Inspired to start writing again

Why? Perhaps because I visited my own site the other day on a whim and suddenly missed the joy of taking pictures and posting them for the world to see along with stories and observations about my life on West Pearl. Perhaps because I clicked "next blog" and found the site of a person on a small island off the coast of Scotland and so liked her, from her writing, that I was glad.

Above is a picture taken in the east side yard of my little house. Imagine a whole yard covered with bright blue grape hyacinth. Here is another picture but taken from a distance the flowers do not show up as nicely.

And below is a picture of the crab apple tree in the front yard just about to burst entirely into bloom. You can see the carpet of blue in the background. I live in the upstairs and that nearly hidden window on the top right is my home office which looks right out into the pink!


But, guess what! It also snowed today. And it haled on Wednesday. Will there be any crab apples this year? You can see the blossoms knocked to the ground in the last picture. It is so amazing to me that the opening of the crab apple blossoms coincides with our last snowfall of the year so many times! Are there enough flowers not yet opened and not knocked down by hale? Will we have enough of a sunny day that the bees down the street can come find the flowers? We'll have to wait and see. If not... no crab apples in the fall! If there ARE crab apples I will make jelly... if not, perhaps bread.......

Latest "View from the Porch" 10-20-09

I grew up in Kansas City, in the heart of the Great Plains. Unless there was a front moving through, we had the same weather that people hundreds of miles in any direction were having. Not so Boulder or the rest of the front range! On any given day, (south to north) Colorado Springs, Denver, Idaho Springs, Boulder and Fort Collins may all be experiencing different weather (hot here/cold there; clear blue sky here/cloudy and snowing there.) My favorite thing, as an original flatlander, is to step out on my porch and see the line on the hillsides above which it is snowing and below which there is rain. This is exactly what is happening in this most recent "view from the porch." Snow up the hillside. Rain on my neighborhood.

Cherries!

There is a pie-cherry tree down the street just like the ones my grandmother used to have in her yard. It is a good year, meaning the cherry blossoms didn't get snowed on and since the tree is across the street from a hive of bees tucked down into the center of 140 year old Cottonwood trees, there were ample bees to pollinate the flowers. Now the cherries are starting to get ripe.

The cherries ripening always makes me remember the time my grandmother took me home with her on the bus. Luckily there was another little girl my age on the bus and we played happily on the twin seats as her mother and my grandmother sat behind us. She got off the bus about sunset and I promptly told my grandmother I was ready to go home now. I was shocked when she told me we were hundreds of miles away from home by now. I had been on long rides in the car before with my mother but when it was time to go home we could always just turn around and go there within minutes. That we had been driving steadily AWAY all this time shocked me!

My grandmother tried to comfort me as I cried. "Don't you want to see the cherries in the back yard?" she said, trying to coax me into cheerfulness.

I was up before dawn, out the back door, took a quick look at the cheeries and went back upstairs to wake up grandma and tell her I had seen the cherries, now I wanted to go home. I was a sad little pumpkin when I finally realized I was stuck at Grandma's house for a full week.

But she did let me eat all the cherries I wanted! And being spoiled rotten for a week was not a bad experience either!

It wasn't until I moved to this neighborhood that I realized that when the cherries ripen it is the anniversary of my week with my grandmother as a five-year-old!

Summer: The Little Boys Are At War Again!

I don't know what program this is but every year groups of little boys go to war in the pocket park across from my house. It is evidently a Boulder summer program because each group comes with teacher in tow. They troop down the sidewalk draped in capes and sometimes helmets, armed with nerf swords and bravado.

Clearly they are having a good time and there isn't a one with attention deficit disorder when it comes to sword fighting! They are all utterly focused and alive. Their shouts ring through the neighborhood.

I do sometimes wonder what their parents are thinking having their boys spend the summer practicing ancient arts of warfare and killing. But clearly the boys like it!

Tim Goes On A Diet

I promise the next time I write in this blog it won't be about Tim but I have to put in this one.

I took Tim to the vet in April. As I suspected he is overweight to the tune of about 2 pounds. The vet said I should cut back on his food. Actually, what the vet said was to mix in some canned pumpkin into his food, and Tim ate it too! Tim will eat just about anything I put in front of him. But the pumpkin didn't agree with him. So I have been trying to just cut back on feeding him so much. He gets a good serving of wet cat food at 6 am, and usually (now) a very small snack at noon, and then the other half of his wet food ration at 5:00 pm. I am beginning to wonder if Tim actually knows how to read clocks because at 5 pm on the button he is always right at my elbow. It was pretty awful the first few days but I thought we were beginning to come to terms with the kitchen door being closed once in awhile. The begging and the horror of an empty bowl was beginning to dim... but then, what should I find on my front porch today but this:


Now Tim wears bells. Two of them. And an ID tag that rattles against the bells when he walks. It has been over a year since Tim "hunted" anything. And I am afraid he may have gotten one of my "friends" today because there are a few squirrels that come to the porch for almonds. But I have to wonder... could it be that Tim decided to do something about his hunger? He brought the squirrel right up onto the porch and left it at the front door. He didn't try to eat any of it but... could it have been a message?

Look at this face and you tell me what you think!

Forget-Me-Nots

The air is sweet with the smell of damp earth and blooming flowers right now. It is a quintessential pleasure sitting outdoors in the evening in the comfortable chair under the tree in the front garden. I am, of course, bothered by the weeding I have not done and the leaves I have not raked.... but over all there are more important things.

I was working late at my computer last night when some quality of the light outside my windows caught my attention. Everything was suffused with an apricot glow. The alpine light was reflecting down from the clouds upon the earth. I didn't even grab my camera, I just ran for the front door. These moments are all too brief as the sun sets, and sets, and sets quickly.

I wait each year for the week when the Forget-Me-Nots bloom. Those tiny blue flowers tug at my heart!

Ever-Changing Views from the Porch

About a month ago
a few days later

about a week ago at dawn


a day later

today!

xxx

Happy Easter!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Adorable Tim

Make a Smilebox slideshow

A few pictures of my constant companion and friend.

Mysterious Images

The "Eyes" in the Water Glass

Taken at Sushi Tora

Here is one of those lovely mysterious things! I treated myself to dinner the other night at Sushi Tora. (I love sushi!) The base of the soy sauce bottle was just captured in the fluting of the water glass such that when I glanced down I was startled to see "eyes" looking back at me. They even seem to be moist eyes with a twinkle! I was glad I had my camera!

Night Rain in Boulder

Night Rain In Boulder

Taken from the top of the parking garage looking down on
The Boulder Bookstore and the street.

Friday, April 3, 2009 - ~8:30 pm

Snow at last!

The world is growing more and more white as the morning continues and my heart sings. We needed the moisture but deeper than that my soul relishes snow!


Here is Adorable Tim's response to the early morning cold. He faithfully gets up with me when I get up early to meditate... but his meditation is to become a "perfect zen circle of a cat!" How he tucks up so tightly I will never know!

I wrote a poem once when I was quite young that I am remembering this morning. It is about how much I love winter:

The last of winter's children

Dances on the sand

In her father's tattered clothing

Dancing with the wind

Spring is coming

I haven't written for awhile. My life has been full of new things and old ones. I am still getting used to attending a Christian Church after all these years of considering myself a Buddhist. But I have been missing 'community' and at this church, I have found welcome, tolerance for my Buddhist leanings, friendly people, ritual, music, and movie night! I watch through different eyes than I had as a child as a congregation walks through its religious life. I am looking for gold nuggets I may have overlooked in the past.

In two days I also begin a 100 day virtual Soto Zen Buddhist meditation retreat for which I have been preparing for the past two weeks - starting to sit again, getting the schedule of my life in order, starting to eat more simply and organically, buying a webcam and signing up for Skype. "WHAT?" I hear you say. "Part of getting ready for a meditation retreat involves setting up video calling?"

Yes, what a surprise! But this is how the meditation master I am going to be working with (who lives in Minnesota, and I live in Colorado) works with his students in personal meetings. Very interesting! I have my first fact-to-fact meeting on Saturday!

Lastly, it has been hard for me to be very productive in my business of late. Grief about the losses I experienced in 2008 has finally started arising to the surface but... it is good... and it is time. I just need to work with it.

It seems early... but the little flowers have started to bloom!

The Seasons Are Changing

Look here! Although it is still February, we are days away from some of the spring flowers starting to open. (In a way this is scary... it is warmer than it "should be" for this time of year.)

At the creek, the rocks are rimmed with crystals of ice.

I have found a place on Boulder Creek where I can start doing meditation every day. I have picked a beautiful spot with a large flat rock, sloping downward at the right angle and in the right direction, upon which to sit and a wonderful cascade of water in front of me. I have been accepted into a 100 day "virtual" meditation retreat under the supervision of a Soto Zen Meditation Master. This will be good! And I suspect it is going to help me focus and move forward in other parts of my life as well.

Ping Pong in the Night

Not as sulky as he looks - Tim the Cat doesn't like the flash on the camera.

I was in bed reading last night when I suddenly heard a dashing and rumbling plus a click, click, clicketty, clicketty, click, click, click. Tim the Cat was playing with one of his ping pong balls. I kept thinking that any minute he would get it stuck under some piece of furniture and the noise would be over but it kept going on and on. I finally realized he had somehow gotten a ping pong ball up, over, and INTO the bathtub.

I try to be considerate of my downstairs neighbor and I am sure a roudy game of ping pong ball, played by a thundering cat, in the bathtub, at 11 pm, is bound to be audible to someone trying to sleep downstairs so finally I got up and took the ping pong ball away from Tim. You should have seen his face peering over the rim of the tub. He looked both cute and forlorn at the same time.

I probably shouldn't talk about my cat so much, but I have to admit that he is one of my chief forms of live entertainment.

Stray Cat at Dawn

At 6:30 I was near my front door putting my shoes on when I heard an ever-so-gentle tap-tap on my front door. My hands stopped their movement of tying shoes. I thought "What in the world?" and was immediately conflicted about opening the door. Was it my downstairs neighbor for some reason? Was it someone bad who would hurt me? The soft tap-tap sounded again.

Gingerly, I opened the front door a crack and there, hanging on the screen, was a small cat. It had reached through the place on the edge of the screen that was loose and was gently pawing the curtain of clear red plastic hearts currently hanging on the door. The curtain of hearts was still gently swinging. The cat froze in place. I froze in place. And then the cat yanked its paw back through the screen, disengaged its claws, dropped to the porch and streaked off.

I stepped out onto the door mat. The cat halted at the top of the lower staircase and turned. It was so cold out, predawn, cold breeze in the darkness. I felt sorry for this cat out in the cold. "Kitty, Kitty, Kitty?" I called, wondering what in the world I would do if it came. It didn't. It delicately walked through the snow and sprayed my little pine tree and then returned to take one more good look at me from the top of the stairs before descending to the sidewalk and disappearing around the curve.

I went back into the house and shut the door. I looked down at Tim the cat, sitting in the center of the living room rug, remembering the time when he was a stray cat, so terribly skinny, and lost out in the cold. "Aren't you a lucky cat," I told him. "Is there a possibility of more breakfast?" he asked with his eyes.

As I drove out of the parking lot of the church later after meditation, two homeless men were standing behind the church in the lea out of the wind. I raised my hand to them as I passed and they raised their hands to me. One of them had his hands wrapped around a steaming paper cup of coffee.

Another of the long-time shops on Pearl Street had "Going Out Of Business" signs in its windows this morning.

Its cold in the world right now. Really cold. In the early morning, unexpected tapping on the door sounds like danger arriving at my house. I wish the recession would stay a story on television rather than standing as a "going out of business" sign in the windows of yet another familiar, neighborhood shop.

Smilebox Picture Show

Here are a few pictures I sent to my adopted neices and nephews of meditation in the morning, my weekend up in the mountains at the women's retreat, the Prayer Box I made at the retreat, and, of course Tim the Cat and his thoughts about my being gone a whole weekend!

Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Up in the Mountains Over the Weekend

I spent the weekend at First Congregation's annual women's retreat at the St. Malo conference Center in Allenspark, CO. It is just 10-15 minutes south of Rocky Mountain National Park. Ever since I first saw it I have loved the 'Chapel On The Rock' which graces the entrance to the center and which I could see, bathed in morning light, from the balcony of my room. What a magestic view!

Tim the Cat had to stay at home but he was well looked after by my twin neighbor girls across the street. They obviously spent some time playing with him (for which I am very grateful!) because his basket of ping pong balls and stuffed mice was pulled out into the center of the rug and there were balls and mice everywhere when I got home.

It is good to go on retreat now and again. I hadn't spent time laughing, crying, dancing, sharing and reflecting with other women for a long time and it was good!

Reaching one of my 100 goals in life!

When I was little my parents used to put my sister and I to bed before we were sleepy. What to do? I used to make up stories in the darkness to amuse myself. I thought, "When I grow up I am going to be a writer! I am going to publish books!" but when I shared this thought with my parents they strongly discouraged me from attempting to make my living in such a precarious way. So I became an English teacher instead... which lasted for all of one year... and now here I am a business skills trainer for small business owners. How did THAT happen?

Just today, though, I realized I made it. I DID become a published writer after all, even if I am self published and only my friends have found me (so far!) on the internet. I can't tell you how much pleasure I get from seeing these posts illustrated with photographs I have taken (mostly.)

I have often commented that I have waited for lifetimes for this generation where the tools of writing and publishing are positively at our fingertips! I am a very happy camper indeed!

World's Dirtiest Cat!

Timothy Ming, my good friend and companion, commented this morning, "I was never the one that thought being the cleanest cat in the world was a virtue. Remember that you were the one that wrote that title into the blog. I said, even that day, that I would take a dust bath as soon as I had the opportunity. You know I did!"

Good as his word, Tim the Cat DID have a dust bath yesterday... a fine day of brilliant Colorado sun and balmy temperatures. He came into the house absolutely brown on gray and I bribed him back outside where I took a spare hairbrush to him. My neighbor, Doug, was on his balcony maintaining his bicycle. A newly brushed cat will not last nearly as long as a newly cleaned and greased bicycle chain. In fact I hadn't made it back into the house before Doug burst into laughter and called me back.

There was Timothy Ming on his back in the warm dust, pleasurably wiggling back and forth. Even 24 hours hence, you can still pat him vigorously and see the dust fly!