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Thursday Seeds | Remember the Schedule
Meditation practice is about refraining from the monkey mind thoughts, that sometimes are not even your own, to come back to what is called the present moment. They could be things that you should be doing, the things that you did that you could have done better, the cat in the other room that needs to stop clawing up the couch, etc. The idea is to let go of all the other things, concentrate on what is right here, right now. This moment only. In keeping a schedule, it is a similar practice though not exactly the same. There are time points in the day, we call them appointments, that…
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Thursday Seeds | Find Your Marigold
The subject of marigolds lends the question of are you a gardener. In the gardening world, Marigolds are just that, gold. They help in the garden immensely in specific ways. There are specific bugs and creatures that are repelled and attracted to this plant. The “bad” bugs are attracted to it so it saves other plants from infestation. Squirrels like to eat it. I’ve watched squirrels pull the blooms off in their hands and eat them like they were a delicacy and not the prevalent flower in the garden that they are. And as fond as they are of them, deer don’t care for them. If you are looking to…
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Thursday Seeds | Lighten the Load
Remember the old adage, keep it simple? It helps with the idea of lightening the load. How much work do you actually have to do? Maybe if you make the goals simple, you would then realize that your time estimate is off by half because you have time to spare. Or if you don’t have time to spare, you could be doing three steps that aren’t needed. Would you be willing to change? So that your load was lighter, your time estimate more valid? These things seem simple in general terms. When you are in the midst of project tangles, sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the…
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Thursday Seeds | Rise up and over, light softly on top
The cure for a sliding pitch is to rise up and over, and then light softly on top of the pitch. You’ll nail the note for sure and bring confidence to the performance and joy to the song because you did it, you didn’t slide down into the dumps of off key or off pitch. Every good high soprano needs this skill. The reach required at the top of a voice range takes good energy without straining. No one likes to hear a straining soprano high note. It’s funny because many folks will call those sliding notes “off key” when in fact, it’s really just a note below which is…
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Thursday Seeds | Goose is good
Duck, duck, duck,…………GOOSE!!! Did you play it as a kid? Did you play it with your kids? The goose is good. It means there is a chase! There is movement and the anticipation is over. There is even the potential for another round if the game AND another goose! The goose doesn’t get cooked in this game. The goose does get some exercise. This goose loves water. Good food lives on the water and so does goosey type friends. And while air is important for wing stretching, all the other elements are needed too. The golden goose loves the sun but also understands the need for rainy days and cloudy…
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Thursday Seeds | Cook the Beast
Roast the bird. Take your time, do it over a long period of time at a lower temperature. Be sure to baste the bird. To taste the bird only after the temperature is perfect. (165 degrees) Stay in and cook the beast. You are cold? Put the soup on. Cook the beast ALL day! Cast iron or lecreuset, make it happen with garlic and salt and the best grassfed butter you can find. Chemical reactions of salt in cooking are taste, not reaction. No catalyst to be had except yum! Slow cook it so it doesn’t even know what happened like the frog in a pot. It’s just a hot…
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Sluething the marigolds
Look it up if you don’t know it. The word that I learned about today was Waymo. It’s a brand? Ok! It’s also a reason for collisions. In my garden observation state, I saw the reason why the marigolds are declining. Some uprooted and some just flat eaten! The Deer were under suspect as they eat everything. But I planted marigolds because deer don’t happen to like them. This week, I stood at the window and watched familiar sight of a squirrel in the yard. (no problem yet). And then as I watched, he grabbed a marigold plant from the ground and dragged it root ball and all to the…
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Thursday Seeds| Beast of Burden
Beast of Burden. First thought? The Rolling Stones. Definition of it? An animal used for carrying loads. Load carrying/bearing walls cannot be knocked down if you want to keep the integrity of the structure. If we got back to the lyrics of the song by the Rolling stones, it’s about not looking co-dependently for another to carry your load. You can carry your own pack. Don’t want to kill yourself? Pack light. Lighten the load! If you are a pack rat, this isn’t a simple thing to do. If you haven’t done your homework, you could take out a load bearing wall which could take your progress back to the…
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Hooded warblers have arrived!!
How long will they stay?
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Thursday Seeds | Put something on
The three important things to do first thing in the morning according to a favorite mentor is: Suit up, shut up, and show up. And I got two out of three, for this post should have gone out yesterday for Thursday. The dog ate my homework, there was a school shooting, and someone got cancer or Covid. (not me.) And while all of those are true, what is also true is that I learned that hummingbirds travel in a group called a charm and they are all over the backyard getting ready for their journey. They don’t wear coats, they go where it’s warm. I also know that the hooded…
