Dotting Eyes

June 12, 2026 — Pat Bertram

So, artificial intelligence is supposed to run the world in the future? Good luck with that!

This comment wasn’t planned, but it just hit me as I am writing — if AI, or at least Generative AI (or as I once accidentally called it: degenerative AI) learns from people, and half the population is, by definition of average intelligence or below, then how will it ever get smarter than humans? And oh, yes, while I’m on this topic, people say that you can tell what AI has written by the M-dashes. Those are the long dashes I use in my articles all the time — eight in this piece alone, by last count — and I guarantee nothing I write is touched by anything artificial. Well, the computer — my fingers do touch that — but as for help with writing? No. Absolutely not. The point of writing is . . . well, to write. Having a voice in a machine do my writing for me would completely defeat the purpose of connecting with my own inner voice and ultimately with other human voices — not vocal voices since obviously I can’t hear people who read my work, but voice as in a person’s unique way of phrasing, unique tone, unique point of view.

But “voice” brings me back to what I came here to say.

I was listening to a clip yesterday from one of the black conservatives I occasionally pay attention to. I started doing so in order to find out what they think about being used to shore up the left’s anti-voter ID stance, and they don’t like it. They know it’s not Jim Crow-2, since their parents went through the real thing and so they know the truth of it. And they don’t like being patronized as if they were too stupid to figure out how to get an ID or how to prove their citizenship. (To be honest, I think the people I listen to are more educated, more coherent, and richer than those treating them as if they needed their hands held.)

Anyway, somewhere along the line during this two-minute clip, I lost track of what the speaker was saying because I was stunned into immobility. I simply couldn’t believe how AI translated his speech to text. He used the phrase “dot your Is and cross your Ts,” and what appeared on the screen was “Dot your eyes and cross your teeth.”

Um. Yeah. It might be artificial but it sure isn’t intelligent!

“Dotting eyes” wouldn’t necessarily be an erroneous transcription if he were talking about art, since that tiny dot in the eye of a painted face is what makes the depicted creature — animal or human — seem alive. And some people are born with teeth that come in crooked, so I suppose in some cases, it’s possible for teeth to be crossed, though I can’t really picture it. (No surprise since I am not able to visualize anything — all I ever see when I close my eyes and mentally try to call up an image is . . . black.)

But still — dotting eyes and crossing teeth? I sure hope the AI systems that run weaponry are a lot smarter than that or we are all doomed.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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True Magic

June 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I mentioned yesterday that it had suddenly struck me with amazement — again — that I was living in such a beautiful place.

And the same feeling struck me again today.

It makes sense why I feel so grateful and so blessed; I live in a truly magical place. I was out working in the yard today — overdoing it as usual — and for a change, I stopped to rest on my pretty bench because I was too tired to drag myself to a chair under the gazebo.

I sat there musing about my magic place. A few seeds, a few plants, some water, and suddenly, there it is — a magnificent yard, with views on every side. (Not suddenly, not really, but as the saying goes, nothing happens then everything happens.)

I’m not being ingenuous. When I moved here, there wasn’t much but weeds, dirt, and a rotting garage, so obviously I did a lot of work, but still, isn’t it magic? I didn’t really have anything to do with the plants sprouting from seed and then growing and having babies, and all of them showing off for me. I gave them the space and opportunity to do what they needed to do, but the rest was them. All the intelligence they needed to know what to do was in them, packed in a tiny kernel of information. I could only marvel at their cleverness at being able to do all the real work.

It’s a good thing they know how to come to life because I don’t. Putting the seeds and started plants in soil and watering what doesn’t die is about all I know how to do.

And apparently, it’s enough. Because sitting there, I saw a whole lot of beauty.

To the right of the garage is the gazebo, of course, and the raised garden, filled with petunias and a whole lot of moss rose that planted itself. There are also dozens of marigolds that decided they wanted to join the petunias and moss rose, but I am thinning those and transplanting them elsewhere.

In front of the bench where I am sitting and to the left of the garage is . . . well, all I can call it is a mini park. Toward the back are the four food plants I just put into the ground as well as a patch of wildflower seeds. Behind the bushes, the lily forest is growing so very tall. One lily towers over me! With any luck, I’ll be seeing flowers in a couple of weeks.

And peeking from behind the bushes, along the fence, are the hollyhocks that planted themselves.

True magic.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in gardening, home, life, photography. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »

My June 10 History

June 10, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I keep getting notices here on this blog about articles I posted on that same day during the previous ten years. I was going to opt out of the notifications, but somehow I never have. (Though I’m sure if those notices included my grief years, I would have opted out immediately.) It’s interesting to see where I was and what I was thinking previously on this date, and interesting, too, to see how much I’ve forgotten. Apparently, once I’ve posted something, it was out of my mind, which, come to think of it, was the point. I never purposely went back and read what I wrote, which considering how long I’ve been doing this blog, could take months, but now I peek at what shows up in my notifications.

Six years ago on June 10, I lamented my lack of a garden. What I mostly had back then was dirt, dead weeds, some newly planted lilac bushes, and a few flowering plants that were here before me. Like the trumpet vine. In previous places I lived, I tried to grow trumpet vines, hoping for a bit of color, but they never managed to thrive. But here, they do. In fact, I have a hard time keeping them in check — I find starter plants all over the place. I dig them up and plant them where they would better serve me, and though slow to grow, most are still alive.

The old vines are blooming cheerily right now, which adds even more color to the garden I never thought I’d have. I remember back then telling a neighbor that in ten years I should have a beautiful yard, and I was partly right. I do have a beautiful yard, but it only took six years to get to this point.

It’s funny, too, that in that six-year-old post I mentioned how bad the winds were, and oh, we’ve been having terrible winds! I wonder what it is about this day and winds? Well, it is southeastern Colorado, which means we almost always have winds.

In 2022, on this day, I wrote about waking up every morning amazed that I am living in such a house on a beautiful mini estate. How very strange it is that I stood outside my house just today, thinking that very same thing — how amazed I am (and so very grateful) to be living here. Perhaps, like the winds, that isn’t a coincidence since I often feel gratitude for this turn my life took, but today it truly did strike me anew how very blessed I am.

Last year, on this day, I wrote about feeling detached from the garden that five years previously I’d wished for. I just didn’t care. (I didn’t need that blog to remind me. I remember how I felt) Oh, I did the necessary work last year, but beyond that, I didn’t take many photos, seldom blogged, and just felt as if it weren’t worth the effort because the intense sun just burned everything.

Whatever struggles I had last year — both with my attitude and the garden itself — didn’t destroy anything permanently. The garden is going well this year, I’m actually enjoying doing the work, and yes, I am still appreciating my cheery trumpet vines.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, life, being me, home, gardening. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Being Snippy

June 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I took a day off to recuperate from working too long in my yard two days running, but I went to town with a friend and ended up buying more plants, mostly plants for my “farm” garden rather than my flower garden, though I did buy one dianthus to fill in a blank space in one garden.

So, of course I spent yesterday planting all those new starts, not just the dianthus, but one pumpkin, one tomato, one watermelon, one cantaloupe. Sounds silly written out like that, but I don’t eat much of any of those things so one plant each should do it. Besides, the main reason to get those particular plants is that they take up a lot of room, and I have a back section of my yard that screams for green. I want to see if those vines with their pretty flowers will fill the area as I hope. And who knows, I might get an edible treat or two out of the deal.

There are several plants, mostly the cottage pinks, that are overgrown, and I’ve just let them go. I have a really hard time gathering the ruthlessness necessary to do such hatchet jobs, so I wait until I have a lot of aggression I want to bleed out. Well, yesterday I was feeling snippy in the meaning of short-tempered and irritable, so I got out my pruning shears and, closing my ears to their silent screams, snipped away as much of those poor plants as I could. I was going to wait until they went to seed, but apparently yesterday was the day I needed to get rid of some aggression.

I’m not sure why I was so disgruntled — well, I certainly spend too much time paying attention to what’s going on in the world as if it were a thriller I was reading in real time, and that makes me worry too much about things I have no control over, and for sure I’ve been stiff and sore after working so much.

Apparently, my revenge on my poor body for giving me grief is to give it even more grief because yesterday, once again, I overdid it. With any luck (and a bit of discipline) I might manage to take it easy today, only watering my newly planted gardens and closing my eyes to the work still to be done.

One benefit of having been so ruthless yesterday is that I was able to clear out around the daisies. And oh, aren’t they glorious! I might even snip off a flower or two to liven my kitchen.

Sometimes being snippy is a good thing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in being me, gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Loyal Subscribers

June 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How do you build loyal subscribers?
View all responses

I find it interesting that most of these blog prompts have nothing to do with me, such as today’s prompt about building loyal subscribers. I have no idea how to build loyalty, have no idea if anyone has even subscribed to my blog. I do know a few friends get my blog by email, which isn’t really fair — they get to keep up with me on a daily basis, and I don’t know what’s going on with them. You’d think they’d be kind enough to reciprocate with their own blog, wouldn’t you? (I’m being facetious. If I want to know what’s going on with them, I could simply call, and I don’t, so who’s the one who isn’t being fair?)

Actually, according to WordPress, I do have some subscribers, and a few more have subscribed in the past few days, so thank you for subscribing!

As for building loyalty — apparently, somewhere along the line I have done so since I see many of the same names in comments and “likes,” but as I’ve mentioned before, I have no idea why anyone reads what I write, though I do appreciate everyone who does. It makes blogging seem so much less like throwing a tiny penlight out into the great darkness of the unknown and more like connecting with friends.

There are some people who have been with me almost from the beginning — starting from the time I wrote about writing, then tumbling into the whole morass of grief with me, and still showing up now that my posts range from stream of consciousness to gardening. Truly, hands across the nations! (Did I mention how grateful I am for you? Well, it bears repeating.)

I might not know how to purposely build a following, but I know how not to build subscribers by the millions — don’t be controversial. Almost all people who garner those sorts of numbers and that sort of loyalty do so by talking about things that gets people emotional, and I don’t want to do that. I know how a lot of my readers think, and I’d just as soon not get into discussions that either get my ire up or theirs. (And I don’t like to have to think of tactful ways of saying I disagree, so I don’t.)

Another way not to build loyal subscribers is to not show a bias because bias automatically gives people a connection to you. It’s almost impossible not to show a bias, and I’m sure mine shows occasionally, though my bias tends to be for irony and intelligence and truth-seeking rather than for any movement or ideology. And I have a definite bias against hypocrisy, emotion that passes as fact, and regimentation of thought. I spent most of my life around people who loved to force people to think their way, so I became adept at changing midstream partly to keep the peace and partly because I didn’t care enough either way to argue the point.

But then, can anyone tell if they are really bias-free? I’m not sure. It seems ingrained so that a biased person acts as if their bias is the truth rather than simply their way of seeing the truth. Case in point: one popular quasi news show has been bleeding viewers because a lot of people don’t like its far-left liberal slant, and all the journalists on the show profess to have no idea there is a slant — they thought they were being impartial.

Seems like a good idea for me to keep keeping away from controversial topics — that way I can keep my bias to myself. And I can keep the readers I have rather than trying to grow a larger subscriber’s list, which I don’t know how to do anyway.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Overdone

June 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Every year I tell myself I won’t overdo the work in my yard. Last year, I wasn’t all that interested in the garden, so I seldom worked too hard, but this year, I’m back to my old tricks. Because I tend to be goal-oriented and because unfinished tasks irk me, it’s hard to do just part of the work and let the rest go for another day. A couple of days ago, I cleared out a patch of the spent larkspur to create a space for some wildflower seeds I’d been gifted. (Since the giftee is coming to visit in a few months, I thought I should at least make an effort at growing the seeds.)

I did overdo, but I got the job done.

If that was all I was going to do for a while, I would have been fine, but then yesterday I decided to start clearing out the tulip gardens. Despite what the photo accompanying this post shows, the tulips are long gone — in fact, all that was left were the half-rotted leaves. After the tulips came the larkspur. (I was going to post the photo of the larkspur in full bloom, but I’m getting a bit leery of posting photos of my house, even though I’ve done so before.) And then the larkspur died off for the season.

So, yesterday, I started to clear out those two semi-circular beds, one on either side of the ramp. I figured to do a little and then a little more another day, but I started on one side, and then, determined to finish, did the other side. Yikes! Talk about overdoing! Although those garden areas look small, they loom large when one has to do the work. (Each semi-circle is about 15 ft by 5, so that isn’t all that small.)

After I cleared, hoed, raked, I planted dwarf zinnia seeds. So now it’s just a matter of watering them and keeping my fingers crossed.

I’m rather stiff today, totally overdone to be honest, so for sure I am going to take it easy. And as for the rest of the after-spring clean-up? I’ll take it nice and slow.

At least, that’s the plan. Who knows what I will actually end up doing, though chances are, as usual, I will overdo.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in being me, gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Note to Self

June 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Note to self: Do not wear a fuzzy sweater when going out to walk around the yard.

Actually, it wasn’t the plush sweater that was the issue; it’s what I did once outside that instigated this note.

I was taking my daily stroll around my garden just to see what’s new, and I came across a couple of hollyhock seedlings in one of my daylily patches. I always have a hard time getting rid of desirable plants, misplaced though they might be, because these volunteers are often sturdier and easier to take care of than the ones I purposely planted. I also figure that anything wanting to live that badly deserves a chance. But hollyhocks in my daylilies? Nope, sorry. Because of their size and the thickness of their stalks, hollyhocks can take over an area, which wouldn’t be so bad, but since they are biennials, living for a year or two and then dying, I would eventually end up with neither hollyhocks nor daylilies.

So, much as it pained me, I dug up those hollyhocks. (I tried to simply pick them as if they were weeds, but the thick roots were already five or six inches deep.) Since I was already calf-deep in that garden plot, I stayed and pulled up a tub’s worth of dead larkspur, creeping Charlie, a couple of leafy spurge plants, and a whole lot of foxtail grasses that had gone to seed. Now those scraggly invaded daylilies have a chance.

I did temporarily leave a couple of other hollyhock babies since I’m not sure if they will be troubling any nearby plants. The New England asters in the area never do well, so perhaps it would be a good time to replant them.

Or not. I’ll have to wait to see how I feel when it comes time to do the larkspur cleanup in that area.

All that was great. No problem. (Surprisingly so since I’d slipped into a pair of sandals to go outside for what was supposed to be a brief gander at the yard — not the best footwear for a sustained bit of work.) I didn’t discover the real issue until I got inside and found my poor sweater covered in long barbed grass seeds that had managed to imbed themselves into the fabric. So, I had to spend as much time cleaning up the garment as I did cleaning up the garden.

Such is the life of a spontaneous gardener!

But still, it would behoove me to pay attention to what I wear outside or else pay attention to what I do outside when I am wearing whatever it is I am wearing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 9 Comments »

Recommended Tags

June 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram

In yesterday’s blog post, I wrote about gardening being A Strange Avocation, and I explained the difference in the behavior of flowers between this year and previous years. The tags I used for the post are gardening, home, life, bees and flowers, bees in a garden, larkspur, lily trees, purple echinacea, purple echinacea turned pink, yarrow. All garden related and directly related to the article I posted.

WordPress, the platform that hosts this blog, has an AI tool that suggests various tags for posts. In case you don’t know, tags are words or phrases that bloggers use to help people find their articles. For example, broad tags such as “gardening,” don’t do much to drive people to a blog post since they are too general. If someone were to Google “gardening,” they’d get millions upon millions of hits, and the chance of their finding any particular article are close to nil. Specific tags are best, or so they say, because the chances of someone stumbling upon your immortal words are a lot better. (I was being facetious about the “immortal words,” making fun of the fact that so few of our blog posts say anything of importance, and yet, in the electronic age, everyone’s words, no matter how puerile, truly are immortal.)

You will never in a million years guess the words that the all-seeing, all-knowing AI suggested for that gardening post, so I’ll just list them for you: “Auto immune disease, breastfeeding, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, IBD.” How is that even possible? I’ve gone over and over what I wrote yesterday, and I cannot see anything that could possibly have generated such a wildly inappropriate group of words.

I know artificial intelligence is supposed to be a great thing, and it might be for other people, but I’m not that impressed. From what I have seen, generative AI in particular is not any more intelligent than most humans seem to be. (I slipped and called it degenerative AI before I corrected myself, but I like that term!) It also has huge biases, especially political ones, which makes sense, I suppose, since the vast majority of news sources and sites like Wikipedia are liberal, and generative AI is only as smart as its input. It would be nice to be able to use Google’s AI generated summaries for a quick perusal of any given topic, but I can’t rely on its answers because it makes mistakes that I know are mistakes. It doesn’t always understand the question, either. I wanted to check out “immortal words” to make sure I wasn’t making up the phrase, and all the AI would tell me is what immortal meant. I also wanted a quick definition for “tags,” and what I got was a whole lot of information about where to buy paper tags with strings. (I’ve noticed more often that search engines seem to be geared to products first, so if I want to know the definition of something, and it happens to be the name of a musical group or a brand name or whatever, that is what shows up, not the more generic term that I was looking for.)

I suppose, in Pollyanna-style, I should be glad that I didn’t need the suggested tags. Glad I don’t know enough about those medical issues from a personal angle to write about them. But still . . . utterly bizarre.

Actually, I’m not one to talk about intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Earlier, I was doing a puzzle, and I needed an eight-letter word beginning with L for a flower. And all I could think of was lavender. Lavender? Really? When I’d spent hours in the morning clearing away larkspur? When I’ve written post after post mentioning larkspur?

Oh, well, such is life. My life, anyway.

PS: The recommended tags for this post are Project Life, Heidi Swapp, San Diego Comic Con, Becky Higgins, Studio Calico. I don’t even know what most of that is!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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A Strange Avocation

June 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Gardening is certainly a strange avocation. What has happened year after year isn’t guaranteed to happen again this year, and what has never happened isn’t guaranteed to continue never happening.

This year, a few years after the seeds had been planted, hollyhocks suddenly decided to grow. Why? I don’t know. Snapdragons survived the winter intact, and at a time when they should just be getting started for the season, they are already finished blooming. The moss rose and marigolds seeded themselves as they sometimes do, but this year, even though I thinned them dramatically, they are still coming in so strong that I’ll have a jungle, especially considering that I’d already put in petunias. The poppies are a no show — none of the red corn poppies came back and only a single California poppy put in an appearance. Blanket flower is one of those plants that are supposedly impossible to get rid of, but one of my blanket flowers decided to get rid of itself. As in previous years, I’ve been blessed with an abundance of larkspur, but most are not going to seed the way they should. Also, a swath of them are lying flat, as if some animal used them for a wallow. Some other plants were flattened by the wind, but the larkspur are in a protected area, so who knows what’s going on.

Some things are going along as they should be — the lily tree garden is taller than ever and is filling in with offspring plants, though the flowers are budding a month early. The daylilies also seem to be spreading nicely, but oddly, one of the plants already had a flower, also a month early. The purple magnus echinacea are growing extremely well, but the flowers are now pink — some bright pink, some pale pink. (As soon as I’ve cleaned up my garden areas to ready them for summer, I might have to see where I can move some of them. It’s truly great having a ready source of transplantable plants, especially ones that do so well around here, and pink is always a cheery color.)

The yarrow was another plant that seemed to have been used as a wallow. It’s possible it’s been getting too much water, though it’s hard to believe that anything around here gets too much moisture. And anyway, I’ve been treating it the way I’ve always done. Still, this might be another plant that needs to be moved.

As you can see, in a garden, there’s always something different. The larkspur surprised me — I don’t know why they aren’t going to seed, but luckily I’ve saved seeds from previous years to make up for the lack. And, since I don’t have to wait for the seeds to mature to pull up the dead stalks, I can go ahead and plant other flowers now instead of in July as I normally have to, which is great. It’s hard to get anything to grow from seed in July around here — the ground dries out too fast.

I almost forgot to mention the bees! There are way more this year than normal. Some days my yard is buzzing from the sound of dozens of big black and yellow fuzzy bumblebees feasting on the larkspur. I’m hoping they’ll like other plants as well so they will stick around for a while. There’s something so pleasant and right-with-the-world to have bees in a garden.

All this and summer isn’t even here. More changes from previous years are on the way, I’m sure. But it’s all good. It’s a garden, after all.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Minimalism

June 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in minimalism?
View all responses

I’m not sure I believe in minimalism. I mean, I know it’s a “thing,” so I believe in its reality. I just don’t know how important it is as a universal lifestyle. Nor do I think it’s something I want to believe in for myself. Minimalism, by definition, is a philosophy centered on living intentionally with only what is essential. Sounds bleak to me. Not to take part in the abundance of today’s world? Not to celebrate small treats and treasures of the day?

Yep. Sounds bleak.

For artists and art lovers, minimalism is about simple-seeming artworks that the artist wants appreciated for the shapes and materials used rather than for some sort of narrative. Minimalism nowadays, though, generally refers to the way one lives. I imagine what is essential to a minimalist lifestyle depends on the person. I bet a lot of minimalists have more luxury items than I do — televisions, streaming services, fancy bathrooms, whatever. Of course, most people don’t consider those things luxury items, but a lot of what we take for granted truly is luxury — running water in the house, an “inhouse” rather than an outhouse, space to move around your home without being elbowed by others, heating systems, cooling systems, clothes washers and dishwashers. For thousands of years, these would have been considered unimaginable luxuries. Anything beyond these “basics” would have been utter opulence.

Hmm. I think I’m getting away from my premise. Or perhaps not. A true minimalist would be living in the woods, without any of these trappings of civilization, so I tend to think what the minimalists of today are really looking for is to own their possessions, not to be owned by them. Having a lot of things can weigh one down. Having to take care of a lot of things can take up time better spent on other things such as new experiences.

It’s funny to think how after Jeff died, I got rid of about half of all we owned together as well as all he owned by himself except for a small box of things I promised to keep plus a few items I couldn’t get rid of. Then, after my father died, I got rid of about half of what was left, just enough to fit in a single storage unit. My goal was to eventually get rid of everything and just live with what fit in my car. I liked the idea of not owning anything, mostly, I think, because I didn’t how I was going to live on my minimal income and I didn’t want to keep paying to store my personal effects.

Long before I could get rid of everything in my storage unit, I had the great good fortune to buy a house, which ended that minimally minimalist aspiration. So then I started in a time of “upsizing.” Besides my vintage car, I now own a house and a yard and a garage and furniture and appliances and tools and oh, so very many things. (A lot of the furnishings and such came from other people downsizing, so I suppose it evens out in the end.)

A few weeks ago, I responded to another blog prompt about Minimalist Living and mentioned that to a great extent, I do live a minimalist lifestyle, but as I said, I don’t call it that. I call it not buying things I didn’t need. I call it living debt-free, not buying anything I can’t afford right now. I call it using things up and not wasting anything.

Every once in a while, I think about owning all this stuff. Not worrying about it; just thinking what it means. My house, after all, couldn’t fit in a storage unit if it would ever come to that. But part of my “minimalism” feeling is realizing I won’t have to dispose of anything I own. With luck, I’ll be here until my end, and then it will be someone else who has the headache of figuring out what to do with it all.

Meantime, I live quietly, frugally (though frugal connotes a sense of deprivation, I don’t deprive myself of anything I want; I simply don’t want a whole lot).

So does this mean I believe in minimalism after all? No. I don’t believe in any movement. I was living small before there was such as thing as minimalism. I don’t need a name (or permission!) to live the way I am living.

To be honest, if you saw my house and my yard, minimalism would never enter your mind. You’d see (as people always tell me they see) comfort, coziness, cleanness. And lushness!! A fully modernized house with old-fashioned touches and set in a gorgeous yard is definitely not minimalist.

It is utter luxury.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 11 Comments »
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