Winter by San Diego standards arrived several days ago.    I took the week after Christmas off and thanks to a warm Santa Ana I have been vigorously at work in the garden.  I pruned ten rose bushes and countless other plants and tress.  I pulled weeds and moved  plants from one … [Read more...]

Ahh, remember the song?   I am reminded of it when I look at the frog positioned in my yard and his happy go lucky stance.  It’s a good thing, to be reminded that is, that life without laughter and whimsy is a life lost.  Frogs do that for me, so does the occasional crazy dog … [Read more...]

I call him the local yoga master.  He can contort his body in any number of ways, especially when it comes to food.  His reach is quite profound actually.  I am amazed to see his stretch, remembering how I once could do something like it.   Ahh, youth.  What happened? We get … [Read more...]

There is so little we really know about those we love.  In the course of a day, we can learn an unknown and revealing tidbit from the past that jolts us, be surprised at an insight shared that helps us see our loved one from another perspective, become puzzled and sometimes hurt … [Read more...]

We often hear or speak it:  there but for the grace of God go I.  A suggestion perhaps that without God’s grace we might find ourselves in hard circumstances except for some reason we are given the blessing of otherwise. I consider this possibility now.  How, for whatever … [Read more...]

My husband Jim has always been partial to basset hounds because they are mellow. Low to the ground, he can usually catch them if they try and run away. The matter of their laid back nature is somewhat of a blessing. Any deficiencies in character – stubborn being one -- are … [Read more...]

It comes at me in record speed, the conflict when I want or have to do it all and feel torn by what to do next.  I live in many worlds, but I struggle at how to divide my time between them all….tending to husband, tending to work, tending to the garden.  They each have a place … [Read more...]

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. Christopher Robin to Pooh” I am not as brave as I appear.  I cower at heights, am afraid of the dark, and reluctant to fly.  I move forward and do one or … [Read more...]

There is a simple fact in life.  You wake up and eventually you go to sleep.  In between is what you do with it all.  Make it work or simply complain that it doesn’t.  Make it work is a much better approach.  As the saying goes – Got lemons?  Make lemonade. Life is not easy.  We … [Read more...]

Perfectionism is not a worthwhile goal.  Balance is.  Perfectionism deals in extremes where we tweak until nothing is left.  Balance deals in shades of gray, the edges fuzzy, perhaps not so perfect, coming with the recognition that to know beauty we sometimes must know its … [Read more...]