The "It's A Good Life" Jar

Today is December 27, 2014.  There are four days left until the new year is upon us...and I'm actually remembering to start a project that I saw months ago on Pinterest which really spoke to me:  setting up a jar to collect memories of good times in.

I have picked out a jar.  It's our old cookie jar from when the kids were little.  It's nothing particularly unique - just a pressed glass jar, probably a reproduction, that I picked up many years ago.  With no children in the house and therefore no need/excuse to make cookies and keep them around, the jar has just been stored in the basement for years, gathering dust.

Said cookie jar has now been washed and dried, and it is sitting in the place of honor on a beautiful, new-to-us, carved table that was a special Christmas gift from friends Flip & Shelley.  Our old cookie jar is becoming our new "It's a Good Life" Jar.  Into this jar, I plan to place slips of paper anytime something happens that makes me feel lucky or blessed or particularly happy or just glad to be alive.  Hopefully, Greg will join in too.  On December 31st next year, I (we) will take out all of the slips of paper and have a wonderful record of the good things that 2015 has brought into our lives.

Yes, this is a little touchy-feely, to use Greg's favorite dismissive desciptor for activities or comments that look beyond the reality of day-to-day living, but that's okay.  A little touchy-feely-ness is a good thing, in my book, because remembering to be grateful for the positives in my life has always made me feel better overall.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think it would be a good thing for all of us to make a special point of cultivating gratefulness.  In fact, sometimes I think that one of the reasons Americans are so stressed nowadays is that we, as a whole, aren't very good about realizing how much good is already in our lives.  Yesterday reminded me of this:  the emphasis in the U.S. on December 26th is "After Christmas Sales", and this morning our paper reported that many people were disappointed at those sales yesterday.  Compare that to "Boxing Day" on December 26th in Great Britain.  For years I had heard the term and thought it referred to the sport of boxing, which I was at a loss to connect to Christmas.  Just recently I learned that Boxing Day is actually a day put aside for boxing up your extra stuff - the stuff that you just don't need or use anymore - and giving it away to those who could use it.  Isn't that a wonderful holiday?! What a great way to be thankful for all the new we received the day before from friends and family!  What a great way to focus on the good in our lives and try to pass along some of our wealth to others!

So I'm cultivating a new tradition in my life to celebrate my gratefulness.  For starters, I must say that I'm grateful to Pinterest for the idea!

Be the Change....

As I ended 2011 and now as I start 2012, the wonderful quote, "Be the change you want to see in the world," keeps rattling around inside my head.

What changes do I want to see in the world at large?  And what changes, specifically, in my world?  How can I "be" those changes?

I started to write about the big issues:  peace vs. war, looming weather crises, jobs, and so forth - but I found that, while I care deeply about such things, they are overwhelming.  I want to make my own little corner of Earth more life-affirming.  If we all did that, maybe some of the bigger problems would solve themselves.

So, in my own little corner, ...

I can start using recyclable bags regularly when I shop.  I don't know WHY I have such a hard time with this one.  It's such a simple thing.  I must have a dozen of the suckers, but I can't seem to remember to bring them inside with me when I go into a store to save myself!  I CAN do better on this one, and every bit of plastic that doesn't get used leaves our planet just a little bit healthier.

I'd love to see more real discussion among friends and neighbors and community members about what we value in life, about directions we'd like to see our lives and communities taking.  What gives us pleasure?  (The local park?  A walking path?  An internet connected coffee shop?)  Is earning more money going to make us happier?  What is a fair wage anyway?  What's the attraction of reality TV shows and who watches them and why?  How do you provide maximum personal freedom while maintaining strong community ties?  (For that matter, which of the two is more important?)  Maybe I can start a local discussion group, open to anyone who wants to join in, where we discuss topics beyond the latest football scores or "what I did on my summer vacation"?

I'd like less stuff to care for.  Short of the house burning down, that means sorting through 35+ years of possessions and winnowing them out, getting rid of what we're not using.  I can organize our things and release those that we no longer need so that other people can put them to better use.  In the old business parlance, that's a win-win!


Well, I think I'll stop.  One totally realistic goal.  One necessary goal that's harder to accomplish.  And one somewhat pie-in-the-sky goal.  Enough for this year. (I do, after all, want some chance of personal success here!)

I hope that 2012 finds us on the path to peace and understanding.  May it be a year rich in caring and love.

A Time to Look Both Ways, Backward and Forward, As We Cross Into 2012

It's the time of year when it seems necessary to look back over the past year, and then right to look ahead towards the year to come.  After reading multiple such posts on other blogs over the past few days, last night I gave into temptation and looked back in my own journal to remember 2011 in our yard and gardens in SW Sedgwick County, Kansas....

The first day over 100 degrees was....(drum roll, please!)...May 9th, when it reached 101 on our sheltered breezeway.  (The average high temperature for that date in Wichita is 74 degrees.)  This was definitely a harbinger of things to come.

We had 53 days over 100 during the year, breaking the all-time record here in the Wichita area.

In my journal, I started whining about unseasonable heat and the lack of rain back in April.  Little did I realize what was in store for us over the next several months!  By August, I'd quit complaining (for the most part) and start cheering on the 100 degree days.  Heck, if we were going to suffer through the horrible heat, we might as well set a record!  And we did.  Several, in fact.

(According to The Wichita Eagle yesterday, Wichita also set a record this year for the widest range between high and low temperatures recorded here for any single year so far:  128 degrees.)

As far as the garden itself went....  We started cleaning and preparing the vegetable garden in February, then did our first seed planting in early March.  Despite my weather whining in April, we had our best spring garden ever.  We're still feasting on the broccoli and cauliflower that I harvested and froze from that spring bonanza.

The summer garden, though, was another story.  I put in some ridiculously large number of tomato seedlings for the two of us (at least 16) and they all took hold nicely and looked great as of May 31st.  I should have had tomatoes falling off the counter and rolling out the kitchen door.  However, out of all of those plants, I got one regular size tomato and 3 cherry (grape) tomatoes in early July.  The plants just didn't set fruit in the scorching heat that never seemed to quit.  Despite the fact that I stopped watering sometime in mid July, most of the tomato plants survived the summer and started to set fruit again in the fall, but a fairly early frost literally froze our hopes on the vine.  We just weren't meant to have tomatoes this year.

So most of our "gardening" this summer ended up being focused on plugging buffalo grass in an attempt to get some sort of decent lawn growing.  (Just for the record, growing lawn grass is NOT really gardening in my book.) The plugs we put in during early July look like they've taken hold pretty well.  The plugs we put in later look...pluggy, even now.  We'll have to see how they look in April or May, as the buffalo grass greens up and starts growing again.

By the time fall got here, I didn't want to step outside to do more than push a camera shutter button.  The thought of a fall garden was simply disgusting.

But it's been a couple months now.  We've had a bit of rain.  The heat of the summer is simply an unpleasant memory.  I can finally start thinking about what I want to do as the weather warms up in a couple months.  Hope, after all, springs eternal in a gardener's breast.

So, for next year???

1)  I'm going to start lettuce seeds indoors, sometime in January, since I learned last year that if young lettuce seedlings experience temperatures below 50 degrees F., it encourages early bolting when hotter weather comes.  Once the young seedlings have more than 3 or 4 leaves, low temperatures apparently don't have the same effect.

2)  I AM going to be home in early April, when the asparagus starts coming up, and again in early June, when the peas start bearing, so they won't all go to waste in the compost pile like they did this year.

3)  Any time now, we are going to put up the bluebird nest boxes that have been ripening quietly in the garage for over a year now.  They'll do a lot more good out on fenceposts where the birds can actually use them!

4)  If the weather gods are good to us and we have decent harvests, I am going to work harder at finding new recipes to utilize our home-grown produce.  Then I'm going to actually try them out!  The recipes I've got are good, but limited, and I know there are many more, wonderful ways to tantalize our taste buds as well as nourish our bodies.

5)  I am going to do a better job of getting our beds well mulched, so that we're ready for the summer baking season ahead of time and don't, hopefully, have to try to play catch-up as much as we did this year.  (I've already got the chopped leaf mulch piled and ready for deployment - its lack was our limiting factor this last spring.)

6) And I am going to continue keeping the garden journal that I started last spring and abandoned in June, when the weather was so discouraging that I didn't have the heart to go on.  I used it to note tidbits from magazine articles, timing for plantings and harvestings, wish lists for purchases and projects, and all sorts of other fun stuff.  While I only kept the journal up for 4 months, I'm finding lots of little notes in it that are getting my blood stirring as I think about getting started this spring! 


And that's enough for now.   The catalogs are coming in and the winter season of dreaming is upon us.  Here's wishing all of us a healthy and happy year in 2012!

The Gifting Question

Now that our children are fully launched into self-reliant adulthood (and there are no grandchildren on the horizon), we've started encountering a thorny question each year as we look towards Christmas - how should we handle giving each other gifts?


Our son, Sean, is an affirmed anti-materialist and flatly doesn't want "stuff".  He is continually trying to pare down his possessions.  He lives in a (series of) smallish apartment(s) in a big city and he prefers to be able to move between them with the least amount of hassle.

Jess, our daughter, loves gift-giving and receiving, loves to create beauty around herself, and finds her home a source of great comfort.  Holidays are particularly special to her, and gift giving is an important part of the feeling of love and family at those times.

Greg's never been a big one for Christmas or Christmas gifts - his philosophy is that he likes to give gifts whenever he want to do so throughout the year, rather than at a culturally determined time of year.

And then there's me.  I love Christmas cards - both sending and receiving them.  I've moved so much throughout my life that Christmas cards are a wonderful way, at least once a year, to feel connected to friends and family that I rarely see anymore.  And I love to give multiple small gifts - the sort that can really lift the spirit if you happen to hit upon a particularly lucky choice, but that leave neither giver nor receiver feeling bad if you totally miss the mark.  The sort that can be re-gifted without angst, but hopefully will give the receiver enough pleasure and/or use that he/she wants to keep them.  Most of the time, that's the sort of gift I'd rather receive, too.

(Anyone else sense a gender issue in my discussion here?!  LOL!)

Sean has suggested, again, that we don't exchange gifts at all.  Greg would happily go along with that.  Both Jess and I would prefer to continue with the usual gift giving tradition.  I've seriously debated just having Jess and I exchange gifts with each other, but that feels very Scrooge-ish.

It seems so ironic to have a tradition that is meant to bring nothing but joy and happiness causing such annual angst...but no one has ever said that the human heart is simple!

When all's said and done, I think Ranger may have the appropriate last laugh here - as he lounges next to his favorite indoor "chewy play-toy," the electric cords!  I suspect we'll figure it all out somehow!