Two Pat Austin Roses...in spite of the heat

If you have been watching the comparison of this year’s weather in North Central Texas to the worst years our area has had to offer in recorded history, you know this has been a challenging one. Let me give those of you living at a remove an idea: when 103 degrees is a perceptible cool-down, it’s been hot!

There’s a lot of fodder for the “worser-than-ever” way of thinking and speaking about things this year, and not just in my rose bed. Yet we live like good citizens within the watering rules for our city, standing in the sun at the end of a hose a great deal. At times, you have to wonder about yourself when you just persist in spite of the circumstances, but then you see this.

A Pat Austin rose, a true English rose, a bit sunburned just like both of us, but bravely budding nevertheless. It made my morning.

Go out today and Find. One. Thing. to affirm your efforts, too!

vs

"Deep Water Oil Spill" by Bronwen Salton

Domestic art can speak with a larger voice. Bronwen Salton has taken the plastic art of crochet and brought immediacy to the effects of what we often thoughtlessly discard.

“Using waste as a medium also lends an embedded meaning to the work. It speaks of our relation to the environment and our relation to art. It demonstrates that we can be constructive and solve the problems that we create…”

In addition to her fine art installations, Salton is co-founder of the community business Masimbambane, which provides participants an opportunity to sell their wares at events such as the Grahamstown National Arts Festival.

For more about this inspiring story of art and economic progress in spite of great hardship, read the article at http://www.crochet-world.com/newsletters.php?mode=article&article_id=1887&key=CWNL

(Fiber people are up to more than you might think.)

vs

Your local provider may vary, but it never hurts to help. Go look and give your karma and your yard a boost!

Do Good. Have Fun. Make the World More Beautiful.

As I write this there are several guys trampling back and forth over my head hammering in a new roof. One of the things I didn’t know you had to do to prepare your premises for this undertaking is to get everything off the walls because…see above…there will be several guys trampling back and forth all day!

(You’ll get a feel for your level of accumulation if you ever have to do this exercise, by the way.)

In the course of pulling down paintings and antiques from over 30 years in the same house, I began to realize I had more art than floor. Looking for a safe place to lean the paintings out of paw/foot-traffic range, I stood for about three seconds in front of the television in the living room seeing the perfect spot if I didn’t care if I couldn’t use the babble box for a couple of days.

Somewhere under the stuff we love is an electronic device we bought once.

That’s all the time it took for me to realize that not only were we unlikely to miss this object in the next couple of days, we had hardly used it in the past week. And then I decided it didn’t matter whether it was accessible or not.

I just received a newsletter that says it perfectly:

When asked how she managed to be so prolific, (noted author, teacher, and designer) Barbara Walker said she needed only four or five hours of sleep each night. She also said that her TV set broke once and she didn’t get around to calling the repair man for five years. “I got a lot done,” she smiled.

http://tinyurl.com/mrhm8j

So, before you ask me what you should do, first ask yourself what are you doing right now that doesn’t matter.

In the middle of the shady forest..... the moon.

“Mike, get on with it!”

The source of the reminder was a couple of phone calls. One on Saturday informed me that the husband of a new distributor in my organization had just dropped dead at the age of 53.

This morning I received a phone call from another friend confirming attendance at a major event this coming weekend and, by the way, he spent the weekend in the hospital due to a heart attack. He is 43.

OK. Got it. Message received, loud and clear:

“You don’t know how much time is left so you better get on with the ‘bucket list’ RIGHT NOW.”

But on a deeper level the message is to get on with the simple, essential, often less obvious, “A” list things as well. Here’s a short list to self:

• Call someone and tell them you love them. One of you may not be here tomorrow.
• Get on with the healing. Practice forgiveness NOW! (That includes forgiving yourself.)
• Is there something important you want to leave behind? Some work, project, message? Do it now.
• Let go of those time wasting activities that distract you. (Overused phrase, but true: “don’t major in minors.”)
• Recognize attachments that are holding you back, slowing you down, limiting your vision. Release them; they do not serve you.
• Examine your thinking. Would you be content with what is on your mind right now as your last thought? It just could be.
• Examine your actions. Ditto above.
• Consider your goals. Do they represent what really matters to you? Would it fit into your epitaph or the eulogy at your funeral?

Note To Reader: What would be on YOUR list?

Yesterday I read the following in the New York Times article titled “Americans Worried About Flu’s Impact on Finances“:

…while most adults are not overly concerned about their own health or that of their families, they are worried about the financial hit they will take if illness or school closings keep them home from work, according to the survey by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Some 44 percent of those surveyed said they would lose income if they missed work for a week to 10 days due to illness, and a quarter said they could lose their jobs or businesses altogether.

It makes me appreciate some choices we have made over the last three years.

2006 was a heck of a year for us.

In February V’s mother passed away.  As the only child descended from a long line of hoarders, V was the one left to put things back together.

For the next 12 months we found ourselves week by week progressively deeper in the accumulated detritus of a century of multiple ancestor’s indecision. Throughout that summer we cleared a large two-car garage from a state of total clutter (I don’t exaggerate when I say you literally could not get more than two feet into the garage) to totally empty. That front of that house was filled from driveway to driveway, sidewalk to curb, 3 to 4 feet high on at least four separate occasions. Thus it went for the entire house plus another property 40 miles away in Ellis County.

I recall once commenting to V as we were engaged in one multi-property clearing push that we had just carried a truck load of trash across four different counties.

It went on like this, almost without cease, through the first quarter of 2007.

But one thing happened during this time that makes the title of this post of profound significance. In May of 2006, despite the press of events, we had started a second business to provide some additional income. We worked on it as much as we could between my “day” job as “the coach” and the relentless chaos that was spinning around us. Around late November of 2006 we were both so totally burned out that it was all we could do to put one foot in front of the other let alone work on building more business. For all practical purposes we were barely in business from late November of 2006 through March of 2007. But we were surprised (make that delighted) that the business we had started in May continued to grow. We were receiving regular checks based on things we had started nearly a year before.

Fits standard 8-up nametag labels. Enjoy!

So here I am now happy to announce that despite the craziness of these economic times my “Plan B” is continuing to build and grow.

I’m not smug about this. Frankly, it was partly dumb luck.

But I am still heel-clicking delighted.

Even though I know it’s only a single plant, when we take it into our environment, make the mental picture of what it will become in its context in our life, and give it as solid a start as we are able, I’m always a bit disappointed when a new planting fails, as we thought this one had. What went wrong? What might we have done more skillfully ? How can we do better next time?

I phoned Michael right away to let him know about the leaf and that the plant is alive, at least for now. (Everyone can use a “happygram” to get through the day, even The Coach.)

“So, it’s made it, ” he said. “No,” I said, “but it is making it. So far. For today.”

(I don’t like to overpromise, you see.)

It’s a useful distinction: how many people are looking for the moment when they’ve “made it” and no longer face challenges or problems or stress. “Then I can (fill in the blank),” they say to themselves. Yet the static sense of “made” simply does not emerge from process of daily living. “Made” is always “making” when spoken in the first person singular. (That means you should press ahead as best you can with the things you want to do when “made” might have happened, by the way.)

So, the little plant is still alive, even though dwarfed by its fellows, who were started years before and have deeper roots to draw upon when the stresses of the summer sun arrive, as they do each year. It is making its effort, just as they are, and may in time stand side by side the other Gerberas, indistinguishable from them to the casual observer.

But we are the gardeners, and we will know: each of us is simply making it. So far. For today.