Weed your to do list. Include sun in the daily forecast.

The sun warmed my face as I woke up this lovely Sunday morning. I stretched as I opened my eyes to find I had been joined on the bed by the little lab as she cheerfully implored with happy eyes and wagging tail if we were going to get up and have fun. My dear one softly snoring away having been called into work at 2 am and returning home sometime just before the sun fully rose.  I dose in and out enjoying this rare quiet Sunday luxury and garden in my head.

Each day I impatiently await total thaw.  The birds are singing now each morning and the sun has that extra touch of warmth and each day the sun is up longer and longer.  I am not patient.  I daydream of some sort of magical power to zap my house clean and warm the soil so I can garden my days away.  My list of daily activities contains to many undesirable duties.  I pout.

But today is Sunday and it is a day of rest, so the house is a mess?  Who cares, no one is coming over, I can do whatever I want.  I think I shall gather seaweed by the seashore for my garden and build some planters and plant potatoes, sunchokes, and peas.  The dogs will love it, and so will I.  Sometimes you need a day with no undesirable duties.  Monday is always a good day for those.

The soul’s sun is doing those things that bring you a deep warmth and pleasure, if you look at a new plant growing, maturing, and finally bearing fruit you will see that it requires 75% sun and 25% rest to really grow.  Now if you only ‘sun’ your soul a little bit, on occasion, I don’t think it can grow much less bear fruit.  To truly garden your home you must sun your soul, who wants to be in a home with a bunch of dried up shriveled souls!  Strive each day then to meditate, find peace, create, spread love, do a kindness, witness a moment of beauty and focus it in on your soul.  Weed out those undesirables to just the required, we all have responsibilities in our life that have to be maintained. But who said we need to torment ourselves with perceived requirements?  If it is a burden and not a true you need to do it for responsibility reasons, then don’t obligate yourself to those extras in life.  While I enjoy physical labor and pounding sign posts in the ground so the fire department can find the address faster another person might enjoy hosting bingo.  I might enjoy helping in the community garden while another person finds pleasure in throwing a bake sale for Head Start.

Find your joyful strengths and lend a helping hand with things that feed your soul, not things that drain it.  We don’t need to be martyrs to do a good thing.  One thing I have noticed about martyrs:  they are a pain to be around, not edifying, uplifting, or joyful! I find them down, drained and draining, shriveled up and dry!  I have been one!  Why?!  They are now worthless to themselves and their homes.  They have nothing left to give, so cut out those extras if they don’t edify your soul! Each day let the sun warm your face at some point, and grow well.

Waste, Waste Not

What is waste?  I think the definition of waste can be all over the map.   Take my lovely Sunday expedition to a local salmon fishing hot spot with my man and boy, we brought home ZERO fish. We did however bring home some fun pictures, smiles all around, and the wonderful memory of little man catching his first king salmon (to small to keep, barely) and another picture to prove it.   So, is that a waste?  I don’t think so, others might argue that we wasted fuel to do that, but then I can argue that the semi driving across the entire US carrying GMO negative value food, harvested by giant carbon burning equipment, processed beyond recognition by more machines has way less value than that very fun and important time spent with my family. Then, what is waste, what do you bring to the dump?  A table and chairs?  Really!?  Well guess I have two chairs I can paint brightly for the outdoor dining area!  (the table and other two chairs were smashed by other dump stuff)  Now I just took someones waste and gave it new life!  Along with some corks for the subsistence hooligan net.  A small gillnet set in the river held up by corks that quickly catches the little tasty morsels:

 

These little oily fish are good dried, smoked, salted, baked, or boiled but the very best way is floured and fried!  Can’t wait to be sitting around the campfire here real soon frying up the days catch up the lovely Stikine River.

So here I am dreaming of the river, hooligan frying in the pan on the campfire, early morning sun – but not yet!  First I have to salvage these corks off of the various discarded nets up at the dump!  They are frozen to the ground and each other, arg, and I forgot a knife.  So I walk away from the dump with two chairs and 20 corks for five bucks. Ehh, not bad!  I will update when I get the net done!  I have to go weed my kitchen now.  I really don’t want to though, I want to go up the river!  Happy first day of spring, folks!