that are helping me through these days.
1. My garden rain or shine, preferably shine. Staying home has offered me the opportunity to observe spring’s changes far more closely than my schedule usually permits. I’ve been able to watch and admire the entire life-cycle of our blooms- from first bud to their blowsy decline. And getting myself outside, my hands in the dirt and my body moving are all so good and more necessary than ever right now.
2. And those blooms . . . I’ve left plenty of color in the garden – a fair share for our Beatrix Potter-worthy cavalcade of critters – but this spring there’s been enough for all that and still plenty left for cut flowers for the house ever since the start of our stay-at-home order. The color lifts my spirits every time it catches my eye.
3. Our very well-stocked bookshelves. I love my local library and I tend to think that if they keep tabs on this sort of thing, I’m known to back-office staff as a power-user, but when our system shut down I never felt more thankful to have far more books that I’d yet to read at home than time – even now.
4. The archive of my all-time favorite podcast, Backlisted, which I just discovered this past winter. It’s two well-read, very enthusiastic British hosts with backgrounds in books and publishing and an equally well-read guest or two discussing a favorite book/author, once popular and/or critically recognized, that has since fallen from the spotlight. The tagline, “giving new life to old books,” sums it up nicely.
They never only talk about one book, though. By the time each episode is finished I’ve usually added at least half a dozen new old books to my interminable tbr. Listening to Backlisted while gardening has proved to be truly powerful medicine. This combination has managed to properly take me out of myself for a little while. What a relief!
5. and it’s been so rainy the past few weeks, but when we have it, always, always, the light.
What has been helping you? I’d love to know.
Be well,
– Debbie
1 Comment
Comments are closed.
Yes, gardens and blooms and books. But also, slow walks where the number of steps are irrelevant, taking picture “sketches” – those with no aim to be especially good, simple meditation, and a few good lists of things to-do (some that need doing and some I just want to do). Love those irises in amidst the fallen peony petals!