Just beginning to get light . . . the news on in the background, the smell of toast and coffee surrounding me. School this morning, the high school bus just went around the corner, mostly empty as usual. On my desk the fittonia, all crisp green and white, is making gigantic new leaves, not sure why they suddenly are so much bigger than usual, but they are certainly very . . . showy. If you have trouble growing anything, this is the plant you need. This one is about three years old now when I have the reputation for killing even the tough aloe vera! I think this one has survived partly because it's so hardy and partly because it sits right here where I see it often enough to remember to water it and not water it too much. Must be a juxtaposition of circumstances that have contributed to its longevity, and I get great pleasure out of greeting it every morning.
The fittonia made me think of Dawn's bougainvillea . . . now there is a hardy prolific plant! It certainly has taking over the whole front of her house, and it looks so very green and wild! I seem to like the green wild ones; it's going to be spectacular when it is in full bloom. Her maple trees seem to be doing well too! I'm really glad of that, my maple tree is one of my favorites in the yard, they have such lush leaves and the seeds are so much fun!
Today I'm not going to send a poem, but an entry from a blog I follow called Aesthetics of Joy written by Ingrid Fetell. Some days I just need what she offers, lots of color, unusual photographs, and a shot in the arm of good cheer. A couple of weeks ago she posted an entry with a quote from Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses and I had to laugh as I recognized myself in it, standing in the yard, holding one of the rare really vibrant red maple leaves, just amazed by the color and the veins running through it. Sometimes you get one leaf that is red but the veins are still green, a marvelous combination. Anyway, I asked permission to reprint her entry and she graciously let me use it here. So from Ingrid and me this morning . . .
"While looking up a reference yesterday in Diane Ackerman’s breathtaking A Natural History of the Senses, I came across a passage that stopped me in my tracks, and I wanted to share it with you.
When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we are. It probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.
This is the wonderfully uncool essence of joy for me: trying too hard and caring too deeply. At the end of the day, you regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.
Have a joyful, creative weekend. I hope you’re out with people you love, or getting lost in something that inspires you. Be clumsy, get dirty, grin big. What else are you here for?"
So, what are you waiting for? Go find something to get happy about!
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