Loving Leaves

The rapid onset of deep Autumn was unsettling. Since then, tomato plants welcomed in from the cold are providing refreshing fruit and energy. As their leaves soak up the southern sun, firm green becomes supple red. The plants and I are adjusting.

Meanwhile, chilled leaves are one of the great pleasures of the season. Although I dread the spring onslaught of thousands of Maple seeds on freshly prepared garden beds, it is the Maple's current combinations of reds, golds, purples, lemon lime and fruit punch that are most delicious. The eye-watering colors shimmering to the breeze, the leafy rainbows sifting downward and the decorative accessorizing of the landscape, link the visual, the spiritual and the practical.

Leaves are adjusting to their critical roles as nutrient recyclers and as earth's organic, biodegradeable blanket. In this way, leaves add life to the largest living organism on earth, soil. Sadly, many leaves never make it home. Instead they are stuck to the hardscape, raked to the curb and either burned or carried away by the bagful and vacuum truckload. What a waste.

Contrary to popular belief, leaves scattered over lawns, flower beds and gardens insulate, feed and strengthen. Leaves covering the ground during winter are essential to the survival of many things. In turn, these microorganisms, insects and animals are essential to healthy lawns and human living environments.

No one rakes the forests, fields and clearings, yet these areas do pretty darn good without lawn care. All the luscious varieties of plant life in these unmanned natural environments, including grass, survive and return every single year.

Enjoy leaves on every level! On any windy Autumn day, try catching a falling leaf. It's much easier than catching a falling star and worth one wish just the same. The next time you look at leaves, love 'em and leave 'em.

Related Links:

Skeletal Existence Poem.

Nature: Friends Like Gardens

Poetry Is A Feeling

An Achievable Advantage

I've told my children to “think, use your head, learning to think is the best way to give yourself advantages in life and learning to think is one of the few things completely in their control.” Now it's time for me to do as I say and start taking advantage of what I already have – my brain.

According to estimates I don't even use 33% of my brain. If I doubled this, what could I do, create, solve, help, heal, avoid?

Whatever I'm doing right now, I'm doing the hard way. I'm making living harder than it has to be. I keep living against my own wisdom.

Whenever I ignore my own advice and do not take advantage of my most basic and precious resource, I might as well have been born yesterday and fallen off that turnip truck.

Running around everyday pursuing the things I do instead of first utilizing my brain to its fullest capacity is like chasing pennies rolling down the street while millions of dollars are undiscovered under my mattress. I cannot consider myself smart, open-minded, objective, adult, intelligent or educated until I learn to tap the potential of my brain and pursue this achievable advantage instead of chasing the type of “who I know” advantages from “you know who”(other penny chasers) that always seem to cost more than they're worth.

Watch this video*

*Shared by CRPS/RSD A Better Life. This blog is by a sufferer of chronic pain. It is resource rich with links, articles, encouragement, endurance, insight and a quest for solutions. Jeisea's journey keeps me mindful of one importance, living.

Nature: Friends Like Gardens

Autumn is not herself. She has allowed Winter to change her. She is surprisingly different.

She doesn't understand how much I need her to be the person who understands her role in the garden.

For now I focus on the harvest of a few friends like cabbage, broccoli, carrots and the soil. I am keenly focused on the fullness of homegrown grapes that will accumulate again especially if I contribute understanding and care again. This year the newborn vines gave what they could of themselves. Next year, they will bear the fruit they live for. It will be their first time. It will be their time nonetheless.

Consider the thoughts of Alice Walker from “In Search of our Mother's Gardens:”

“Please remember, especially in these times of group-think and right-on chorus, that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labour so to bring into the world.”

Though I question Autumn, I mainly question myself. Are my friends like gardens or are they like Winter?

Spirituality: Completing The U-Turn

[continued from Life's Intersections & U-Turns]
“What the hell?” That crazy fool gon' tear sumthin' up! Gon' rearrange the front end offa one a dem cars!
But that sucka made it and kep' on trucking.
Made me wonder what else is possible.
Made me realize you can't make u-turns with the hammer down.

Polepole, is a Kiswahili word meaning, slow or slowly. It is pronounced (po-LAY-po-LAY)

Some of us are hardly guilty of polepole. We are guilty of traveling too fast.

We allow life with all of its required components to set the pace. We allow house work, yard work, errands, holidays, people, jobs, churches, organizations, obligations and many other things to keep our foot on the go pedal.

That leaves little to no polepole time to take in life and look at our map to make sure we're on course.

Still, all is not lost even if we've traveled hundreds of miles out the way ending up in East Bumbleton somewhere at the wrong end of a fork feeling stuck.

It's time to get off the expressway of expectation. Life is amazing but this ain't the Amazing Race. Rest stops are for resting. We need plenty of spiritual rest stops along the way for replenishing, reassessment and recommitment.

Anyone making a U-turn always has the right of way so don't worry about rearranging someone else's life. Even if it's the children's. Start slowing down...turn here. I've seen far crazier and scarier things work out just fine. It's possible. Polepole......polepole.........polepole...............You can make it. Come on. You got it! Now keep on trucking, sucka'.

Related:
Life's Intersections & U-Turns
Starting With Seeds Of Resources And Becoming A Positive Force That Directs Change