Tag: Texas hill country

The Good Life

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I stopped by the Water Gardens and saw three of them sitting on the edge of a wood table. Two were in bloom and I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed such delicate beauty making this loud of a statement.

Similar to the pillow mentioned in Feel the Music, there was no need for another plant, but if it could be happy in my yard, I’d literally stare in wonder at it while it bloomed. Three days later, I went back to the Water Gardens and made my way over to where they’d been sitting previously. It blended in with all the other plants on the table, but there was one left. It wasn’t in bloom, but I recognized the foliage and not being in bloom is how it was overlooked.

Curcuma-Siam-Sparkling-Tulip

Last year the yard was all about the bloom, but this year it’s about watching and waiting for that one spectacular moment. There’s nurturing in between every bloom, but the rewards far outweigh the attention given. In the book, Simple Abundance, the author has been talking quite a bit about gardening. This reading is titled The Good Life, and she shares an excerpt from the book, Loving and Leaving the Good Life, by Helen Nearing.

  • Do the best you can, whatever arises.
  • Be at peace with yourself.
  • Find a job you enjoy.
  • Live in simple conditions; housing, food, clothing; get rid of clutter.
  • Contact nature every day; feel the earth under your feet.
  • Take physical exercise through hard work; through gardening or walking.
  • Don’t worry; live one day at a time.
  • Share something every day with someone else; if you live alone, write someone; give something away; help someone else somehow.
  • Take time to wonder at life and the world; see humor in life where you can.
  • Observe the one life in all things.
  • Be kind to creatures.

I’ve been helping a woman water the flower beds at church once a week and noticed she didn’t have a sprayer on the end of the water hose, so I brought her my rain head to use. I attached it to the hose, turned it on and handed it to her. Just the sound of the water the rain head gives and watching it shower over the plants was such a peaceful moment she didn’t want it to end. It’s moments like that you know you’re standing in the good life.

Firewood

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During the Texas snow/ice storm, I saw a post on Facebook that made me smile. It was a photo of a front yard covered in tree branches, and said, “It’s raining firewood.”

I needed to see that because the most unnerving part of that week for me was the location of our home. The house is surrounded by ginormous oak trees and rests beneath their canopy. We’d hear the crack of a branch, then boom onto the roof, and the branch would slide and fall to the ground. I did a lot of meditating that week, and thanked God for metal roofs.

Once the snow had melted away, I stepped outside to look at the front yard, and was in agreement that it had rained firewood. The yard was covered with sticks, twigs and a few branches, but I looked at the sticks as, ‘kindling’, and the branches were easily broken into firewood. No healthy branch breaks. It was a good day for a fire, as I removed the cover from the firepit.

God knows my heart and knows I love to sit near a fire. I gathered up all the sticks and laid some in the pit. There were so many I had to start a pile of them nearby, along with the smaller broken branches. The larger branches were laid aside for future use. I sat by the fire for hours that day, and just pondered God’s goodness and grace. If it’s gonna rain, let it rain firewood.