine on the old ones and they were hidden away inside their cases, where we wouldn’t see them. So we thought, why spend money replacing them when it wasn’t necessary?

But the problem with that attitude, as I later realized, was that although we didn’t see them every day, they weren’t really hidden either. I still had to look at four dingy, yellowed, ancient, squashed pillows every time I washed the bedding. Instead of fully appreciating the pretty new comforter, sheets, and pillow shams, laundry day meant (yuck!) looking at this:
 

Even though the old pillows were out of sight most of the time, they weren’t out of mind. Finally it dawned on me that the cost-avoidance of not replacing the pillows wasn’t nearly worth the aggravation they were causing me. So I bought four new pillows. Now the bed is all nice and fresh, with cozy fluffy white pillows in both the cases and the shams—a big improvement for a small cost. So much more comfy!
 

In the future I’ll keep in mind that just because something is not out in plain view, that doesn’t mean it should be kept around forever. Even if it’s still functional and nobody else can see how worn out and ugly it has gotten, it detracts from our own enjoyment because we know it’s there. Although money doesn’t buy happiness, being overly frugal can cause us to feel that we’ve been deprived of life’s simple comforts. And those comforts—including the ordinary things we see in the house—have more of an effect on our happiness than we may realize.

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.