Meg Evans

Last week I realized that I’d had a bit of calendar confusion and had made plans to attend a fun activity at the same time as a responsible grown-up activity. Leaving out the details to protect a not-so-innocent party (me, that is), I’ll just say that I came to the conclusion other responsible adults could handle the latter activity without any need for my presence, so I shouldn’t feel obliged to pass up an opportunity to have fun. In short, I decided to play hooky.
 

As it turned out, the would-have-been ditched event got rescheduled anyway, so it didn’t matter except that it gave me some food for thought. Often we feel guilty if we don’t follow through on every obligation—but maybe we shouldn’t. After so many years of being responsible parents, employees, volunteers, etc., and constantly burdening ourselves with one task after another, an occasional day of playing hooky could be just what’s needed to lighten the load!

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 orange trumpet vine along my backyard fence (also shown here and here) has one last bloom remaining at the very top. All the others have turned into big, heavy seed pods hanging down above the grass. Hummingbirds love these flowers, and I took a quick picture with my phone camera on a gorgeously blue morning, to mark the end of the season.
 

Wishing everyone who reads this post something beautiful this week 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.

Today still felt like summer here, warm and sunny; but there’s no mistaking the change of seasons when the days keep getting shorter. This morning I put some Pumpkin Spice coffee on the K-cup carousel, taking the place of my Raspberry Chocolate Truffle summer favorite, so as to get ready for the chilly mornings that are forecast for the weekend.
 

Although I generally like the long days of late spring and early summer the best, there is always something to appreciate at any time of year! Seasonal flavors—whether they’re of coffee or anything else—are a tasty reminder that nothing ever stays the same, and we should enjoy life’s carousel as it turns.

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 crystal bead necklace that I’ve been calling my worry beads (shown in other Nurturing Thursday posts here and here) served as a bracelet today, instead.
 

My right wrist has been feeling sore this week. As far as I know, this is not from exercise or from anything unusual, so it’s likely that I have been putting more pressure on it while sitting at the computer. I looped the beads around my wrist both to ensure I don’t press on it and to increase my body awareness.

Now I am wondering if there may be some area of my life where I’ve been doing too much “pushing” to get things done faster, which has caused me to subconsciously push down on the mousepad harder than usual. Our bodies do send us messages sometimes—we just have to be open to listening!

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 little garden fountain on my front porch, which I mentioned in a May post, has had a lot of algae this summer. I didn’t want to risk harming animals that might drink out of the fountain by putting chemicals in the water; so I’ve just been dumping out the water and the pebbles from time to time, and then putting in clean water and more pebbles.
 

I need to quit being lazy about it, though, and give the fountain a good thorough scrubbing to get all that algae out! The water hasn’t been flowing as freely as it should, and every time I look at it, I’m getting subconscious impressions of blockage and gunk instead of the healthy flow of energy that I had in mind when I bought it. Even the best of intentions for self-nurturing aren’t necessarily going to work out without some work being put in!

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.

As we all know, yard work does not go away when ignored. A row of junipers under my living room windows had been getting overgrown for years while I put off the chore of pruning them. I sternly lectured myself this spring that it needed to get done now, before the sprawling branches killed any more of the grass around them. I started working on it over the weekends, setting myself a deadline of mid-August because that is when the lawn service usually does the aeration and overseeding, which I thought might help with getting the grass to come back more quickly.
 

When I mentioned that to my husband, who is a practical-minded engineer, he said that the timing really didn’t matter because the lawn service people generally don’t walk that close to the bushes anyway, and the bare areas will mainly grow back from the edges because overseeding adds only a small amount of grass seed. Looks like he was right about that because the aeration and overseeding was done this morning, and I didn’t see aeration holes or a significant amount of grass seed in the bare areas.

Still, I would say that setting myself a deadline was good because it kept me motivated to finish the task, even if it didn’t make a practical difference. When neglected chores sit around in plain sight with no definite completion date, they tend to drain mental energy because the subconscious mind notices such things and files them away under the “lots of stuff to do, and it’s not getting done” category. Better to quit procrastinating, get the chore over with, and effectively “overseed” that depleted energy by looking at the positive results instead!

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.

Somehow I let myself get into a gloomy, brooding sort of mood over the past few days; and when today rolled around I still didn’t have anything in mind for a Nurturing Thursday post. While I was standing in the laundry room, taking towels from the washer and putting them into the dryer, I was wondering if I’d had any self-nurturing going on this week that was even worth mentioning.
 

Then I started thinking about how everyday things like a washer and dryer, along with all the other common household items we take for granted, make our lives more comfortable all the time. My current front-loading set is much nicer than the set it replaced, which in turn was better than the first washer and dryer my family had, and even that cheap set made life much easier than using a laundromat or an apartment laundry room.

And of course, before the modern era, women who did their laundry by hand in a washtub or at the river would’ve dearly loved going to a laundromat! So, as with everything, it all depends on one’s perspective. When gloomy thoughts show up for no particular reason, the best thing is to take a different view of the situation and just let them wash away!

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.

Yesterday I decided that it was time to post a summer photo of my backyard willow hedge, completing the series of autumn, winter, and spring photos featured in past Nurturing Thursday entries.
 

So I stepped out into the backyard and took this photo, standing at the end of the hedge as I did in the other seasons. I felt warm and comfortable in the sunlight of a cloudless day, surrounded by the late-summer sounds of crickets, locusts, and one small bird chirping. It was so peaceful that it almost seemed as if the moment might last forever.

As it turned out, though, it was a very good thing I took the photo yesterday because this morning was cool and rainy, feeling much more like autumn. Looking out the window at today’s damp gray sky, I’m reminded that everything changes, and often much more quickly than we expect!

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.

Around this same time last summer, I wrote a Nurturing Thursday post that included a view from my kitchen window of an orange trumpet vine along the backyard fence. It wasn’t blooming much because of the harsh winter; but even so, I thought it made that corner of the yard look like a fairy-tale sanctuary. This year it’s blooming a lot more, so I took another photo.
 

This morning my husband looked out the window and saw a hawk perched on the fence, but it flew away before he could grab his phone and take a snapshot. I’ve often seen rabbits in the backyard, probably because the fence protects them from neighborhood pets. I expect that’s what the hawk was after.

On those busy days when my thoughts start wandering off in many different directions, it’s always good to know that I can just look out the window or step out into the backyard and connect with nature!

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 have three large hostas in my front garden. A neighbor gave them to me long ago, when she discovered that she had bought a few more than she needed. Three years ago, I posted a blog entry called Room to Grow, about moving the hostas when they grew larger than I had anticipated. Life is full of assumptions that need revising, I wrote, and such tasks are best done promptly.
 

The plants have been thriving in their new location. All they needed was a little more space! Often that’s true in our own lives, too. When we feel stuck and frustrated, maybe we shouldn’t just try to get used to the annoying situation. Instead, we might do better to move things around and give ourselves more space to keep on growing!

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.