By now most gardeners are rather chomping at the bit to get some seeds in the ground and get things moving, right? However even reckless I am watching the mountains that lie out at the perimeter of this valley eyeing the snow with respect and making the decision to wait it out until the ground is a tad friendlier-warmer to embrace my plans. So what do we do meanwhile? I’m a woman with a home and I know some of the things you do. You clean. You mend. You bake. You sort out papers and the closet and piles that were neglected during summer and fall. And strangely, for some of us (more than you might think if the poll I took today is any indication) we look at that jar of coins and think perhaps it’s time to get them processed and start over. Am I right? Anyway, that’s how it is here. I have been throwing extra (read, weighty) silver coins in a crystal jar and all pennies in their own separate container. (It was pink. Yes, I say was.) Periodically, probably around now, I pull out those little paper sleeves they give you at the bank and count them up and take them to the bank. I started recently with the pennies, which were spilling out of their (pink) pot. As I was counting (and recounting) pennies I watched the aggravation mount in my mind and found myself thinking what an enormous waste of time it was to sort pennies and bind them in round paper rolls. SURELY there was something better to do with them. The time expended was not worth the value of what they were going to return.

And then a little light went on and I thought with a big smile:

Find a penny
Pick it up
All day you’ll have good luck.

Bingo. And so on the spot I decided that if I couldn’t seed my garden, I could seed the sidewalk out front. With pennies. But only the shiny ones, I decided. Otherwise, it wasn’t the same. And so ever since, over the last couple of weeks I have religiously been planting a penny at a time directly in front of my house on the sidewalk. Oh, I’m very sneaky. I really don’t want any neighbors to catch on to what I’m doing. It’s my secret. So I bend over to pick up a “weed” which has traversed the lawn, or, whatever. You get the drift. And I leave the shiny penny.
And then I simply go back inside. And during the day when I feel like a nice stretch I go out front and see if it has disappeared. And usually it has. And then I leave another! How fun is that??

So largely I had decided I did not want to see who was finding those pennies. It was more fun to just imagine. And my intention, simply, was based in the realization that the value of the penny, IMHO, was more to be found these days in the old addage which we apparently all grew up with, than in any true monetary value. I mean, come on.

The Universe did give me a glimpse, however, into how this little secret might be panning out. I happened to legitimately be out in the lawn pulling up an offending little weed when two rather middle aged women who were out for a walk suddenly came to an abrupt halt as one eyed the penny. She snatched it up in a single sweep and held on to it like a victory, displaying it to her friend. You can imagine the smile that stretched across my face, as I deliberately turned away, when her friend pronounced animatedly, “And it’s a nice shiny one, too!” Oh, joy!

Satisfied that my secret foray into penny seeding indeed had merit, I decided to write about it and post it here. I needed a photo of a penny on the sidewalk. I went out and placed one squarely in the sun. Click. Refocus. Click. Refocus. Click. Refocus? What the hey? This is not working. Why not? Maybe it’s too flat. Maybe my camera (set on auto-focus, mind you) can’t DO flat. I look up. Two young Hispanic boys are approaching me. Ah-ha. Boys? I need you.
OK, here’s what you do. See this penny? YOU, I point at one, pretend to be walking along, spy the penny and pick it up and show your friend. Easy, right? Kids always think I’m slightly nuts but in a good way. They go along. Click. Refocus. Etc. Ad nauseum.

OK, reluctantly I accept that after all these years and all these photos my Pentax has a boo-boo. I take it to a camera store, straightaway. They say they will send it in for repair until they ask a critical deathly question. “How old is that camera anyway? Ten years?” Uh, more like 18. Uh-oh. I can see on their faces this was the Wrong Answer. They pronounce it dead and obsolete. (How could THAT BE? Did they see my photos on my post last week? Come ON.)

I turn this over in my mind and I decide to “Ride the Horse in the Direction He’s Going” as Werner Erhard used to say, and I ask immediately about a digital, rationalizing with amazingly rapid speed that maybe the Universe is sending me the message to Go Digital. As in finally. Hasn’t it been just a week since a visitor to my blog asked me what kind of camera I use and I confess it’s a 35mm? Did I tempt fate?

In ten minutes time I’ve decided I want the new Pentax digital. It just feels right, it looks right, and, besides, my birthday is right around the corner (always the driving post in any expenditure decision in my book–did you read about my diamonds???)

I come home. I hit google. I find three offers. I email David Perry WHILE I’m on hold at Abes of Maine. (Please be home. Please be home.) And as I’m placing the order David kindly emails me that, no he has not done business with Abes, but his father has and that’s all I needed to seal the deal. (Thank you, Mr. Perry.)

So it’s on its way. And then I wake up at 4:00AM and I find myself asking myself, “What if it’s not dead? What if it’s the auto-focus? What if it’s not the Universe necessarily wanting me to Go Digital? What if it’s the Universe telling me to stop using auto-focus and (gasp) learn to use a camera???”

At dawn I dig out the manual, which, mind you, I have basically not read in 18 years. It’s true. And I find the page on auto-focus and I turn it off. (Hello? It’s a little button on the front. As in On/Off.) And I grin as I put FILM in my Pentax. And I aim. And I shoot. And it takes.

I am now meditating, being a metaphorical kind of girl, on what “being on auto-focus” means to the Universe. If you have any particular insights, do tell.

Love and blessings,
Kathryn

Oh, yes, Happy Birthday to Me. Official Birthday Girl photo herewith:

My cake said, “Happy Birthday Beautiful Me.” I kid you not. Here it is!

And here I am. Do I look HAPPY??? I am!

Posted on March 15th, 2008 by Kathryn
Filed under: People at Play | 26 Comments »

I was nearly swooning when I brought my first bouquet indoors from the above camellia tree. My home is graced by not one, but two, of the above variety which are currently in full bloom, each standing at least ten feet tall! Half the front of the house is covered with these delicious blush blossoms, that fall somewhere between pale peach and pink. It is a splendor, my dears. Exquisite is the closest word. Yet even I was somewhat puzzled by the enormous impact these particular flowers had upon me once I had put three or four burgeoning blossoms in a lovely vase and placed them next to the bathroom sink. Was it the color? Was it that winter had had its effect and my soul just longed for spring, was filled up with the sheer delight of a freshly cut bouquet? Or what? Maybe a bit of both, I surmised. And then I picked up the book Oprah has chosen for her new free international workshop (which begins online Monday evening, btw), Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. And I was deeply moved to discover he opens the book with an “evocation” that begins with a treatise on flowers. He suggests that a single flower triggers in us a memory of our own most inner beauty, our true nature, a faint whisper, perhaps, of that which we have forgotten. Could it be?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home…

William Wordsworth

I believe so, my dear gardeners, I believe so.

The garden abounds with camellias at this time of year. Outside my bedroom window I’m treated to an equally tall pink one. Perhaps some of you who are more educated in camelias than I might actually identify some of these. They were planted many years ago by someone no longer gracing Earth’s stage. I am simply the next to enjoy. And so I share with you:

I found this whimsical creature dangling over the fence that separates my yard from my dear next door neighbor’s:

“The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition…Flowers…would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.”–Eckhart Tolle

I shall be eternally grateful for the beauty flowers bring to our lives. This month it is the camellias. Soon it will be the rhododendrums, the trusty hollyhock, and graceful cosmos and a world of infinite possibilities, forms, beauties. How lucky we are to notice, to tend, to provide, to teach, to enjoy, to appreciate, to be.

Love and blessings,
Kathryn xoxox

Posted on March 1st, 2008 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants | 22 Comments »