Meg Evans

With so much going on in today’s busy world, it’s all too easy to get a bad attitude when something doesn’t go as expected. I have to confess that I let myself get annoyed recently when I wanted to make an appointment and was waiting for a call back, but did not get a prompt response. I started to feel like maybe I was being ignored on purpose. They did eventually call, and of course the most likely explanation is that they were just disorganized and it was nothing personal at all.
 

Sometimes those little annoyances are best taken as nothing more than life’s helpful reminders that an attitude adjustment might be called for!

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’m listening to the rain as I write this post, with occasional thunder rolling through. This past week has been dark and humid, leaving an oppressive feeling as if I’ve lost much of my mental energy for no particular reason. The stories and blog posts I’d like to write seem as if they’re far away, washed out to sea with the tide on a dark moonless night, with only a faint gleam of dawn to be seen.
 

But, there is peace in those quiet spaces too, and time to reflect. It’s the same in our minds as in nature—the sun and the tide always return.

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 ordered a flat of snapdragons again this year for a junior rowing fundraiser. Some of last year’s plants are still alive because of the mild winter (as shown in a late November post), but they’re not blooming yet, so it will be good to get some new ones in next to them!

The plants were delivered to the boathouse this afternoon, and my husband picked them up. He hasn’t gotten home yet, and the flowers are still in his car, so I’m posting an image that I cropped from the order sheet instead of the actual flowers.
 

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll get them planted while my husband mows the lawn. Wishing all my readers in the Northern Hemisphere a week of happy spring planting too!

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.

When I sat down to start my work I knew this would be a long day, both because I usually work later on Thursdays and because I had an annoying computer issue yesterday that wasted time. Also, it was a dark morning and got even darker when some rain blew in, whipping the new leaves on the trees all around.

Then it occurred to me that a window with a nice view of trees next to my desk was something to appreciate, even on a rainy spring morning; after all, a lot of people nowadays work in cubicles far away from outdoor views. So I decided to post a cartoon of a smiling tree for Nurturing Thursday.
 

Okay, this is a totally goofy picture, but I have to admit it cheered me up. And yay, the sun came out just now and the birds are chirping, too. It’s all good!

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’ve had the windows open much of the week because the spring weather has been just lovely. A pleasant breeze from the north brought the scent of fresh blossoms into my dining room. Setting the digital art frame to display a cheerful beachfront animation made it feel like I’d rented a cottage at a tropical vacation resort, even though I never really left home!
 

When a few small things are enough to find beauty in the moment, it doesn’t take much to transform everyday life into something magical.

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.

If we could go back in time and look at what we’ve accomplished over the years from the perspective of a much younger self, we’d probably think it was awesome. After all, we didn’t expect as much of ourselves back then, since we hadn’t seen as much of the world and didn’t understand how a lot of things worked. But somehow, we managed to bumble along and do many things that we never imagined we could do.

Now our expectations are much higher, and we’ve realized that the world is much more complicated than it once seemed. We notice all those little mistakes we used to be totally clueless about. Some days it feels like everything is going wrong if one little item on the to-do list goes undone. Rather than giving ourselves compliments for having done so much already, we just pile on more tasks.

So, a regular perspective adjustment is much needed!
 

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 cool, windy mornings of early spring have a lonely feeling to them, sometimes, looking up into trees with just a few tiny leaves starting to open on branches that blur into a dark sky. The willows in my backyard have mostly dropped their catkins, as shown in this post from last year, and now they’re outlined in the pale green of new growth. For a moment, a squirrel peeks around a neighbor’s tree. A breath of the damp air carries with it a sense of potential, of bright and wonderful things yet to be imagined. The lonely feeling floats gently away, carried on the wind.
 

I couldn’t resist illustrating this post with a happy squirrel image that one of my coworkers attached to an email message earlier this week. Enjoy!

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 woke up to a dark and rainy morning. Rather than complain about it, I browsed through the online gallery for the digital art display on my dining room wall and picked a suitably dark and dramatic wilderness image, with steep rocky cliffs and fog. It made me feel like a Tolkien character about to set out on a quest. There is no photo of it for this post because the colors didn’t look right when I tried to take one; so instead, I’m posting a simple piece of word-art as a reminder that even on an ordinary wet spring day, there’s always something fun to be found, and it’s good to have fun!
 

Just because we are grown up, that doesn’t mean our imaginary quests are childish or silly. We need them for the same reasons as when we were little kids reading storybooks—to nurture our imagination and expand our perspective on the world. Our ancestors understood this when, in ancient times, they regularly held elaborate ceremonies and made drama and ritual a central part of their lives. Nowadays, although we have many more options for exercising our imagination, we often lack the rituals that reminded our ancestors of its importance, so we need to give ourselves little reminders every now and again.

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 was dark and very windy here, with occasional showers. Some gusts were strong enough to rattle the house. But now the storm has blown through, it’s a quiet and peaceful evening. I can hear birds chirping outside my front windows. Nothing to worry about!
 

Sending hugs and peaceful thoughts to anyone who may have been worrying today! Just as in the natural world, when there are storms in our minds and in our lives, they always blow over eventually.

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.

It’s bright and sunny here today, with cheerful spring flowers popping up everywhere. I enjoyed seeing them all over the neighborhood when I went out for a run yesterday afternoon, but I did not take any photos. So instead, for my Nurturing Thursday entry I’m posting this word-art image that compares life to a camera:
 

Blogging is a great way to capture and look back on the good times, and to make friends along the way. Whether a post has photos or only words, it’s a snapshot of where the author happened to be at that point in time. Like old-fashioned journals and photo albums, but more easily, our blogs let us look back through time and see how we’ve grown and what we’ve learned. It’s a wonderful exercise in perspective too!

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.