Welcome back!

Thanks for spending a few moments of your Tuesday with me. Each week I will share excerpts from my current writing, quotes from others that have really resonated with me this week, plus what I'm reading, listening to, watching, creating and excited about this week.

Morning Page Musings

(Excerpts from my daily journaling)

On Summer in Florida: "Once the real summer heat hits around here, I basically go into maintenance mode and find it hard to begin a new outdoor project for a while."

On Preparation: "The old me would have been ashamed to show up unprepared, but the new me knows that showing up, even unprepared, is powerful."

On Questions: "Within the unanswered WHY lies a sort of tension and the answering shifts and sometimes relieves that tension."

On Uncertainty: "I lean into uncertainty, then I lean into confidence and then I move forward."

On Eyes 1: "As others shield, avert their gaze, even close their eyes, should I be opening mine wider, allowing even more light to come in?"

On Eyes 2: "Not just what we see by looking out through them, but what can be seen or learned by looking at them, into them."

On What Would Have Been My Dad's 92nd Birthday: "He never said a lot, so when he did, you listened."

Quotes from Others

"These are my friends." 2-year-old Clara on the two little girls she just met at the library.

"Once we admit the need for help, the help arrives." Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way​

"Is there a feeling more gleeful than opening a cage and setting something captured free?" Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter​

"There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries." Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (Behavior)

What I'm Listening To

​Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris How to Get Ahead at Work, Buddhist-Style. This podcast episode featuring David Nichtern was truly a fascinating conversation to listen in on, but also, much more than that. They really dove deep into the connections between creativity, spirituality and making a living. Not only are they NOT mutually exclusive, but they can be meaningfully intertwined and interdependent.

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How's It Growing?

I headed off to my local Lowe's garden center Sunday morning, looking for a type of jasmine that will climb a trellis - and the trellis on which it would climb. I didn't find the climbing jasmine, but I did find a gorgeous scarlet Mandevilla, the aforementioned trellis and some jasmine that I planted as ground cover around my little free library. And finally hit the clearance area jackpot with four hanging baskets filled with pink impatiens for $6 total! I've been trying to find a way to get hanging baskets on the cheap and this ticked that box. And bonus, the flowers still have plenty of life left in them.

What's Cooking?

Made my weekly sourdough boule and my monthly Danish rugbrød (rye bread) . Danny eats most of the sourdough, but I always have to have a buttered slice as soon as it's cooled down, before it gets sliced and stored in the freezer. I like to refer to that as the "baker's slice". I eat a toasted slice of the rugbrød most mornings with my breakfast. It's a dark, dense, chewy, nutty, crunchy slice of earthy deliciousness.

Places

U-pick season is still in full swing here in Florida and my daughter and I didn't want to miss blueberry season again this year. Somehow, we've missed it the past couple of years. A refrigerator repairman threatened to thwart us again, but we made it with enough time to pick for an hour before closing. We picked our blueberries at Whitehead's Blueberry Farm on what turned out to be a fantastic Florida spring day. Even at the peak of heat and sun, the temp was comfortable with a breeze and low humidity. I forgot how careful you have to be picking blueberries. Usually only one or two on each cluster are ripe, so plucking the ripe berry without disturbing the rest is an art. I gave my condolences to any berries whose lives I cut short and headed home with four pounds of the most perfectly ripe, sweet, delicious berries.

Until next week...I'll be finding happiness in the pursuit.

Betsy

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