A Forest of Flowers

These foxgloves are amazing. Over a hundred of them. Intermixed with thousands, yes you read that right, thousands of Shasta daisies. A lot of the foxgloves are over eight feet tall: deep lavender, white, soft lavender almost white. Some evenings I sit on my deck and just look at them in wonder, listening to the myriad of birds warbling, tweeting, chirping, whistling, trilling, cawing, squawking, cooing, and the zzzt zzzt of humming birds.

A few nights ago, sitting out on my deck, I watched a couple of bald eagles swoop and float through the air in huge loops and circles, their wings outstretched in elegant lengths, seemingly effortless. Were they just enjoying the freedom and seeming weightlessness of their swoops? Not long after, I saw some seagulls seem to do the same thing: swoop and loop with no clear destination. Simply enjoying the freedom and beauty in being so present in Nature and the moment.

By golly, when the ducks fly through, they are definitely headed out on a mission: flap, flap, flap those little wings. They are gone by in a minute!

Can I be free and present in the moment? The foxgloves are so beautiful, asking for nothing, and giving so much wonder. I tease myself that I have the attention span of a hummingbird. Yet the hummingbirds sure seem to know where they are going and what they want as they zip around the feeders on my deck.

Being present with myself. Progress on my novel. Connecting with friends. Author and teacher, Bill Kenower, talks about connection is of ultimate importance. I care about what I’m writing, it interests me, I edit and feel it when it expresses what I feel. Yet also the connection I feel to it, and that my readers connect in some way to it.

Woo Hoo! A forest of foxgloves and daisies. Birds singing and chirping. Me learning from them to be present and to connect.

A Path to Besançon

When I saw an orange-breasted robin wrangling a worm up out of my lawn a couple days ago, I thought I have worked hard for things, too. Haven’t most of us? How many times did the bird have to do that to get a decent meal?

In looking at the abundance of irises in my yard, I saw the blossoms in full bloom and the tight buds yet to express their beauty to the world. Potential. Present and imminent for the future.

Wrangling. Abundance. Potential.
Working toward a goal.
The robin wrangler captured my thoughts. There are a myriad of birds in my world. When I sit on my deck in the evenings as the sun sets, listening to all the chirps, tweets, caws, hoots, coos, warbles of those birds, it is like I am connected to Nature, to the real world.

Working on my novel, being present for my family, going to a concert, helping a neighbor, mowing my lawn and weed-eating. I am connected to Nature, yes? A story-line in my novel took me to the town of Besançon in southeastern France (pronounced behzansan). Quite the history there, and it was way fun to be led to a new discovery.

Such a wondrous part of writing: the characters and events often reveal themselves as I am writing. I am sitting at my computer trying to wrangle the next event or conversation out of my thoughts. Then the character downloads it into my head. Another cool part is that when I try to create what I think should happen or what a character should say, there is the part of me that says, “That is not working,” or “That does not feel right.”

I have learned to pay attention to that part. Yay, it’s about time!

Thanks for reading~~ The foxgloves may be next: they are getting tall and are full of buds.