Life in Little Arrangements

Casually flipping through the pages of a magazine I bought on a whim, it turns out, after reading most articles, I live a romanticized toned-down life, because of early childhood beliefs that lead to unrealistic expectations about relationships and life experiences.  Romance in my life is a harlequin playing tricks on me.

While I believe beauty can always be found in even the simplest pleasures, the pessimist I live with has trouble finding beauty anywhere.  When the realist I have evolved into needs a break, it’s off to the writing room to snuggle up in my comfortable armchair that loves me almost as much as the one in the living room does.

Finally, an order has been made to purchase the metal framework for the last picture I’ve been waiting a year for to frame and hang in my writing room.  I believe I have been finishing this room for the last five years, but the completion is almost in sight. (hahaha...)

Austin just asked me about dinner, as he’s still on standard time, and my reply always is “one hour more”.  He thinks I’m goofing off on the job, and he’ll keep reminding me until 4:00pm.

I’m looking at this magazine article titled “The Simple Romance of Dining Alfresco”.  I love dining in the fresh air and sharing the affair with tiny, hungry black mosquitoes and high humidity that begs for an oxygen mask.  There’s no afternoon dining, and just as the sun is rising into a sky of pale gold is the best time for breakfast dining, anyway. 

Turning the pages, one after another, and there it is… “Life in Little Arrangements”.  How do they know me so well?  My arrangements seem to tell my life’s story if you know the code, but of course, you don’t, so the story is lost when all that is left is stardust.

Despite it all, a quiet glow of happiness does fills my soul as I move my little treasures around to my liking, then step back to see where I may edit.  Sounds frivolous, doesn't it, yet it does sooth the soul.

  

It’s also about the fleeting arrangements of perhaps a steaming hot cup of tea placed next to the open page of your book or magazine which is placed next to a beeswax candle with a match nearby for when you are ready to sit down to a lovingly arranged moment just for yourself.

It’s about moments that are truly yours, where you use your eyes, hands and senses to make your surroundings something you can engage with, adjust and enjoy.  My little arrangements are buried under a year of dust, and others are patiently waiting to be moved into new places, or back into old places.

A treat for myself, waiting nearly forty years, a little breakfast set of old pieces I picked out.   A beautiful arrangement in itself, that makes me smile in my early morning ritual of starting my day beautifully.

 

I've always been a collector of rocks, crystals and fossils, 

big and little ,

anything out of the ordinary.

Nevada, Colorado and Tennessee -

whenever and wherever I would hike.

They each tell a story.

Scattered throughout the house,

they may be found on any shelf

cozied up to other arrangements.

The ones above easily fit into my hand. 

1.  Dark volcanic rock covered with a crust of calcium carbonate

from Walker Lake, Nevada, my home area.

2.  Six sided rock that looks too angular to be naturally formed.

3.  I always call this "shark fin", as it sits upright like a fin in water.

4.  Layered sediment rock from Walker Lake.

5.  From Nevada, Either layered sediment or a fossil.

6.  A carved cone shaped rock used by the Paiutes. 

in the Great Basin area.

7   A hollowed out rock I found in the rock rubble 

by a river bank in Reno, Nevada when I was a teenager.

8.  A very pale lavender, then a gray layer, then cream.  

Personally, I think a piece of amethyst, found in Nevada.

9.  A one inch long quartz crystal, found when I was a child

walking across a sagebrush desert in Nevada.  

The sunlight reflected off it, making it visible for me to find.

10.  A sheet of Alum crystals found in a tiny stream 

in Alum Creek Canyon, Nevada when I was a child

picnicking with my Family on an outing.. 

11.  Coral fossils found in an almost dry streambed 

near an abandoned homestead in Tennessee.

12.   A tiny geode with white quartz crystals, found in Tennessee..

13.  An Ammonite fossil from Nevada, a lifetime ago.

My mind has decided to close down on this subject, and perhaps yours has also.  A special moment for me as I flipped through my collection of children’s books to see if there was an indent in the lineup for a trinket of some sort was a book that brought back memories of years ago.

That was the golden era when one could easily find a bookstore to walk into on a day of wandering around, and I was always a sucker in heading for the children’s department to read anything that featured an animal and lots of artwork.

This book is “Guess How Much I Love You” by Sam McBratney.  At that time it was so endearing to me, so here I am years later reading it again and onto the floor falls the CD that was included but never played by me.

 

Listening to the story beautifully told with much expression in the voice along with music would enchant any child, including the child in me.  I expected the CD to stop, but no!  An hour of listening to Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare’s adventures, one after another, with games for the child listening.

I wasn’t prepared to jump up and down and wave my arms about, so I listened until the child in me realized she had grown up and all this silliness was really silly.  It was a special moment that reminded me that happiness is where you wish to find it, even if it’s a story being told to the child within you.

There are times when I feel life defeating me, and I struggle to fight back.  It’s quite an ordeal to move myself out onto the deck when Vic is sleeping in.  I manage, as I always do, and I suppose it creates a greater appreciation in the end.

The air is filled with cicada song, as I hear two different types – one revs up and then falls back into silence, then repeats, while the other just grind away, back and forth.  (sigh)  A pesty little fly begging for a treat has set a place for itself at my breakfast table. 

The air is filled with little short and sweet chirps, which Merlin Bird ID says are Common Grackle, American Goldfinch, and Northern Cardinal hiding in the tree and bush tops.  A female cardinal tastes a viburnum berry just beginning to turn pale pink, and the sweetest of moments – a hummingbird appears as if by magic and sips nectar from a few Liatris flowers on the deck before quickly saying “see you later”.

Sky of true blue without a cloud anywhere I can see, which quite frankly, is just a quarter cut of the space out here.  Gentle breezes occasionally ruffle the leaves and refresh me as I sit with a cushioned butt on chair and bare feet propped up onto a hassock.

It’s high eighties out here with a real feel in the nineties.  It’s not a day that suffocates, which is a blessing.  Tomorrow more rain is expected, usually in the form of thunderstorms full of lightning bolts, so I will enjoy this day with vigor.

That being said, it’s time for a refreshment break as the ice is a thing of the past in the sweaty water glass, the tea long gone, and the crumbs of a seedy cracker with almond butter and blueberry preserves have been sufficiently mauled over repeatedly by my pesky fly friend.

As my hummingbird visitor put it so politely, see you a bit later.

Back again with a cantaloupe half to eat.  Such a treat, and I will relish it immensely!  I’ll tell you the tale of a cherished leather purse, if I may, drowned in an overnight thunderstorm that rumbled on for hours.  Little did I know it was fighting for it’s life while I was sleeping and dreaming. 

Vic sheepishly came in from the garden the next afternoon after he discovered it languishing on the seat of my rollator which was parked at the garden room door where I left it the day before.  He is the self-anointed keeper of my purse and rollator when out and about for the day, an honor he chose, but his memory is lacking of sorts. 

A roll of paper towel has given up its life drying things out as well as possible after the purse was turned upside down to drip a bit, and it’s contents wiped free of water and the paper ones left to air dry.  It will be awhile before the leather and lining dry completely.

In the meantime, sections of the purse are being held open by whatever works and it is hanging from one of the shelves of the living room cat tree.  Just business as usual, I guess. 

The breezes are few and far apart as the day begins to roast.  Clouds are moving in over the quarter dome of sky that I see, and it’s mesmerizing to watch them quietly and vastly move in with their billowing puffs of cotton.  

The two Blackhaw Viburnums are struggling, as is apparent by the vast multitude of berries covering them and the leaves that are so unusually small.  The enormous amounts of rainfall this summer might have been too much on clay soil already saturated- do you think?

Vic was so proud that he had trained up the clematis growing in the prairie garden to cover the arbor.  There is no clematis out there, so I trekked around the corner that hides the prairie garden and was greeted by the entire area overrun with Passion Flower Vine.  Poor guy, what he gets for not using his plant ID app.

He says it’s all gone now, but we gardeners know that’s not even remotely true.  It will greet him next spring with a passion.  He won’t know what hit him!

I’m beginning to feel as if I’m a potato almost done roasting on the grill, so it’s indoors I go.

Above: Leaf Cutter Bee on Joe Pye Weed

Below: Butterfly Weed strangled a bit 

by the Passion Flower Vine.  

A leaf of the vine is in the

 upper right hand corner, 

hiding behind the Butterfly weed.

Spicebush berries ripening from green to red.

A golden Skipper Butterfly on Joe Pye Weed

Honeybee

 

'Winterthur' Viburnum berries beginning to turn 

from green to white, then pink and blue.

Liatris aspera

A Hummingbird favorite

Rudbeckia fulgida

'Autumn Minaret' Daylily

Can have flower spikes over five feet tall.

Oenothera gaura, Biennial Beeblossom

Easily 5-6 feet tall

Sometimes behaves as a short lived perennial.

We have a large patch of this at the sunny edge 

of the front garden, and in part of the prairie garden.  

It moves in on its own.

I think this is a Carpenter Bee.

Lonicera sempervirens, Coral Honeysuckle Vine

An approach I read about that screams at me to try it is to pick out the one thing you wish to do first thing in the morning and begin doing it.  After a week or two pick a second thing you wish to do after the first one, and do #1, then #2 for a few weeks before adding a #3.  It’s called stacking your day or something like that, for people who find it difficult to motivate themselves because of life’s events.

I’m going to try it, and #1 will be to make my bed right after I get up.  I always wind up trying to untangle the bed sheets and blanket at bedtime when I feel like a wad of glued together badly cooked spaghetti trying to crawl back out of the trash bin.  I just want to crash and sleep.

I’m ending this so I can crash and sleep.  Much love to all my readers; you mean a lot to me.           

Yvonne

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