Growing

June 18, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is one way you have grown this year?
View all responses

One way I have grown this year? Older. I’ve grown older. I don’t really feel any older than I did a year ago, but there is one indication of that growth: some things don’t heal as fast as they once did. Well, one thing — sinus congestion. So far, I’ve tried just about every possibility, both medical and natural, and still, I have that sinus pressure and post-nasal drip. I’m waiting it out now, hoping it will cure itself. It did once upon a time — when I was young, I had allergies so bad I was almost comatose, but for some reason, I got over it. Maybe I will again.

Maybe not.

That acceptance of what life deals out is part of growth, I suppose, though such acceptance isn’t a recent growth experience for me — it came from years of grief over my various losses and all the living that followed.

I’m sure this blog prompt is about personal growth, though I tend to think I’ve grown up as much as I am going to get. I’m not even sure I want to develop further. At this point, will any sort of growth make my life better? I suppose it’s possible, but I also suppose it’s possible that a period of de-growth will be coming as I continue to age. I hope not — I appreciate the lessons I’ve learned in life, and I hang on to whatever wisdom I gleaned from them. I’d hate to think I’d forget those lessons and have to learn them again. It was painful enough the first time!

Personal growth supposedly contributes to fulfillment, self-awareness, mindfulness, well-being and happiness, which I’m all for when it comes to younger people, and was all for when I was young. But me now? I’m as self-aware as I want to be (any more awareness would turn me too far inward); I try to be mindful whatever I am doing for safety’s sake if nothing else; I have as much fulfillment as I can handle; and my sense of well-being is doing as well as can be expected. Does that sound smug? I don’t mean to be. I am grateful for where I am in life.

Gratitude. Acceptance. Mindfulness. Those are all lessons I’ve learned, things I practice. That seems enough. For now, anyway.

As it is, the only growth I celebrate is what is in my garden. That sort of growth I can get behind!

***

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

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Talking to My Twenty-year-old Self

June 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
View all responses

Hypothetical questions like this make me think — not about the question I’m supposed to blog about, but the mechanics of it.

Truly, assuming there was something I wished I could tell my twenty-year old self, how would that work?

At first, I thought of leaving a message somewhere for me to find when I reached this age, but then I realized that’s the reverse of the question. Besides, there’s nothing my twenty-year old self could say to me today that would make any difference. If there was something that was important enough for that younger version of me to want forwarded into the future, it’s already been done. First, there is a little thing called a memory. Second, even if I don’t recall the important thing itself, it would be written in my very life — everything that ever happened to me stemmed from the thoughts of that year (and every year) so any message would be redundant.

As for the logistics of getting a message back to that younger self — reverse email? But email hadn’t been invented back then. That twenty-year old self would have to wait several more decades to receive the message, and by then, she’d be almost as old as I am now. If not that, then what? Time travel? Okay, so assume I went back in time, how would I ever convince that person I was her? I’m sure she’d think I was a relation, perhaps a great-aunt or some such because I did at one time bear a distinct resemblance to my mother.

I remember when I was young not ever actually thinking that old people were forever old, but I somehow presumed it. I knew people grew older, but it just seemed to me, in that accepting way of youth, that they were old, and had always been, just as I was young, and would always be. It makes sense, I suppose — when you’re young, you can see the changes in yourself as you graduate to a new grade every year, but the older folks always looked the same. I don’t know when it struck me that old folks had once been young, that they’d lived a whole life before getting old, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen until later in my twenties or even in my thirties. (I knew people aged, of course, but old age seemed so alien to my young self that I never made the connection.)

So there my young self would be, seeing this old woman, and no way would my twenty-year old self ever believe that I was this old. Oddly, I doubt that my current self would even recognize that young self. Odder still, now that I’m old, I feel as if I’ve always been old, as if I’d never been young. I mean, I know I was, but . . . who can remember that far back? Or care? It is easier just to accept what I am today and go with that feeling rather than give credence to a past.

Which means, I suppose, that even if I could go back and tell my twenty-year old self something, there’s nothing I would wish to tell her.

As for the photo accompanying this article, I realize it’s not my twenty-year old self, but nowadays, one young age is as remote as the other.

***

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

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Eight Years Ago

June 16, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I hadn’t realized it until my blog reminded me, but my Pacific Crest Trail backpacking trip was eight years ago. Actually, the blog detailing the trip was written exactly eight years ago today, so I can only presume that the trip was a day or two before that, but still, it’s close enough.

It’s funny that eight years doesn’t seem that long ago. When I’ve mentioned hiking and backpacking, people nod at me, thinking it was when I was young, and I might have been younger eight years ago, but I was still climbing up in years while I was climbing up those hills.

What surprised me about the blog post, No Resfeber for the Weary, was the reminder that I took the overnight hiking trip in June. In the desert. What was I thinking? I also remember that I was just getting over a cold, so again, what was I thinking?

I do remember, come to think of it. I was thinking that if I didn’t do the backpacking trip then, I never would. And I was mentally ready.

Apparently, despite my hiking with a filled backpack for months before that in preparation, I wasn’t really physically prepared. Since I’d planned to be gone for several nights, I needed to carry one heck of a lot of water because there was no water up in those hills. I wish I could have been out longer than that one night — it really was incredible being by myself on that isolated trail, camping alone out in the middle of nowhere — but physically, I gave out. I’d heard of “hitting the wall,” but had never felt it. And then I did. Hit the wall, I mean. I was lucky I didn’t tip over and fall down a mountainside. Oddly, I wasn’t sore. Just unable to move.

My one regret is that I was never able to do a long backpacking trip, but I am very glad I managed to do that particular overnight trip. Hiking, of course, wasn’t anything new, nor was camping, but the combination of the two was what made it an unforgettable experience.

I was right about that being my only chance. Exactly one month later, my homeless brother died, which in a roundabout way changed my life. And now here I am, a thousand miles away from where I hiked that day, living in my own house, tending my garden, and trying to hold back the years still creeping up on me.

After Jeff died, I was determined to live despite the agony and angst of grief. I didn’t want to waste the years of freedom he gave me (his dying freed me from further care and I’ve always been cognizant of that sacrifice, involuntarily though it might have been). And looking back, not just at the past eight years, but the eight years before that, I see how much I have done. I bet he’d have been glad I experienced life in the way that I did — he felt bad that the constraints of his illness stole my spontaneity from me, and I made sure that I got it back so he wouldn’t have to feel bad. (Odd how that worked — he was gone and it wouldn’t have mattered to him, but it mattered to me.)

I’ve lost that spontaneity again, at least mostly. I’m certainly not going on any backpacking trips (though I still have all the equipment, just in case), but then, I have nothing left to prove to me or to anyone. Nothing left to make up for, either.

Still, I do sometimes dream of a long trail hike, and I wonder . . .

***

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

Posted in Adventure, dealing with old age, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Miniscule

June 15, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve always prided myself on my vocabulary, a vocabulary gleaned from my vast reading over the years. This vocabulary doesn’t translate to speaking because many words I know and know how to use I don’t know how to pronounce, and I’m leery of using such words ever since I was made fun of at a young age for mispronouncing “macabre.” At the time, I was being driven home by the father of the children I’d been babysitting, and for some reason I used the word, pronouncing it as “mackaber.” I still remember his laughter. So, since I’ve never been able to handle being made fun of, I only use words that everyone else does, though I don’t hesitate to use any word I wish in my writing, confident that my spelling is correct.

Well, I was confident until yesterday. I was writing something, I don’t even remember where or what, and I used the word “miniscule,” which is how I’ve always seen the word written. Whatever spell check that particular site was using flagged it as wrong, and said the word was “minuscule.”

Not believing the program since I’d never seen that spelling and since neither MSWord nor my blog has ever flagged the word, I looked it up online, and sure enough, the word is “minuscule.” How is it that I have lived all these decades and not known that? It’s also pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. I did not know that either.

Further reading tells the story. “Minuscule” used to refer to lower case letters (the minus coming from Latin meaning less) as opposed to “majuscule,” referring to uppercase letters. It seems to me that since “minuscule” refers to something being simply lesser, rather than something very tiny, “miniscule” (pronounced with its emphasis on the first syllable) should be a word in its own right.

And it’s getting there. Although “miniscule” is still considered a typo by purists (which I thought I was but apparently am not), the correct spelling is “minuscule.”

Except when it’s not. “Miniscule” has been used since 1871, though it wasn’t until the 1940s that it became an accepted variation that wasn’t always flagged as a typo. My print dictionary includes “miniscule,” and mentioned that it’s a variation of “minuscule.” So whew! Maybe I’m not as far off as I thought I was.

So even though it may or may not be a full-fledged word, I will continue using “miniscule.” It sounds like what it should mean: something vanishingly small.

It is funny, though, that a word such as minuscule/miniscule is only slowly evolving, but other words are almost instantaneously accepted, like my most unfavorite word, “veggie.”

Oh, well. I learned something, which is always a good thing, even if it did deflate my already under-inflated ego.

***

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

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Paint and Palate

June 14, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes I find myself amusing. Not often because . . . well, because I’m not really amusing, and anyway, it’s hard to be amusing by yourself. But yesterday was different.

I went to a fundraiser with a friend. I’d been told about the event by the woman in charge, and I thought about going, but that’s as far as it went. It’s hard at times to break through the wall of inertia that seems to descend upon me when I spend too much time alone, to throw the thought of doing something out ahead me and following it, which is why I seldom do anything unless someone actually comes and gets me. So, when a friend said she was going and asked if I wanted to go with her, I jumped on the chance. Inertia overcome!

The fundraiser was a Paint and Palate event. (Oh, funny! I just got the pun: Palate? Palette? Cute.) The goal was to have fun, paint, nibble on charcuterie, and help support a local school activity. I’d done such an event years ago where an artist had us paint a moon-lit scene while she showed us every step of the way. I could do that; I have no real artistic ability, the kind where you paint what you see, either in your mind or in a photo, but for that one day it was fun pretending to be an artist.

This event wasn’t like that. A canvas, palette, paint and brushes were supplied, as well as photos of possibilities, but the decision of what to paint and how to paint it was up to us.

“I can’t do that,” I told my friend. “All I know how to do is paint by number.”

Those words gave me an idea that cracked me up. Paint by number! Or paint numbers. Sort of like the opposite of a paint-by-number kit where you paint over the number. Well, I painted the numbers over the paint.

Yep, sometimes I amuse myself.

More than that, since my painting didn’t take all that long, I had plenty of time to nibble on the lovely snacks provided — watermelon, kiwi, cheese, crackers, salami, cookies — while others painted more realistic scenes. A lot of talent in that room! Luckily for me, my talent for cleverness — sort of — gave me a chance to participate without feeling too out of place.

I really liked that blank canvas. Maybe someday I’ll get some for myself just to play with. Or even better, the next time one of these events is scheduled, I should just go. As long as someone comes and gets me.

***

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

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Creating Wealth

June 13, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I read something interesting the other day. The writer claimed that the default setting of humans is poverty. Which is true when you think of it. For as far back in history as you can research or imagine, humans lived in poverty so vast that even the poorest person today is wealthy by comparison. People today seem to think that the hunter-gatherer culture was a myth, just a morality tale to make a point about being grateful for what we have. But that’s the way humans lived for tens of thousands of years. Even in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance years, where learning and the building arts were at a highpoint, most people lived in poverty. Not only was wealth in short supply, what there was of it remained in the hands of a very few, and even those folks — kings and other nobles — weren’t wealthy by today’s standards.

What is truly remarkable about our current life is that there is any wealth at all. Even more remarkable is that the overall wealth of the world is growing. So are opportunities to find your own source of wealth. Of course, most people don’t count wealth as I do — a warm place to live, a vehicle, appliances and all sorts of other labor saving-devices, food to buy in a grocery store rather than having the backbreaking job of growing it. There are also parks — local, state, national — to play in, and such open spaces had once been reserved for royal use only.

In today’s world, there are also all sorts of programs for people who either can’t or don’t want to work (and there are plenty of able-bodied people who simply prefer to sit around watching television six hours a day; this isn’t a guess — they make videos bragging about it). There are way too many homeless, though the money that was geared for those people seldom reached them and in fact was sometimes stolen and used by the administrators of such funds to buy multiple homes for themselves. And, too, a lot of homeless do cling to a life of addiction.

But for all that, we are generally living in a time of vast wealth — wealth that was created by human labor. (Except of course, for those who preferred to do such things as crash the currencies of other countries rather than come by their wealth honestly.) Human labor today is still creating wealth. Pulling assets from the earth, making things, selling those things, using that money to make other things and selling those other things and around and around it goes, with more wealth created every day. Working wealth — the wealth that is contained in on-going business concerns — is what keeps the world going. If there were no people creating more wealth, we’d all be scrambling for the bits that were left, until finally, the world would run down and we’d be back where we started — in abject poverty but with the memory of when we had it so good.

There is a growing hatred for the working wealth creators because people say that no one deserves the kind of wealth that some entrepreneurs have managed to accumulate (though they say nothing about the non-working billionaires who are funding the insurrections in this country), but the truth is, the wealth of the working rich is in their businesses. They do not have cash sitting in a bank. Very few of the working wealth creators have cash on hand. Their money goes into their businesses, which creates more wealth by creating more jobs, more products, even a higher standard to strive for.

Although the working wealthy are using their wealth to create more wealth for everyone, too many people think it needs to be stolen from them and given to those who don’t have the ability to create wealth. The problem is, if these working wealthy were to pay the vast sums in taxes that people think they need to pay, the wealthy would have to sell off large chunks of their businesses, which means they would lose control of their own companies, which means there would be a dearth of working capital, which means less aggregate wealth in the world.

With their money always in use, many (maybe even most) people who own high-performing businesses, borrow money to pay their employees because they are cash poor. Cash in constant circulation creates more wealth, more jobs, more . . . possibilities.

Humans are the ones who have created the wealth in the world today. As far as I know, dollars didn’t spew out with the big bang or on creation day or however the world came into being. Wealth came from human labor.

There used to be a time when people would hear of someone getting super rich and would think, “I can do that. Become rich. Maybe. Someday.” Now people see the wealth that’s created and they think, “They need to take his wealth away from him so I can get me some of that.”

Wealth isn’t a matter of everyone having the same amount of money because if it were, then there would be no money. If you take from the “haves” and give to “have less,” then why would anyone do anything to create wealth just to have it taken from them? They wouldn’t.  Which would leave everyone sinking back into the default mode of poverty. Besides, if all the billionaires in the USA — supposedly there’s fewer than 1,000 of them — were taxed 100%, their taxes would fund the government for less than two years, so it’s much better to let them keep creating wealth.

People complain about loopholes that the wealthy businesses use to bring their taxes down, so the answer is not to take even more of their money but to lobby to close the loopholes, assuming those are loopholes and not just a way for the money to keep working. But for the most part, the taxes the wealthy pay are dependent on many things, so one year a fellow can pay 11 billion and the next year nothing. And even if the companies end up not paying taxes, the owners who take a salary and all the people they have working for them pay taxes, and generally a lot of taxes, because many of them become very high earners, so the aggregate taxes paid ends up being significant.

Whether or not the working wealthy “deserve” the money they make, is almost beside the point. Nowadays, I’d prefer to leave wealth in the hands of those who created it and who are continuing to create it. If you took it from them in the form of punitive taxes, then it would disappear into the same grifters’ hands where so much of the working people’s taxes are ending up. Why people are so accepting of that money being stolen, I have no idea, but throwing more money into a grifters pool does no one any good.

Either way, it doesn’t matter since the money is not going to end up in our pockets, neither mine nor yours.

***

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

Posted in being me, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 7 Comments »

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

 

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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

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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 »
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