Growing Versions

 I am loving the new agreement that dandelions need to stay. The voices arguing for their demise are dimming. If we want the bees to survive, they need food goes the argument.  We need them, they are no longer considered an eyesore by more and more people and I am made to feel less and less guilty for letting them linger on my lawn.  While I have long defended dandelions, I usually caved and chopped them down with the lawn mower. Seeing dandelions poliferate makes me think about all the other things that I cut down to satisfy the random wishes of other people.  What should I be letting grow and go to seed and blow out across the fields to continue another season?

I have a penpal!  Everyone in my household was buzzing last week when I received a personal letter (a piece of correspondance that does not contain ads or bills, in case you are not familiar with the concept).  My kids and husband each separately asked me if I got the "personal letter" from the dining room table.  It was a generous little gift of thoughts committed to paper from  Wife Mother Expletive .   I used to receive several letters a week from my best friend, friends from university, from camp, from weekend retreats.  It was pre email and facebook and if there was a want to connect, that was the only way to do it. Even though I read Wife Mother Expletive's posts on a regular basis, it is a whole other pleasure to read words formed by ink that was warmed in the writer's hand on the way out into the world as ideas and words incubated in their one unique brain.  It reminded me about how much I value mail and am merely anesthetized by endless p...

A couple of years ago, the city's Victorian era Public Gardens were finally opened (after years of pleading) for times throughout the winter.  Prior to that, the gardens had been closed during the winter to protect the grounds from being trodden on through slushie, freezing, thawing cycles. However, this past year, it was closed again through the winter. I am glad. The reason it is so good is that something that is closed has to one day be opened. Finally, after several months wondering what was going on in there under the frozen pond bottoms and frost encrusted hedges, the gates swung open.  It was open for the season.

We played school for the first time in ages. The curriculum has been updated since the last time. A drawing of the suitcase for camp.

I am not writing like I had been. When I first started this blog, the words flowed out of me in gushes. As time went along, I learned to edit, omit and shape my ideas. As my skills in photography grew, my need for words has gradually lessened. But what I've learned about writing and creating in general is that there are times for making and there are times for waiting. How about you? "Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer—he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave." EB White

Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest — thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated. — Beau Taplin

After months of slogging through slush and watching my footing through icy patches, I came to a moment, a brief gift of time, when all of that feet watching was forgotten, and unnecessary. The time had come to look up.