Meg Evans

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.

Because it has been unusually warm this week, my husband and I decided to go rowing yesterday. We hadn’t gone out since November, and we’d been looking forward to another enjoyable season with our rowing club. Summer and its long sunny days seemed right around the corner!
 

The forecast called for occasional light showers, though, and when we got to the boathouse there wasn’t anyone else around. Then the rain started coming down harder, and an updated forecast showed more of it blowing in. But since we were already there, we decided to go for a short row anyway. It was good to get out and enjoy nature, even with a little rain!

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.

People nowadays are so busy that when we have good feelings about others, we might not take the time to give a compliment or even think about it. So I decided to post this word-art image for Nurturing Thursday and share a bit of cheerful encouragement!
 

Wishing everyone an amazing day full of joys and successes—and as for the people in your life who make you happy, it doesn’t take much time to give them compliments and spread some good cheer around!

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.

This morning it was snowy and blustery when I looked outside. My first reaction was along the lines of, “Oh no, snow again, isn’t it time for spring and green grass already?” But then I thought about the frigid winter we had two years ago, when I posted this February photo of bushes covered in ice:
 

I’ve generally been trying to cultivate a habit of asking myself, when I feel like complaining about some trivial thing, “Compared to what?” The truth is, most of the stuff that we complain about is totally unimportant, and often it’s not even bad by comparison to the same thing at a different time!

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.

After a dark wintery week, I was very glad to see the sun this morning, and I opened the wooden blinds in my family room right away. There’s still no furniture other than a rocking chair because filling in the space never felt right to me, as I mentioned in a previous post. But it’s lovely in the sunshine; and even though the sky soon turned hazy, reminding me of the old song “Hazy Shades of Winter,” all that wide open space left me feeling cheerful anyway.
 

Maybe it’s the angle of the sun as it slants more steeply through the windows, reassuring my subconscious mind that spring is not far away. Whatever it may be, I hope that everyone reading this post has a comfortable place at home that inspires cheerful feelings 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.