It takes so little to make us happy.
After returning to work following a refreshing holiday, we came home to fix a simple meal and relax. With hamburgers sizzling on the grill -- the new grill, quite a step up from the little $30 charcoal grill bought before Clinton was president -- I picked a few veggies from our garden.
Cucumbers, green beans, tomatoes, green onions, a bit of basil, nothing beats fresh picked. Nothing. And the joy of raising these little goodies. And growing enough to share with neighbors and friends. Priceless.
Our little 4x8-foot garden sets just off the screened in porch. We enjoy looking out at the lush foliage. Just seeing their greenness brings a smile to my face, eases the day's tensions, reminds me that nurturing something or someone rewards the nurturer as much as the object of their attention.
We watch each little flower develop. And then wait for it to turn into 'fruit' or in this case veggies. So big and beautiful, and producing new life that we can eat and grow healthy. What a delightful life cycle.
If only growing healthy was as easy as eating our vegetables.
In Their Honor by Linda Swink
An important addition to U.S. military history. And a must read for anyone who doubts our defenders' heroism.
Photo by Derrol Goldsmith
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Diana Gabaldon's An Echo in the Bone
A true disappointment. But even at that, its one of the best books I have read this year.
Bob Sanchez
Comic Mystery Writer
Diane Diekman
Biographer, Memorist
Gary Presley
A Publication of The University of Iowa Press
Glenn Cooper
Novelist, Screenwriter
Jack Shakely
Author of The Confederate War Bonnet
Jayne Pupek
Novelist and Poet
Jeannette Angell
Memorist and Novelist
Jennifer Chiaverini
Author of The Elm Creek Quilts Novels
Nell Duvall
Novelist
Peggy Vincent
Author and Essayist
Rebecca Coleman
Author of Desperado City
Richard Lewis
Novelist
Spread your wings
Photo by Derrol Goldsmith
Technorati
Quotes I gotta share...
Art Director to Photo Editor: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When corporate gives us lemons, they’ve already been squeezed dry.” -- http://overheardinthenewsroom.com/
"The problem is to go into oneself. Go to the darkest parts and the brightest parts and find out what you like and want, and validate that. It's not just a question of art and finding out who you are and making this wonderful thing happen out of yourself, but it's the responsibility to society and caring about other people. A lot of people think art is to be separate, but art is to embrace others - whether to convey something difficult or to talk about light. Work that comes from the spirit, journeys into the spirit are what we need now. Spirit has always been in art." -- Joyce Wieland
""Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity." -- found in a Fortune Cookie
"There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead." -- from The Art of Mending -- Elizabeth Berg
The truth is that many people are self-publishing many books every year and succeeding has a lot to do with understanding what is trying to be done and how. Some of the most famous writers self-published first, including D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, James Joyce, and more recently James Redfield, with his Celestine Prophecy. -- J.C. Hewitt
"It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography -- but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off." --Margaret Atwood at the Atwood poetry lecture, in Hay On Wye, Wales, June 1995
There are as many nights as days, and the one is justas long as the other in the year's course. Even a happylife cannot be without a measure of darkness,and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if itwere not balanced by sadness. It is far better to takethings as they come along with patience and equanimity.Carl Jung
As my pediatrician said when I asked him about "-handedness" in my first child, he said that all babies are ambidextrous and inept with both. This has proven to be a useful concept in life, particularly when dealing with certain bureaucracies. -- Jane Steinberg
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. -- Kurt Vonnegut
The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.
-- Robyn Davidson
I was once afraid of people saying, Who does she think she is?Now I have the courage to stand and say, This is who I am. -- Oprah Windfrey
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Lord Byron
"The short story is like an old friend who calls whenever he is in town. We are happy to hear from it; we casually fan the embers of past intimacies, and buy it lunch." --R. Z. Sheppard
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. -- Walter Bagehot
In good writing, words become one with things. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. --Truman Capote
We cannot choose the things that will happen to us. But
we can choose the attitude we will take toward anything
that happens. Success or failure depends on your attitude.
Alfred A. Montapert
_______
Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck. The problem in fear is our response -- the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us. . . . Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways.
_______
"All that's different between a rut and the grave is the depth. --Anon.
_______
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke, Irish stateman 1729-1797
_______
"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." -- Abraham Lincoln
_______
I think that the people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."--Dwight David Eisenhower, 1959
_______
[It is] a very American lesson: you need not have been
to a place in order to be from there. —Nirej Sekhon
_______
Time is the coin of your life.
It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent,
Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
-- Carl Sandburg
_______
"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." -- Sarah Bernhardt
_______
This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt. -- Earl Wilson
________
"Imagination rules the world." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
________
"We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk."-- Eleanor Roosevelt
________
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." -- Albert Einstein
________
Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
________
"I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. -- Jules Verne"
______
"A cat may go to a monastery, but she still remains a cat" - Ethiopian proverb
______
"A family stitched together with love, seldom unravels. -- Anon
______
"As we knit, so shall we rip." -- Leah K.
"The problem is to go into oneself. Go to the darkest parts and the brightest parts and find out what you like and want, and validate that. It's not just a question of art and finding out who you are and making this wonderful thing happen out of yourself, but it's the responsibility to society and caring about other people. A lot of people think art is to be separate, but art is to embrace others - whether to convey something difficult or to talk about light. Work that comes from the spirit, journeys into the spirit are what we need now. Spirit has always been in art." -- Joyce Wieland
""Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity." -- found in a Fortune Cookie
"There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead." -- from The Art of Mending -- Elizabeth Berg
The truth is that many people are self-publishing many books every year and succeeding has a lot to do with understanding what is trying to be done and how. Some of the most famous writers self-published first, including D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, James Joyce, and more recently James Redfield, with his Celestine Prophecy. -- J.C. Hewitt
"It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography -- but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off." --Margaret Atwood at the Atwood poetry lecture, in Hay On Wye, Wales, June 1995
There are as many nights as days, and the one is justas long as the other in the year's course. Even a happylife cannot be without a measure of darkness,and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if itwere not balanced by sadness. It is far better to takethings as they come along with patience and equanimity.Carl Jung
As my pediatrician said when I asked him about "-handedness" in my first child, he said that all babies are ambidextrous and inept with both. This has proven to be a useful concept in life, particularly when dealing with certain bureaucracies. -- Jane Steinberg
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. -- Kurt Vonnegut
The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.
-- Robyn Davidson
I was once afraid of people saying, Who does she think she is?Now I have the courage to stand and say, This is who I am. -- Oprah Windfrey
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Lord Byron
"The short story is like an old friend who calls whenever he is in town. We are happy to hear from it; we casually fan the embers of past intimacies, and buy it lunch." --R. Z. Sheppard
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. -- Walter Bagehot
In good writing, words become one with things. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. --Truman Capote
We cannot choose the things that will happen to us. But
we can choose the attitude we will take toward anything
that happens. Success or failure depends on your attitude.
Alfred A. Montapert
_______
Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck. The problem in fear is our response -- the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us. . . . Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways.
_______
"All that's different between a rut and the grave is the depth. --Anon.
_______
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke, Irish stateman 1729-1797
_______
"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." -- Abraham Lincoln
_______
I think that the people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."--Dwight David Eisenhower, 1959
_______
[It is] a very American lesson: you need not have been
to a place in order to be from there. —Nirej Sekhon
_______
Time is the coin of your life.
It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent,
Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
-- Carl Sandburg
_______
"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." -- Sarah Bernhardt
_______
This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt. -- Earl Wilson
________
"Imagination rules the world." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
________
"We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk."-- Eleanor Roosevelt
________
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." -- Albert Einstein
________
Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
________
"I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. -- Jules Verne"
______
"A cat may go to a monastery, but she still remains a cat" - Ethiopian proverb
______
"A family stitched together with love, seldom unravels. -- Anon
______
"As we knit, so shall we rip." -- Leah K.
2 comments:
What a difference your latitude makes. Consider yourself lucky, garden-wise. We won't be picking anything except lettuce for a couple of months. The corn is just up an inch and there are no flowers on the tomatoes. Memorial Day is the traditional day to get a garden started around here.
By the way, you were right the first time-- anything containing seeds is technically a fruit: tomatoes, cukes, green beans, squash. Vegetables don't have seeds: celery, lettuce, potatoes, beets.
You've shared a nice family moment. It's nice to eat a meal that you've grown yourself.
Hi Ruth,
We can't get into the rhythm of these southern seasons, but we're trying. By the time we got our garden out, we were already 'late'! They plant in February here. For decades we planted to the Good-Friday-for-potatoes, corn-knee-high-by-the-4th-of-July, if-your-garden-isn't- sprouting-by-Memorial-Day-you're- no-gardener, rules. :) So right now it feels like we should be nearing July!
Your garden sounds like it is right on schedule. I can't wait to hear about your 'garden sass.' :)
Dawn
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