Meg Evans

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.

I’ve mentioned in recent posts that I have been busy cleaning up dust and clutter around my house. Last week my husband cleaned up some dust too, though he hadn’t planned on it. Our air conditioner had gotten very noisy and seemed like it was running much longer than it should have been, so he took it apart to see what the problem might be. He is very handy, but had never worked on the air conditioner before, so was not quite sure what to expect. He thought maybe something had rattled loose inside. As it turned out, the problem was that the condenser had gotten clogged with dust and lint.
 

The small white plastic screen on the wall in the background of this photo is the cover for the dryer vent. It’s too close to the air conditioner, which we hadn’t thought about before, and lint from the dryer had been getting sucked into the condenser. Over the years, enough of it had accumulated to be a problem. So, when my husband saw that, he figured he’d just vacuum it off with his ShopVac. But it was caked on so tightly that it didn’t budge, so he ended up having to hose it off. The cleanup took a lot longer than the quick repair he’d had in mind; but the air conditioner is doing much better now—it’s running less often, which should save us money on the power bill. And it’s quiet, hooray! When old appliances get noisy, people tend to get used to it and not think much about it; but the house feels so much more comfortable without the noise! It’s a useful reminder that if we’re to nurture ourselves properly, we need to pay attention to the little things around us and make sure they’re in good order.

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 I usually give at least some forethought to choosing new plants, I impulsively bought a gardenia while doing my grocery shopping in March, which left me wondering if the bitterly cold winter had deprived me of all common sense. I just wanted something new and green!  After getting home and belatedly realizing that I had no clue what to do with the gardenia, I put it in my kitchen until the weather finally turned warm enough to put it outside. Only then did I start thinking about where it might go.  The front porch wouldn’t do—too shady. I bought a pot with a “Welcome” message, but was still pondering where to put the plant after I repotted it. Had I foolishly bought something for which I had no use? Thankfully, my husband came to the rescue by suggesting that it would look good outside the garage.
 

We never had a plant in that spot before; but it seems to be doing fine there, and I like being greeted by the cheerful message on the pot when I pull into the driveway. Even though it’s just a simple, ordinary little thing, it gives a pleasant and comfortable feeling to coming home. That moment of impulsive shopping turned out for the best after all.  I try to avoid randomly buying stuff just because it looks pretty, as that’s how the house ends up full of clutter; but there’s also something to be said for buying occasional small items to brighten up one’s home and 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.

In addition to getting rid of clutter, my spring cleaning this year has focused on dusting and polishing neglected areas. Railings, baseboards, and other such places can go a long time without much attention being paid to them, unless a person has a thorough cleaning routine that gets to them without fail, on a regular schedule. Which I’ll admit, I don’t.
 

Feng shui consultant Kathie Seedroff points out that our living spaces reflect the metaphors that govern our lives. The little things we encounter every day frame our overall experience of the world. In her ebook Hey! It’s Feng Shui Friday, she says:

Often our state of being is described in words by what’s going on in our homes, offices and lives. Take a look at these examples. If your goals feel ‘out of reach,’ look to see what is ‘out of reach’ in your home or office. Are the shelves ‘out of reach’? Are things ‘out of reach’ because they’re hidden/stored in the back of a cabinet or behind other stuff? Do you feel like you never have enough ‘time’ or are you never ‘on time’? Pay attention to the number of clocks and timepieces you have. Are they all working? Are they set at the same time or different times? Notice the words you use and find the metaphors in your spaces.

Reflecting on this advice made me notice that I had been using the metaphor ‘dust and cobwebs’ to refer to neglected areas of life in general. So I decided it would be a good idea to look around my house and see where dust and cobwebs might be lurking. By giving those neglected areas a good dusting and polishing, I can ensure that every day I see a well-cared-for house with nice shiny surfaces, thus subconsciously shifting my perspective toward seeing abundant care and nurturing in my life. This in turn leaves me feeling more cheerful and optimistic that everything will be taken care of properly. Although housework may seem like it doesn’t matter much, as time goes by all those small things we do (or don’t get around to doing) really add up and make a difference.

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.

How do you nurture yourself on a day when you’re feeling down? Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her book Simple Abundance, suggests two alternatives: Eat some good comfort food and go to bed, or shift gears by getting fixed up nicely and going out. In either case, just remember that the day will soon be over, and that there’s always a gift to be found in even the most discouraging day.
 

Last week, I was feeling a bit stressed because of some disruptive stuff that had been going on; and then I noticed that my watch battery was running down. My husband and I have a matched set of water-resistant Tissot watches, which have to be sent back to the manufacturer when they need the battery replaced. His watch battery lasts for many years, but mine doesn’t last nearly as long because women’s watches (and their batteries) are so much smaller than men’s. So I’d have to go without my watch for about a month, while feeling discombobulated the whole time.

My husband offered to take it to the jeweler’s for me, and I gave it to him before he left for work Friday morning. I reminded myself that I should just be happy to have a good-quality watch, my life is full of blessings, and replacing a watch battery is not a big deal. Still, it wasn’t much fun when I looked at my wrist out of habit and found no watch there.

I thought I’d probably have a quiet evening—just browse a few blogs and maybe do some reading on my Kindle. When my husband sent me a text message to say he was on his way home, he also said he’d gotten something for me. That added excitement to the day! I looked in the gift bag from the jeweler’s and found a new watch in there. It’s a style similar to the other one. I wouldn’t have thought of buying an “extra” watch for myself, just to wear for a short time every year or two, because that would have seemed too frivolous or extravagant; but what a lovely present it made!

Although not every stressful day literally ends with a present in a gift bag, I do believe there are gifts to be found in every day, whether they’re actual physical objects or something more abstract like a new insight on life. The key is to stay aware of what’s going on in the moment, so as not to overlook them.

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.