FORGIVENESS

The road to freedom is through the doorway of forgiveness.

 We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive; but if we are willing to forgive, we may begin the healing process.

 It is imperative for our own healing that we release the past and forgive everyone. 

 Louise Hay

To will to forgive. So there it is. Doesn't get any better than this.

The hawthorne, after ten years, has decided to become the alpha-plant, replacing the juniper. Both bear healing berries.

SATSUMA

Two years ago, I was gifted with a satsuma orange tree.

Last year, it produced tiny oranges which were bitter tasting.

The satsuma, for those of you who do not know, is a large, sweet orange, much like a tangerine in that it peels like a tangerine and pulls apart like a tangerine. 

It is much larger than a tangerine and sweeter.

these buds are blooming for this year's possibility of a large, sweet crop of satsuma's.

We'll know in a few months. Lots could happen in the meantime.

MILKWEED

For several years after I purchased the milkweed from a sale to benefit the school's butterfly garden, the newly transplanted plant, which came with a cocoon already attached, resulted in the emergence of butterflies.

Then there were none.

Cocoons attach to the plumbago and yellow butterflies emerge, sometimes massively.

A black, yellow, and white striped caterpillar, eats up all the parsley and eventually there are several monarch butterflies. I have never seen the cocoon. 

But, where have all the caterpillars gone that attach to the milkweed?

Such is life on my little plot of land here in Crescent City.

PLANTING

Dick hires a young man with an extra helping of energy.

This weekend the two of them planted the garden.

The garden consists of a 15'x25' plot created over an old septic tank and several pots.

Potatoes are already coming up and are about ready to be covered over for the next growth spurt.

Various veges are planted in neat rows with wooden stakes to mark their whereabouts.

Pots of varying shape and quality hold several types of peppers and tomato plants.

Greg emptied the old soil from the pots, added new, mixed it with mulch, while Dick planted away behind him.

They dug up a dead guava, replacing it with a Norfolk pine which had been the holiday tree.

Greg harvested all the grapefruit and took it to the Christian Service Center to distribute to those who come there for the food bank.

What would the aging do without the partnership of youthful energy to facilitate the love of a garden growing.!

Freshly transplanted tomato

EUCALYPTUS

Not native to Florida, the eucalyptus was imported and planted in swampy areas.
This tree has an enormous ability to draw in the water around it.

Inspite of its value to the vast swampy areas of Florida, environmentalists have waged a campaign against its planting.

Florida is kind of like that with people, as well.  Although everyone is a transplant from somewhere else, there is a sense of ownership entitlement by those who have been here for three or four generations.

Like those who settled here so long ago, and those who are coming these days, the eucalyptus tree in Florida promises to be around for a long time.

Some campaigns - like "native trees only"or mindsets about belonging only if rooted in several generations here - are just not going to survive.

We all belong where we are and have the right to live purposefully right here and now.

Silver dollar eucalyptus

DUCK

A life's time is a great adventure.

A life's  time is a perilous journey. 

A life's time is a scramble.

A life's time is also like a duck resting on a lake in the rain. 

buoyant, peaceful, impervious to being soaked, and fragile.

It is the fragility that calls to be so grateful for the time we have, 

beckons us to live fully with great joy.

The fragility also carries a buoyancy, and a  deep instinctual trust.

Enjoy today. Live it all up!

 Feel the bliss it has to offer. 

Tomorrow, a friend may not be here or you may not be here.

First Lake, Old Forge, NY, August 2012

PIZZA

The only food better than a sandwich is pizza, unless it is a pizza sandwich.

I am very good on keeping to my dietary restrictions, those which accompany this aging process.

However, once I start eating pizza, that's it. It's pizza time!!!

When I taste a pizza that is "just like" the pizza I grew up with, it's more than pizza time! It's veritable banquet of continual eating.  Fortunately, this happens only once in a blue moon.

I did not have even one slice of pizza in Italy. All the pizza I saw looked more like the tomato pie that  I also grew up with and never acquired a craving for.

Now, let us consider the pizza sandwich... 

One sight along the way in Assisi, Italy