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  • Hatchling

    It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

    -C.S. Lewis
    Hatching is hard. 
    Giving birth is hard.
    Raising children, god help me, hard hard hard.
    All beginnings, are hard.
    Rilke said, “that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”

    (Funny how I had planned to post this picture “just because” and it took on a life of its own!)

    I’ve always said my motto is, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

    Do you tend to take the easy way out, or do you look for the challenge? 


    What’s your motto?
     

  • A Life Less Plastic: Reusable Produce Bags

    I was recently taken to task in a public forum for shopping at a normal grocery store– Acme– and not totally eliminating plastic from my life. Because, apparently, if I am not perfect in my quest for green living then it is unacceptable for me to give other people my opinion, even if they asked for it.

    Now,  I use very little plastic. I go for glass or paper first, and then if I have to, recyclable plastic. My initial rebuttal was that I don’t use any plastic habitually, but then I realized that’s not quite accurate: my bread comes in plastic, and I use those horrid plastic produce bags for little things like green beans. (Bigger items, like celery or onions, I just pile onto the conveyer belt loose and deal with the skunkeye I get from the cashier.)

    I don’t know what I can do about the bread yet; I am not up to the challenge of baking a fresh loaf every other day. But I did do some research and I purchased the Flip & Tumble™ Reusable Produce Bags from reusablebags.com. (Not an affiliate link, I purchased these on my own.)

    The bags are a fair size, not quite long enough for a stalk of celery (which I am OK with loose anyhow) but plenty big enough for a carton’s worth of farmer’s market strawberries, a pound of green beans, or half a dozen large apples. They are a sturdy mesh that have gone through the wash just fine (line dry) and all the strawberry stains came right out. They close securely with a drawstring, you can wash your produce right in the bag– eliminating the need to wash out a colander– AND, most importantly, the cashier can read the labels on your produce through the mesh. No skunkeye to report.

    Also, I like the multi-colored tabs on the side. I don’t know that they serve any purpose but they were a good design idea.

    I do wish they weren’t made in China. Just sayin’.

    So that’s one less thing for me to feel guilty about, one step closer to a life less plastic.

    How’s your path to green going these days?

  • My Favorite Flower, and Advice from Ferris

    Every moment that’s ever been or ever will be, is gone the instant it’s begun. So life is loss. And the secret to happiness is to learn to love the moment more than you mourn the loss.

    “Emily,” as quoted in What Happy People Know: 
    How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better
    These are my favorite flowers in our yard. They are so very tiny and delicate; at full bloom they are maybe the size of a dime. They bloom for a week at most, and each year I wait for that perfect moment to photograph them. Some years I miss it because I wasn’t paying attention. Some years I wait in vain, because rain will come or the deer will eat the branches or the conditions will otherwise not be ideal for photography.
    Even if I do get a nice, sunny day to take the photographs, sometimes I will download an afternoon’s worth of work to find that my hands just weren’t steady enough, or a barely noticeable breeze was enough to soften the focus.
    Sometimes I get lucky and I get a handful of shots that make me immeasurable happy. They tide me over until next year.

    Sometimes I decide that what I have is good enough. One of those shots I made into the banner for this website, and it makes me smile every time I log on.

    Is it the flowers that I love so much, or the challenge of the right time, the right conditions, the hours of work to produce a satisfying result?
    Does it matter?
    As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
    Applicable to the fleeting nature of tiny flowers… and pretty much everything else in this world.
    Sigh… they’ll never be this age again.
    What do you look forward to, year to year? What is guaranteed to put a smile on your face?