the green days
I’ve found it suits me better not to announce or necessarily even plan my occasional breaks from social media, but rather to let them happen organically and reflect on them afterward. This one wasn’t a total break, since I did post snippets to IG Stories almost daily, and I spent a little more time on Twitter than usual. (Which still isn’t much. I have to take Twitter in carefully timed microdoses these days.) But for two weeks, no Instagram grid posts, no captions, no FB, no Bonny Glen, and I put my Patreon on pause for the month of August.
None of this (except the Patreon pause) was planned; I was just busy elsewhere. WB had surgery at the end of July (went well, good recovery); Jane moved home from California around the same time. This weekend we celebrated Rose’s 21st birthday. (!) In between: work, long walks, a book or two, lots of embroidery. A small party where I found ‘my’ karaoke song (i.e. one I can nail). Or maybe that was before the surgery; late July and early August melted into each other.
I took Holly Wren Spaulding’s free mini poetry challenge this past week and welcomed her infusion of gentle insight into my morning creative practice, a practice which continues to be the most satisfying and nourishing gift I can give myself: this quiet, screen-free dawn hour, alone with a few good poems, a notebook, a fresh pen. I spent a lot of time with Kimiko Hahn this summer—Mosquito and Ant; Toxic Flora; Narrow Road to the Interior. Also a lot of Japanese haiku in translation. Huck wakes during the end of my writing time and staggers sleepily into my studio to snuggle into the gray armchair with me, tucked under our poppy blanket. We read poems and watch the sky change. Even when I’m tired, it’s delicious.
I also spent a lot of time in the garden, enjoying the late-summer lushness! Hummingbirds in the hyssop; bees industrious in the fennel and coneflower. A few tiny strawberries, a handful of cherry tomatoes. Asters spangling the porch wall with blue stars. A strange crow with a coppery head raiding the suet feeder each morning. My neighbor’s asparagus bed now a forest: airy green treetops festooned with apple-red berries. An abundance of small noticings. A necessary quiet.
tanita says:
Sounds utterly lovely. I hope to cultivate a necessary quiet like this in our new green spaces. This summer’s abundance of unexpected little joys in the corner of the yard – noticed a new strawberry plant the other night; where did that sneak in from?! – as well as the plums and cherries and the skunk and the crows and all the rest have also been “an abundance of small noticings.” May we all find ways to include that necessary quiet within ourselves.
On August 20, 2019 at 9:11 am
monica says:
So good to hear from you, except for that one little lie slipped in there. NO WAY is Rose 21. Not possible.
On August 20, 2019 at 9:32 am
Penny says:
Truly very inspiring. I’m glad WB is well and happiest of birthdays to Rose. 🙂
On August 20, 2019 at 11:08 am
Penelope says:
A bit of quiet grace is a blessing indeed. It sounds like a marvelous tumble of days. Life is rich.
We are coughing our way through the August hay fever, and settling in to the intensive postop days for my one darling who had surgery, and trying to wrap my head around what my other darling’s ‘senior’ year of homeschooling will look like …
On August 21, 2019 at 4:19 am
Susanne Barrett says:
Lovely. I needed the green and golden peace of your post as I go into battle today.
Thank you.
~Susanne
On August 21, 2019 at 8:16 am
Fatima says:
That was a beautiful August you had.
On August 23, 2019 at 1:58 pm