Meg Evans

Because we face so many decision points every day in our complicated modern world, it’s just not possible to avoid making mistakes. That in turn leads to feelings of insecurity about whether we’re as capable as others. The truth is, of course, that we don’t have a fair basis for comparison because we rarely see other people’s mistakes and worries—everyone tries to keep them hidden.

If we ever stopped to add up the many things we’ve accomplished over the years, rather than worrying about little mistakes here and there, we’d find that the scorecard looked pretty good. And besides, life isn’t just a simple calculation of mistakes vs. successes anyway—there’s a lot more to it, such as having fun, doing something meaningful, and making the world a better place.

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.

I had in mind to get my Nurturing Thursday post up bright and early this morning because I’d been posting them later than usual this summer, and I felt like I had been slacking and ought to do better. But as it turned out, I couldn’t use the computer early in the day because of massive (and somewhat buggy) Windows updates yesterday, which caused a backup to fail last night. My husband started the backup again this morning, and it had to run for a long time.

That turned out to be serendipitous, though. I started thinking about the value of a relaxed attitude toward time as part of self-nurturing, and that ended up becoming today’s post. I asked myself, what’s the big deal anyway about posting blog entries on a schedule? A blog is supposed to be fun, not work. It shouldn’t feel like looking at the clock and filling in project codes on a timesheet.

So, my self-nurturing resolution for this week is to just let my blog posts flow naturally while having fun writing them, and banish all thoughts of slacking!

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.

Although most of us don’t go through life expecting to be perfect, we do tend to see our flaws (whatever they may be) as more of a problem than they really are. Truth is, most people don’t even notice them, and we are just pointlessly wasting our time worrying about nothing! So, for this week’s Nurturing Thursday, I decided to post a little reminder that everyone has plenty of flaws and that beauty—of both the inner and outer variety—does not require perfection:

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.

Birds and small animals occasionally drink from the little fountain on my front porch (shown here). Today I saw a chipmunk and was going to take a photo, but the chipmunk was scurrying away under a bush by the time I got back there with my phone. I noticed that the bush needed mulch and that a few small weeds were coming up around it.

Of course, there’s always something in the yard that has weeds or is otherwise in need of maintenance—we expect that. Then I started wondering, why do we expect so much more from ourselves than from our gardens? We wouldn’t complain that a garden was a bad garden for having a few weeds, but we criticize ourselves for all kinds of small imperfections. We might do better simply to accept the fact that, just like the yard, we’re always going to have a weed here or there!

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.

Because there are so many consumer goods and advertisements for them in today’s world, people often feel poor as a result of not being able to buy everything at once. Even though many of us actually have lots more stuff than in the past, it doesn’t always feel that way. So, when those ads make us feel like we don’t have enough, it’s best to keep in mind that the most important things in life have nothing to do with money.

Having an expensive house and buying all the latest cars and gadgets may be fun, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a person is rich in what really matters.

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.

I mentioned in a Nurturing Thursday post last year that three of my rosebushes had died of a virus. Now I have replacement bushes that are doing nicely. They’re still tiny and not yet in bloom; but they do have buds and look like they’re thriving.

At the end of the season I’ll cut back the older bushes enough so that everything will be the same size. By next year the rose garden should be back to looking like it always did. Even though losing some of the bushes seemed awful at the time, it really wasn’t all that hard to repair. That’s true of many things, and it’s a good lesson to keep in mind!

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.