Meg Evans

Although my daughter’s puppy loves to play in the backyard, where she can find plenty of sticks and other fun things, she quickly gets hot and tired in the “dog days” summer heat! So she comes inside after a while, drinks some water, sits on the register to cool off in the air conditioning, and then barks for someone to open the door and let her back outside.
 

Puppies don’t need to be reminded to take time for self-nurturing; they instinctively have a good sense of when they need to rest and cool off! That’s something we humans could benefit from cultivating, too, instead of letting ourselves get “dog tired” with all the distractions of our busy modern world.

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.

Last week I bought a salt crystal lamp to brighten an area of my house that doesn’t get much light. The lamp is now sitting on a shelf that previously held a small plant and a fountain. Neither of those items was well suited to that location; the low light meant the plant didn’t grow much, and the fountain caused some peeling paint because it was too close to the wall and there were occasional splashes.

As with any purchase in our consumer world, buying the lamp left me with the question of what to do with the things it had displaced. The best spot for them, I decided, was a corner of my kids’ study. That area was invitingly clean after some clutter got removed, and it looked like it could use some fresh new energy.
 

The poor little plant definitely needed a new pot and fresh soil. I bought a larger pot and then filled it in around the edges with some cuttings I took from another plant, to make the arrangement look more leafy and cheerful. Then I put down a natural-fiber mat to absorb any spilled water. The plant seems to be enjoying its new home, and the fountain gives the room a better look too!

Although people tend to think of redecorating in terms of huge, expensive, time-consuming projects, it doesn’t really need to be that complicated. Just rearranging a few small things can leave the house feeling much more pleasant!

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 got the sprinklers set up today because the weather has been dry, the grass is turning brown, and the lawn service company just did the yearly aeration. Also, while I was outside, I watered the gardenia that I keep in a pot next to my garage (shown in my June 12th Nurturing Thursday post).
 

That got me thinking about how we notice when our yards need watering, but sometimes we overlook the signs in our personal lives that tell us we’re in need of more nurturing. When we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re probably not going to look in the mirror and think that we look parched like the grass, even though we really do look tired and stressed. Just like our yards, we need to “water” ourselves regularly.

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.

Many of us keep a gratitude list as a reminder to appreciate our everyday blessings such as family, a home, clothing, and food. When we’re feeling stressed and grouchy, taking a few minutes to consider the good things can be enough to banish that rotten mood. And when gratitude becomes a regular habit, it can bring about a far-reaching shift in perspective.

When I wrote yesterday’s post Moments of Grace, in which I mentioned wanting a deck of miniature cards as a little girl and then unexpectedly getting them as a prize from a gumball machine, I thought about how children naturally appreciate those small wonderful moments. And that led me to a question: What can we do as adults to cultivate that sense of life being filled with magical prizes everywhere? Well, how about starting a new kind of gratitude list called the Bubble Gum List?
 

As I envision it, the Bubble Gum List would be for moments that inspire a feeling of “I just got the biggest, bestest prize ever, YAY!” Moments when you just can’t believe your luck, when everything in the world suddenly feels so right that instead of walking, you just want to skip and dance.

Children have moments like that all the time, of course. But as adults, we set the bar much higher when it comes to allowing ourselves to feel spontaneous joy. After all, sensible adults don’t go around singing and dancing just because of a happy little moment, do they? So we subconsciously deny ourselves permission to acknowledge those feelings and don’t pay them any attention when they show up. Keeping a list of joyful moments can go a long way toward changing that mindset and convincing ourselves it’s all okay.

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.

My mother-in-law enjoys gambling. She occasionally goes to Vegas or takes bus trips to casinos with her friends. When she gambles, she decides in advance how much money to put toward it, in an amount she wouldn’t be too upset about losing. If she wins, that’s good; and if not, there’s always another chance for better luck next time.
 

I do not gamble and have never visited a casino, but this approach strikes me as a good attitude to have toward life generally. We’re always making decisions about how much money or time to spend on everyday things; and if we take the perspective that it’s just a small amount and its loss would be no big deal, then we’re less likely to get upset when something doesn’t work out the way it was intended.

So many people are afraid to make choices and try new things because they might be wrong. Well, so what? In most situations, being wrong is not a major calamity. If we try a new activity and don’t like it, or if we buy something and it turns out to be a waste of money, that’s not much different from losing a small amount of gambling money, and there’s no reason to be upset about 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.

As I mentioned in the comments to my Nurturing Thursday post last week, there is a bizarrely mismatched hedge along my property line, which a neighbor planted many years ago. I suspect she did it with no forethought at all, just buying a totally random assortment of whatever trees and shrubs happened to be on sale.  Nearest the street, the hedge consists of a redbud tree, some honeysuckle bushes, an apple tree, and other stuff that has no apparent rhyme or reason to it. Since it was planted, a new family has moved in, without redoing the hedge. I can’t really blame them for putting that chore at the bottom of their priority list—honestly, in their position I wouldn’t be all that enthusiastic about it, either.
 

Farther down, there is a gap where the resident deer herd (who can’t be hunted within the city limits, and show almost no fear of humans) got in the habit of walking through. They trampled the shrubs, leaving weeds in their path. This year it’s mostly Queen Anne’s lace; I made sure to cut off the thistles before they flowered, given the fact that the wind is likely to blow any seeds toward my yard. But thankfully, because I have a side-entry garage, none of my windows face the side yard next to my driveway, so I don’t have to look at this from my house.
 

By now you’re probably wondering what a neighbor’s hedge has to do with self-nurturing. I haven’t yet gotten to the best part! Just by the luck of the draw, one of the plants at the back of the hedge is an orange trumpet vine that has grown tall and robust along my backyard fence. Last year it looked absolutely gorgeous, with flowers and hummingbirds everywhere. Although it hasn’t blossomed much this year, probably because of the harsh winter, it still gives that corner of my yard a lovely storybook appearance.
 

This is what I see when I look out my kitchen window. Delightful! And it wouldn’t have been there if my neighbor hadn’t planted all that mismatched stuff; the idea of planting a trumpet vine had never occurred to me! So, every time I look out my kitchen window, the view reminds me that there’s always something to appreciate about the random things in life.

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.

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.