Flowers in the Rain

Rainy Day Flower Harvest Basket

Today is a blissfully peaceful, rainy, cloudy, sort of cool but humid day here at Mountain Harvest Basket.

My phone has not rung even once today. I can hardly believe that. I pick up the receiver occasionally to make sure the dial tone is still working.

Even my incoming emails have been less than usual. Certainly my outgoing ones are less on the weekends lately.

I love that today is a slow, stay-around-home-and-do-what-I feel-like-doing day. That is such a rarity in my life. Usually I am going in several directions at once with many partially finished tasks all at the same time and juggling phone calls, emails, people, activities, outings and events. I can do that. I am even pretty good at all that coordination stuff, but it sure wears me out to a frazzle sometimes.

Why do I feel like I always have to give 110% of my energy to each project, event or person? Why can't just part of me, my energy or my attention be "good enough"?

Because it isn't. That's why.

I am sure you all can relate to this. Then since it is impossible to give so much of myself to every single thing that I pile up on my massive To-Do lists, I get frustrated with myself and then I feel like I have failed. I freeze and proscrastinate starting projects because I know I won't be able to do them perfectly as well as I would like to. I also sometimes feel like I have let myself or others down in the process.

Sometimes I am just so stressed out that I want to run away, far away, and hide for awhile. I fantasize about jumping into my car and just driving away somewhere. Somewhere peaceful and beautiful. Somewhere where nobody knows me and nobody expects anything from me. It would be peaceful.......for awhile. Crazy thing to fantasize about, huh? Yeah, probably.

I am really not the hermit type in general though. And I can't really jump in my car and just drive away from here in search for peace, beauty and anonymity. I have responsibilities here.

So instead of running away today, I stayed here at my home and listened to it softly rain. Felt the breezes on my skin and the let the big raindrops wet my hair as I weeded my vegetable garden and picked myself a bouquet of lovely Spring flowers to brighten my day and my heart.



I picked a bunch of sweet smelling multi-colored Sweet Williams that grow down in my lower garden near the herbs and berries. While down there I discovered that I had a slightly over-ripe artichoke (also a flower) so I brought it in to eat later as a snack. On my way back to the house I snipped a few bundles of French Lavender that grows in my herb garden right below my bedroom window. Lovely, all of them.

Flowers, especially the softly scented ones, make me happy. Flowers also remind me of my Mom, and sometimes this little girl needs to feel her Mom close to her, especially on a peaceful, rainy, cloudy day sandwiched in between weeks of frenetic chaotic activity. Sometimes I need to remember that I can't do it all or be everything to everybody all the time. Sometimes it helps to imagine my Mom telling me that everything will be OK, and then to see her smile and hear her wonderful laugh...even if it is only in my memory.




Thanks Mom. These flowers are for you too. I know how much you love them.

I can feel you with me in the garden telling the flowers to grow.






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