Retreating to Quiet



On Saturday morning I took these pictures as I was watering the flowers and plants out front.  I had waited 5 days for rain to come (it rained late that afternoon-after watering) so I had to go rescue a few more delicate plants.  I love the quiet in the morning and I love being outside watching the world and seeing all of the insects go about their life. The past days and weeks have been busy. Sometimes more mentally busy than physically and that mental business can really tire me and so I go quiet and retreat within.  Time outdoors for me is quiet and meditative in that I pay attention to all the details around me instead of the chatter in my head.  I water a little, pull weeds, pinch back a flower here, clip a branch there, fill up the bird bath, see a little dragon fly flitter by, watch the clouds change and feel so much calmer and in tune with the world (the real one) around me.

We are headed to look at more homes later this afternoon, or rather neighborhoods.  We look at the neighborhoods first and then decide if we want our realtor to show us the homes. Keeping my fingers crossed on one in particular.  We have also been spending time moving things around in our current home to make room for our in-laws and their two fur babies to move in later in July.  It feels a little topsy turvy right now but they are great roommates (we have all lived together before) and I know once Miss Butters (and me) gets acquainted with the new sounds of our home she will settle right in.

I have also been striving to move my body in some way everyday as part of the invitation that Elizabeth made to do something everyday for 30 days.  The weekends have been the hardest part but I am really loving this invitation and I am feeling the results both mentally and physically.  The strange part is that adding this to my day has challenged me in keeping up with my other creative work.  It seems I simply cannot do everything and still enjoy it all so I am embracing just the movement for now (30 minutes or more of daily activity-yoga-walking-running-my own funny brand of aerobics and stretching).  Perhaps once the daily movement becomes integrated into my everyday life I will be able to incorporate some of the other creative work back in or perhaps some days will be dedicated to body work and some to creative-hand work.  I love that I get to figure it out as I go along and for once I am not feeling that I have to have all of this figured out or that there are actually rules to what what I should (or shouldn't) do.  Yeah for freedom!

Speaking of freedom, I do have a few paintings still in process that may just get painted over too.  That is an area where I am still learning to loosen up.  I also have a few paintings in mind that I want to do that involve robots.  It seems when I have an intention to paint a particular subject that something else pops up all together different so it will be interesting to see what comes out of the robots intention.

What are you up to this week?