IT'S SUMMER, LET'S FORAGE

 

Through the Glass

It's so hot. Every summer I want small ways to live well.  Don't you?  Mr. Wiggles is stretched out on the cool floor by my side.  Our 15-year-old Maltipoo has a collapsing trachea, and with the vet we are monitoring his quality of life.  I try not to think about it.  He has only virtues.  I am his favorite and someday I will miss his devotion. If you love a dog, you know. 

So, yes, in this heat and political climate, we need small ways to live well.  Can you think of some?  How about starting in the morning, rising when the air is still cool, letting the dog out and watering the garden?  Letting the water wash away all the anxieties that accumulate during the night.    

From our well, water spurts on my feet and arms, dripping from the hose, soaking the earth beneath the chips around the plants.  Purple salvia, marigolds, impatiens, shiny begonias, red geraniums and a yellow-tipped ground cover that grows wild among the mosses.  Periwinkle blue balloon flowers and lemon verbena. Lantana in pink and orange.  Blue hydrangea that waits for me.  A wilting riot that needs my daily help to stand upright.  Even my forsythia need water this summer, deep-rooted as they are.  My garden is a modest creation, nestled by the house to avoid the foraging deer.  We saw a mama and her fawn just steps from the patio yesterday.  My husband jerry-rigged chairs to act as scarecrows.

Creating something may be the best small way to live well.  I read an article, "Foraging for Life" by Amy Dufault in a lovely journal called Taproot.  She wrote, "I think that our making marks a place in our lives, that the things we make by hand are stepping-stones to some greater goodness inside us."  Making releases feel-good chemicals in our brains, like a brain vitamin. I can't make much, can't bake, and my knitting can be a frustration rather than a source of serotonin. But hands in the dirt, or at my craft table with scissors, glue and glitter; taking photos for this blog, journalling or here typing away--those are creative dopamine times for me.  

We use the word Practice for yoga and meditation.  We should use it for everything we do. Why not, "I have a cooking practice" or "I have a tennis practice?"  I definitely have a writing practice, one word, one do-over at-a-time.  And with the percentage of plants that I lose to drought, deer and squirrels, gardening too is a practice. 

This article says that "making becomes a foraging of the self as much as the production of something physical."  Don't you like that idea?  We find ourselves everywhere, over and over.  The self that lives this retirement life is not the working self I used to be.  I never found her collage-journaling. blogging or gardening.  Your married self is not your single self, your parenting self is not your child-free self, your older self is not your younger. 

All these selves deserve small ways to live well.  Dufault says that our selves call to us, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes louder.  And that every call is "another bout with identification, the self crossing from country to country."

We love summer.  Most of us don't even mind the heat that much. We cope. Pools and lakes and cold drinks, vacations, cold suppers, tank tops and bare feet, air-conditioning, indoor and outdoor games, hair piled up or shorn.  We look forward to this season all winter.  Let's find ourselves and forage for small things to make this a wonderful time.   

                                                      Nina Naomi