One tiny twinkling star

Imagine...

one tiny twinkling star

in the dark night

makes all the difference

to the person navigating a journey

with nothing else to guide them.

Let your light so shine

it may be someone's

one tiny twinkling star.

Maintaining some semblance of holiday cheer despite the flu (thanks to Netflix and cold medicine)

I spent all last week watching every Christmas movie I could find on Netflix while being sick with the flu (the real flu as in "influenza" and "don't-go-outside-your-home-and-spread-this-to-anyone" or you could be "patient zero" in your neck of the woods).

I gotta say that sitting around watching endless Christmas movies sounds really great until you overlay a 102F/38C fever on top of it. You get a pretty funky experience when you do that. One of my favorite movies "Elf" was a bit odd to watch to say the least. "Scrooged" was really strange. And other Hallmark/made-for-tv Christmas movies all blurred into one big massive plot line that I don't think I could possibly mentally unravel now unless I watched them all over again (I won't be doing that).

I'm not sure if I'm infused with more of the Christmas spirit than I usually am simply for watching all those flicks back to back. Between dosing myself with fever reducers and decongestants every 4 hours, I've definitely heard about every rendition of every Christmas carol I could imagine. I've watched just about every romantic scenario involving a girl falling in love with a guy around Christmas (how many more movies can you make about a girl needing a boyfriend/fiance to take home to her parents for the holidays?). And I can attest to the fact that Santa does come in every shape and size imaginable thanks to Hollywood.

And I think it should count for something that I was wearing flannel jammies with Santas all over them almost the entire time. That should warrant an extra candy cane in my Christmas stocking... or something.

It truly is a wonderful life if you always remember, "play" is the action required to start every great film... including your own

This evening, on his way home from work Hubby stopped at the store (he often does since he does the grocery shopping). I came into the living room to find the television screen full of the start menu of one of our favorite classic films "It's a Wonderful Life". He had cued it up to surprise me. He had found the dvd at the store and bought it.  I wandered into the kitchen to find that he had bought a little advent calendar full of chocolates. I opened the little "window" for December 1st and handed him a chocolate. Then I opened the little "window" for December 2nd and popped that chocolate in my mouth.

A thought... an idea... a concept that's been percolating in the back of my mind this past holiday weekend started bubbling to the surface and taking form in words instead of just feelings and impressions.

I went back to the television with the start menu still up for "It's a Wonderful Life"... the thought continued to take shape.

I went and got my camera and photographed the television (Hubby thought I was a bit odd at this point... but that's normal).

Then I sat down and started playing with the photograph on my computer–letting the words that had bubbled to the surface in my mind come out onto my screen on top of the beautiful graphic from the dvd.

I thought to myself... It truly is a wonderful life. But I have to engage in the process for that wonderfulness to happen. I have to take action. Just like I have to hit the "play" button to enjoy a great dvd, the smallest actions can bring about wonderful and beautiful experiences. Those small actions are like hitting the "play" button of my life, taking me out of "pause" mode or "waiting" mode and making my life story or "film" roll forward one scene or even one frame at a time.

It's the little things that make life rich. Those things rarely cost money and usually don't require a huge amount of planning and preparation. Like when Hubby decided to try his hand at making a homemade cherry pie last Friday. He knows I love cherry pie. And he asked me earlier in the week, "How hard is it to make a cherry pie?" I told him I didn't think it was that involved. He hunted around on the internet and realized it wasn't hard at all. So while I was sleeping in on that lazy post-Thanksgiving morning, he went down to the kitchen and baked a cherry pie... for me. It wasn't elaborate but it was one of the sweetest and most kind gifts of love from him to me.

A homemade cherry pie... a little advent calendar... a classic Christmas movie on dvd... by themselves they aren't much. But when combined with love, they are the things that make up a truly wonderful life.

It's perfect weather for garden installation around here

I think normally when someone says, "Yeah, I'm taking the whole week of Thanksgiving off because we have plans" it means that the person is traveling to spend the holiday with relatives or go on a vacation of some sort to celebrate the holiday.

Not so around here.

When Hubby said he'd be taking the whole week of Thanksgiving off because we have plans, it's because:

1. a portable storage container is being delivered to our driveway
2. the last of 1500 pounds of boulders needs to be moved out of the back of our low-riding pickup truck
3. the invasive ivy and vinca major that's grown through the fence from the neighbor's yard over the past few years needs to be hacked away
4. the boulders that were in the pickup need to be arranged to line the path down the south sideyard in preparation to install a pea gravel and flagstone path (which we'll probably tackle during his time off around Christmas)

Oh... and Hubby is also doing the pre-holiday food shopping that needs to be done while I'm sitting here typing this blog post. Yeah, I married a saint of a man.

The garage has, up to now, been our storage area for my floral design supplies (including some massive coolers too big to put anywhere else and big boxes of blocks of floral foam), home construction materials, and food storage in pantry units down one wall. Over the past few weeks, we've relocated the pantry units to available temporary space in the house, but there isn't room anywhere for everything else in the garage that needs to be cleared out in order to begin the work of transforming the space into my new studio.

So last week, we made the decision that we'd just have to bite the bullet and include the cost of a portable storage unit in our construction budget.

The portable storage unit was delivered on-schedule mid-day on Monday. It's called CoolBox because (unlike other portable store pods) this one is completely insulated so the interior stays more temperate. The 16 foot x 8 foot unit is now sitting in our driveway taking up one parking space with its door facing our garage door. Today, Hubby started the transfer of stuff from the garage to the unit while I worked on setting rocks.

Hubby had done the monumental task of cutting back ivy the past couple of Saturdays (despite being plagued with an allergic reaction to all the stuff he was kicking up in the process). Once he had cleared the ivy away to reveal bare ground, he started moving rocks from the back of the pickup and pre-placing them in a line.

Then it was my job to come along and apply my vision to the placement of the rocks. I had to dig, scoot, and rearrange to get each one looking just right. The long course of rocks now forms a raised bed for the warm climate lilacs, loquat trees and Cecile Brunner rosebush that form the dense arch of foliage leading down the sideyard to our "secret garden" in back.

Hubby smartly discovered one rock with a little "mouse hole" on the bottom and placed it perfectly over the irrigation line that runs to the raised bed (you can see it in the photo above). (I'm telling you, he's awesome!)

With the November air cool and crisp, it was the perfect time to be doing this hard labor.

This time of year is always interesting in the garden. There are some trees and bushes (the liquid amber, plum, pomegranate and cherry) that are turning beautiful shades of yellow gold or russet red. At the same time, the leaves of the non-deciduous trees and bushes, like the thick glossy loquat leaves, remain a lush green. The hummingbirds and bees still have plenty to snack on since the lavender, loquat and navel orange are in bloom. At the same time, their deciduous neighbors have bare branches ready for winter.

It's such a wonderful time to be out in the garden, I may have a hard time breaking away for the Thanksgiving festivities. Then again I'm "a bona fide turkaconis freak" of major proportions so it probably won't be that hard to lure me away.

We are not being compensated in any way by CoolBox Portable Storage or getacoolbox.com for the photo of their storage container or mention of their company's services in this blog post.

I love Autumn... but I'm not a big fan of the fall

I love Autumn... but I'm not a big fan of "the fall"... "the fall" of the leaves, that is.

The leaves look so beautiful as they change colors while on the tree--nature dressed in the same colors I love to wear myself.

As brilliant as the inside of a tropical fruit, the orange-yellow leaves of the pomegranate is a delight to behold... until those leaves start loosening their grip and descending to the ground and pond below.

Every day or so I sit on my "tranquility bench" with pool net in hand sweeping leaves off in gentle strokes being careful not to scoop up little mosquito fish in the process. It's slow, methodical and eventually very rhythmic.

As I sit on the bench, I look above me at all the leaves still hanging on.

I know I will be scooping those out in the days to come.

There's no easier way to do this delicate work.

I am the steward of a backyard wildlife habitat, and I must be gentle in my stewardship opting for slow and methodical sweeps of the net over get-it-done-quickly techniques that would most likely involve noisy leaf blowers or nets over the pond that would prevent animals from getting the water they need while our region still waits for the replenishing autumn and winter rains to fill up seasonal ponds again.

The "tranquility bench" takes on a slightly different purpose this time of year, yet I still find tranquility there.

Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and garden installations

I know it is officially autumn when the Japanese maple tree begins to change color. It has. The leaves dance in the breeze in colors ranging from russet red to bronze to a pale Granny Smith green. Fortunately, this tree holds on to its leaves a long time after they've changed color, so Hubby and I can enjoy them and savor their beauty.

With the cooler daytime temps, I've been able to go back out into the garden to do involved hardscape installation that I can't do in the summer heat. However, I do have to keep telling myself the old adage, "Slow and steady wins the race" and that it's perfectly okay to do things at a slower pace than what my creative imagination and my ambitious brain would like.

Last Saturday, Hubby and I went to our local landscaping yard and handpicked over 1500 lbs of beautiful moss-rock boulders of various smallish sizes. Actually, I picked and Hubby lifted. I wasn't able to help because of a minor fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue flare-up. He loaded each rock onto a palette. Then the landscaping yard guy came and picked it up with a forklift, drove it to the scale and then to our truck where employee unloaded the palette into our truck and Hubby was able to finally get a break. The poor little pickup was riding pretty low on the way home, but it handled the rocks like the champ it is.

My flare-up has been keeping me from moving forward with installing the rocks as the border for a future pea gravel and flagstone path down the side yard, so the truck it still sitting the driveway (very low) full of rocks.

I keep repeating to myself, "Slow and steady wins the race... Slow and steady wins the race."

Because I haven't pushed my body (as I often do) I'm feeling this flare-up wane already. And if I don't jump the gun and let it completely subside, I'll feel just fine to start hauling rocks around in a couple of days.  Then I can line the path in preparation for a pea gravel to be put in so flagstone can be set in it.

I just have to remind myself, "Slow and steady wins the race... Slow and steady wins the race." You know, now that I think about it, I feel a little like Dory on Finding Nemo.