Sucked in by Beauty Thanks to Martha Stewart & Venus

Somehow a copy of Martha Stewart's "Living" addressed to me ended up in my mailbox recently. Upon making it past the "cover turkey" surrounded by gigantic sage larger than any grown in my garden, I ended up feeling more like dying than living. Surely this wasn't the effect the sender intended.

At first as I scanned the photos, I was completely taken with a pie. It wasn't just any pie. The recipe read: Apple-Blackberry Pie with "Fall Leaves" Pate Brisee. I wanted to add a visit to Davis Cookware in Hillsboro Village to my 'to do' list in hopes of finding tiny leaf shaped cookie cutters. Yes, the top of the crust was made of beautiful fall leaves cut with a leaf cutter then the leaf veins were etched with a knife. Reading further, I discovered something called an egg wash is involved. I suspect this is not a facial moisturizer for the cook while the pie bakes. Upon reading the fine print, "a pate brisee is the pinnacle of pie-making" I realize I might truly metaphorically end up with egg on my face if I try this. The pumpkin pie with a shortbread crust ranked as 'easy' is probably where I should start.

Thanks to "Living" I want to move to one of Vermont's farms, where I can be part of the process of making cheese alongside little goats and Jersey cows. Martha's mag offers me a way to visit rather than actually have goats in the country of which I've been dreaming.

Page after page, I was sucked in by the beauty of what I saw. Rachel Lang, my astrologer friend, says I've a chart loaded with Venus meaning I love beautiful things. Martha obviously knows Venus too.

Earlier that very day while perusing a stack of childhood related odds and ends, I found some glittery pieces reminding me of how mesmerizing glitter was. I wondered if glitter still existed. Wonder no more. Glitter does more than exist. Glitter rocks. In the middle of "Living," I not only learn about a technique called "Glitter painting" but see Vivaldi and Sharkey, glitter painted portraits of Martha's cat and dog. (The photo conversion tool's available at www.marthastewart.com) I know what I'm getting Mystery and Bogeysattva for Christmas.

As Venus-filled person prone to excitability, I knew I was in trouble. To calm myself, I went to the front of the magazine where I probably should have started. Tucked between an internet and an insurance ad was a page titled 'Martha's Calendar' which included a list of things Martha does around her house. Written upon each day were two to four things I should be doing in November, things like clean out the gutters and winterize the beehives, organize the potting shed, apply bone meal to the bulbs. Just writing about it, I feel the fringes of panic. I'm not including yoga, working out and stocking the liqueur cabinet for entertaining. Yes, reading Martha's list made me want to find the liqueur cabinet, but wait I don't have one. Does this mean I have to build one?

If I'm doing all these tasks how do I have time for glittering, goats and egg washes?

A week from Friday I'm to bathe the cats! or so reads the calendar. Been there and done that on first cat. I still feel bad about the traumatizing her with the noisy hair dryer and that was twenty years ago. 'How does Vivaldi react to the dryer?' I wonder.

The only thing I had done in the prescribed first ten days of the month was dig up a few gladiola bulbs, but I hadn't even done that right. According to the calendar, the bulbs were to winter in the basement. I relocated them to a sunnier location in the soil.

The basement though was another matter. Periodically, usually when avoiding a writing project, I think of painting my basement floor. "Living" this month devotes an entire article to making one's basement livable. My armpits begin to sweat as my heart beats faster. Creating a "Haven Below" would be the ultimate of creative U-turns, possibly the final one since "Living" was making me feel more like dying.

I read on, on to feeding the birds in winter. There's Martha smiling, filling at least twenty tube feeders hanging from what appears to be the eve of a barn. I've a hard enough time ensuring the birds have food at our two bird feeders. She stands smiling, not a hair out of place, wearing snow white gloves while holding a long pole by which she removes each feeder. Around my bird feeders, the birds see me without a hair in place, often in a housecoat or holey pants and a sweatshirt sans gloves. As for the pole, the one I'm fussing with holds the feeder or is suppose to. The feeder keeps falling because clay soil is virtually impossible to sink the pole into not to mention the squirrels that try to climb the pole and the chipmunks that jump from the carport to the feeder to eat then jump down when they see me coming.

If this is a gift, the giver's intent I suspect was to make me feel good. Instead I'm reminded of the Halloween years ago when I had the impromptu idea of creating the "House of Martha Steward." I vaguely recall changing the last name to avoid a law suit and the house was really just a table with a screen and me behind it. The table held an assortment of holiday items. The mother's got roses because I thought it was Mother's Day. There were Easter eggs, a fake cake with firecrackers for the 4th of July and of course a Titan's pompom and banner (there's that cheer leader theme again). The parents loved it and the kids thought I was just plain weird. Finally I retrieved their candy from of course, a Christmas bag. The whole idea being that Martha, like so many many of us, fall prey to the commercialism of the holidays that one event bleeds into the next. My character was on the verge of a nervous breakdown or that's how the sign read.

I realize after finding the photo that I appeared to be having lots of fun. I was living like the magazine title suggests. Maybe this is part of Martha's intent, to increase beauty, joy and fun in the world.

My external world may be very different from Martha's but some part of our internal worlds aren't that far apart. Whether I'm glittering over the weekend or reminiscing about glittering days gone by, I want to be present in living rather than just existing and dying. I want to be mesmerized by glitter and fall shaped leaves atop a pie and curious as to the origins of pate brisee and how Vivaldi really feels after his cat bath next week. I want to feel the stretch as I reach to clean out my gutters and wash my windows. I want to enjoy goat cheese whether I make it to Vermont or not as well as relish talking to the birds watching as I fill the feeders housecoat and all.

I want to embrace the shift of being sucked in by beauty. Thank you, Venus. Thank you, Martha.

-Dawn!, The Good News Muse

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Embracing the Inner Puppy and Squirrel

This morning I headed out for my walk and saw coming toward me a tiny puppy. This happy, bounding bundle of energy thought nothing of the traffic at the busy intersection nearby. Fortunately the traffic stopped, I gasped and the puppy kept coming only pausing ever so briefly to check me out. I scooped it into my arms and returned it to the appreciative neighbor from whom the puppy had escaped.

Within moments, a squirrel scampered down a tree up ahead and came running down the sidewalk toward me also. I've been on a rant lately as to how we don't honor the animals, but has word gotten out? Do they know?

Upon seeing me, the squirrel unlike the dog, put on its brakes and spun around racing as fast as it's little legs would carry it back up the tree from which it came.

I smiled thinking of how we all start out as young children, like the puppy, full of enthusiasm, seldom meeting a stranger then all too often we become more like the retreating, safety seeking squirrel.

I was reminded of how I've often had two modes through life, one being when I live unrestrained with a sense of "Whoo-hoo, life is a playground filled with new and interesting ventures." Then just as life gets really exciting and I'm feeling too alive, I turn into the squirrel with a sense of "Oh, shit, life might be actually be on my side. Good things could happen and happen too fast." I like the squirrel retreat to my 'tree' as life passes by.

I want more running toward the new and exciting while also allowing for a tree to lean against not for safety but for rest and assimilation. I think that makes me the puppy and the squirrel. I honor these moments of grace offering lessons through the animals as well as the animals that live within.

What animals speak to you? What are they calling you to?

-Dawn! The Good News Muse
(Bob's working on his next story)
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

What About Bob? What About You?

If you read my Oct. 10 story ,you know who Bob is or....was. Yes, a closer look at the lonely little tractor in the raised bed reveals Bob's absence. Yesterday prior to hiking I ran out to water the last of the green beans and a handful of beets. I threw a bucket of water on the beans and gasped, "Bob?" Assuming Bob's absence was a prank, I ran inside shouting, "911 - Bob's missing in action. Help. Help." I quickly sensed this wasn't a joke played by someone I knew at least.

I couldn't go hiking. What about Bob? Jerry of course says Bob will still be wherever he is upon our return. We drove to the trail while recounting our last remembrance of Bob and wondered whether he was 'missing in action' held hostage by a squirrel or raccoon desiring food for his release or being tortured as a means to gain access to his gardening wisdom. Worse yet what if he was AWOL, rebeling against my authority. I thought we had a pretty egalitarian relationship. Did Bob feel otherwise ?

The last time Bob and I really had a heart to heart was a couple of weeks ago. The garden was dying. The tomatoes vines were brown, the watermelons I planted late were the size of oranges and obviously not going to see maturity. We had just gone through our my mum-phase. I was bringing Bob in for winter when he said, "Leave me outside. I'll put the plants to bed. Grief's hard on you." This was Bob's way of saying let me take care of this outside stuff and you take care of the 'inside' stuff. Write about what shows up inside you as your first garden enters a new phase. Bob was faithful to his part of the agreement. I would see his tiny self under the green and brown remains of strawberries, okra, peppers and beans and smile although inside I felt melancholy. I was helpless to stop the cycle of death as the magical plants that had brought me such joy while teaching me life lessons were diminishing, gone.

With Bob's sudden disappearance I was jolted into remembering that I did none of the writing to which I had agreed. Had Bob struck a deal with a critter, asking it to cart him away to teach me a lesson? Loosing Bob reminded me of how quickly I loose myself , my insides and what makes me tick, my heart. I don't even know I'm lost.

By the time, I returned from the day's hike, dark had descended. So this morning early while still in my pajamas, I went out in search of Bob. Within minutes of digging in the leaves, I spotted his bright yellow hat and smiling face beneath the leaves.

"What an adventure," Bob said. "I wanted to see how nature acrtually does it, what it's like to be dynamically involved in the onoing process of one's self being altered into new form that would not be recognized by one's old form.

"You mean composting?" I asked.

He continued, "This is what one of the Shakespearen Henry's meant when he said, 'Presume not that I am the thing that I was.' Reminds me a bit of what the cocoon and butterfly explained earlier this summer."

"Whoa! You've been reading Shakespeare and taking anthropology classes without my knowing it?" I asked half angry and half happy. "You talked with a butterfly and caterpillar....without me?! You've no idea how upset I've been thinking you were MIA."

"Whoa, Sweetheart, if we want to talk 'missing in action' look no further than someone whose mastered being MIA in much of her own life. You know, I'm not into judgment. I'm just mindfully calling it like I see it."

I know Bob's right as he continues.

"You think I've been working out here all summer? Presence is best practiced with a balance of being and doing from a space of non-judging mindfulness. Remember I am Bob, your Buddhist gardening go-to guy. As for the butterfly and catterpillar, they only came to me because they couldn't get your attention." Now that I have your attention, take me inside. It's chilly out here.

I smile, the kind of smile one feels inside and out. Yes, Bob, I will take you and your lessons inside and from that place consider 'What about Me.......?" "What about YOU?

=from Dawn!, the Good News Muse & Bob 11/09

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Costumes - The Betrayal or Portrayal of Essence

For Halloween, Jerry and I freed our Inner Cheerleaders while also lifting the quantum energetic level of the local NFL team. Within 24 hours of our 'appearance' the Titans finally had their first 'W' in the win column. (Note: Jerry with surprising ease mastered the slight, but necessary back kick required of all aspiring cheerleaders. This is in no relation to the creative, ongoing kick backs of sorts performed by investment/banking institutions ultimately assisting in the recent economic meltdown. But I digress.)

As the handful of trick or treaters made their way down our street, we cheered: "We've got candy, yes, we do. We've got candy, how about you?" or "We give you candy and we take it away." (Clap 2 times) (Hmmm, am I the only one noticing in the first cheer the word 'money' could be substuted for 'candy' by major players in the investment industry and that our government could be in turn saying: "We gave you money, now we're taking it away," I think Pres. Obama needs a Chief of Cheers to assist in these matters.)

As for Halloween, we toned it down for the wee ones out for their first venture, as they were reluctant to approach, let alone take our candy. I was happily reminded of childhood when my mother drove my siblings and me over town trick or treating. We got homemade popcorn balls from one woman and cider poured by a witch from another.

Our den floor became a mini stock exchange as we traded our loot with one another. I was as mesmerized by the colorful wrappers as the candy inside, not unlike the Wall streeters seduced by the adrenaline of quickly making vast sums of money gradually negating the ethics behind aquistions.

I recalled one Halloween in college when I drove down the interstate dressed as a clown to surprise my grandmother and help her pass out candy to kids still flocking to her street ten years after I had. And although I didn't mention it, I remembered my father's propensity for costumes, his last being a clown which I saw only in a photo at his funeral. Friends I've unintentionally traumatized prior Halloweens would say I inherited his genes in this regards.

During the evening, I found myself most curious regarding were how free the costumed me felt and how restrained those driving past on our dead-end street appeared. My long pink locks unlocked the part of me that unknowingly had bought into being invisible or seen but not heard (see prior Musing).

As for those driving-by, some stared ahead driving in haste toward their destination at dead end while others stared at us without a trace of humor, not even a nod or slight smile. One lone girl with Auburn tags, as in the college, not hair color, happily shouted, "What's going on here?" This rare drive-by support was so unexpected we hardly shook our pom poms. Were the serious, driven drivers-by unknowingly portraying who they think they must be in our society to get ahead or were their expressions conveying shock over grown ups having fun.?

Our favorite treaters were Lily! the cheerleader who inspired this trilogy of sorts and Candy Man, whose pants were striped in twizzlers, her shirt and hat in gum drops, while sporting a Hershey's kiss umbrella and a twizzler mustache....all her creation.

Although we associate Halloween with shadow, the dark, mysterious and scarey side of life, Ella and Lily's costumes conveyed their very essence, not shadow. Candy Man, aka Ella, has the sweetest, most caring heart I know and Lily! the boldest of spirits. I suspect with the parents and friends they have, their essence will not end up in their shadow to be remembered in therapy or self-help circles later in life.

So many of our individual problems (which in turn become societal) comes from gradually and unconsciously putting on the "costumes" we wear the other 364 days of the year. These are the costumes we come to believe we need for protection and status, to please others or to portray we don't need others, out of the need to be invisible or visible. These layers and labels first separate us from who we are then in turn separate us from one another.

Isn't it ironic the 'costume' I put on at a young age that I thought would keep me from feeling alone, resulted in a greater aloneness, one that led to my betraying myself and sending into my shadow a vibrant me? So often what we decide to portray often betrays who we really are in spirit and essence.

Thanks to Lily, I happened upon my essence, my cheer leader, who realizes she is not only to be seen, but heard, heard first and foremost by Me!

I wish for each of us, including those profitting from questionable practices on Wall Street, a remembering of who we fully are in our essence and a gentle laying aside of our 'costumes.' Imagine the shift that is bringing !

The Cheerleader - Part 2

What on earth was I thinking when I wrote in my prior Musing "I am Dawn!" and stated I'd awake each morning with confidence thanks to accessing my Inner Cheerleader. As so often happens with whatever I write, I'm shown within 24 hours how I don't embody the shift my website nor my writing attests to.

Yes, it's hard to admit but the last thing I feel upon waking is the excitement suggested by an exclamation point. If anything, ! is more like the ball and bat with which I feel I've been hit before morning coffee and sometimes afterward. I don't look forward to the day or my life and this is hard to admit.

On this particular morning as I slogged downstairs my coffee-radar on, my Inner Cheerleader AWOL, I heard: Give me a C, Give me an R, Give me a EATE. What do you have? CREATE.

Jerry stood in sweats spelling out the perfect cheer. I went from slogging to hugging with no trace of my grumpiness to which we're accustomed. The cheering continued throughout the day in phone messages and at lunch creating for me a very different and contagious energy.

I called a friend who's attending a series of unending interviews and not only cheered for her but suggested her husband do likewise. While walking down the street, I cheered for my neighbor Judy raking leaves from the storm drains in the street. You can't cheer for someone else or be cheered for yourself without experiencing a positive energy shift. This may not apply if your team's severely loosing in a sporting event, though quantum physicists might argue cheering even helps then.

How on earth did the Dawn who burned her name and an exclamation mark in wood go AWOL?
How did I come to forget the girl in the hairnet( a potential dreamcatcher according to my friend Laura)? Who stole her fire or did she unknowingly quit tending it?

Fifth grade, around the time of the photo and the height of my woodburning period, was the best of times followed by the harshest. I had just glimpsed confidence having won the district speech contest in 4th grade and along with two friends getting one of three roles in a 5th grade play. This was a really big deal to the girl in the hairnet whose only performances other than church choir were in front of her bedroom mirror singing duets into a hairbrush with Karen Carpenter, Cher and various artists from Soul Train and American Bandstand. (Remember "Love Train?" I loved that song.)

These two positive events were quickly followed by public and private traumas starting with peeing on myself in the outfield during recess. The only thing making this worse was the outfield was asphalt. I wanted to sink into Mother Earth unlike the puddle that didn't sink but surrounded me. Instead I pretended to be throwing up, a 5th grade attempt at distracting my peer from the pee since a fellow outfielder walked over to ensure I was okay.

I rushed by the teacher whose rule was you either 'went' before or after recess, but not during. I ran by her and vaguely remember calling my mother to come get me. The event was never spoken about at least to me that I recall. There was nothing to cheer here other than maybe the fact that I cleared the playground. (Great, now that I'm allowing myself to truly think of this, I now wonder what happened to the puddle?)

This incident was followed by a total fall apart during another speech contest as my limbs, lips and voice quaked. At the conclusion, one parent said to another, "What happened to her? She did so well last year." Finding ways to avoid public speaking became the compass guiding my life so much so that I chose the only major in college which allowed me to trade taking speech class for diction which only required we sit in circles rather than stand before an audience. (In English class, my rule was broken due to having to recite poems and give very brief talks, mine were brief and I chose to break my rule when I tried out for yes, cheerleader. Somehow I discovered that when shouting neither my voice nor body trembled. I proudly cheered before my peers who to my dismay chose my girlfriends for the squad.)

The speech and pee incidents were closely followed by having to be resuscitated at camp during a treading water contest when I not only took myself down but a fellow camper with me. These three public events don't include my private fears of death and hell. Yes, each morning around this time I began to feel relief I had not awakened in hell, the firey burning kind thanks to the preacher's Sunday sermons, yet I awoke in my personal hell. I thought I had cirrohsis of the liver as a 5th grader because I was spitting up what I now know are tonsil stones but at the time sure looked like how I imagined my liver having read of it in the World Book Encyclopedia. I cried so much and waited to die as the fire in me dimmed. The girl who wrote Dawn! came to associate her name more with mourning than morning.

This week I've wondered what it would have been like to have had an outer cheerleader during the earlier events of my Fifth Grade years. These events probably wouldn't have birthed shame and its kin if in the outfield I had heard: "It's alright. It's okay. We all have accidents. Yours was today." Or what if after the speech I had heard: "You're alright. You're okay. We all get scared. Fear works that way."

Of course, my peers and parents were all part of a culture that was cheering deficient in the ways I desired. The beliefs of those times: "Pride goes before the fall" and "Children are to be seen and not heard" did not promote a cheer-ful environment. Thanks to the environment and above situations (I didn't even go into the boyfriend chapter of that era or more aptly stated boyfriendless chapters.), I emerged like most of us, needing a positive inner and outer cheerleaders. This brings me to: I need you. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. You need me. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. It's about reciprocity.

In the prior story I concluded with accessing my inner cheerleader. We need both, to be able to cheer ourselves on internally and also accept or ask for cheers from others. We need one another. The earth needs our cheers, the Universe might like a few and the angels and guides watching over us all would probably enjoy a cheer or two.

"Go, Friends, Go. There's a story to be told. Go, Earth, Go. Lovingly unfold." Cheers to us all.

-Dawn!, The Good News Muse

I'm Dawn! (the one wearing a hairnet) Who are You?

No, this is not my Halloween costume nor the result of a sibling prank played by my younger brother or sister while gathering blackmail material for later in life. This is me at eleven, the me that had the confidence to wear a hairnet as well as pj's while posing for a photo. Can you believe I was actually posing wearing a hairnet? I can't. I look at her and wonder, 'Who on earth was this girl?'

She was the same eleven year old who upon receiving a wood burning kit for Christmas promptly burned her name Prometheus-like on a 3" X 12" piece of wood. She not only wrote her name but followed it with an exclamation point and hung the pronouncement on her bedroom door.

A few years ago, my sister upon helping my mother clean things out at home, brought me the sign. Even then I wondered who was this girl who not only wrote her name, but added the exclamation mark. I hung it over the door to my writing room and promptly forgot it. Last week, I took it from the door where it's ignored and began to ponder it and her.

The day after doing this, Lily and her mother, my friend, Alicia, walked down to visit. Actually I should write Lily! for Lily has no problem with owning who she is and stating what she needs to have happen in her life. In some cases Lily! doesn't state a thing, she just does it like happened this summer when she learned to ride her bike without assistance of the human or training wheel type. She wanted to learn so she did. My eleven year old and Lily! would have gotten along quite fine.

The day Lily came to visit, she wore her Halloween costume, a pink cheer leading outfit complete with pink pom poms. Someone earlier that day commented to Lily's mom that it would be great if we each had a cheerleader to encourage us throughout the day. This idea stayed with me long after Lily in her outfit and flip flops rode her older sister's mountain bike down the street. (Yes, she's now learning to ride an even bigger bike.)

I continued to think of having my own personal cheerleader as well as the girl who burned: Dawn! into the piece of wood that hung on her bedroom door throughout the days and nights of her childhood. I can list the many things that stole her fire, but I also know when, like Lily, I do what I know to do without concern for what others think, I feel that fire again. I feel her most when I lean into my fear and embrace adventure, whether it's in France as happened this summer or in my own home as I sit to write.

I could use a cheerleader to boost my resilience in the simplest of things. Last night as I sat
trying to determine how to use an external hard drive purchased for my computer nearly a year ago, her first cheer would have gone something like: Hit it. Hit it. Harder. Harder. (as in the computer screen) followed by:Break it. (clap, clap) Break it. (clap, clap). Once she realized I was not humored or supported, she would have cheered: You're alright. You're okay. Tomorrow is a brand new day followed by: Ask for help. (Clap 5 times.) Ask for help. (Clap 5 times.) You might have to be a sports fan to get the rhythm of the cheers.

Obviously I didn't break my computer although I didn't figure out hard drives. I did resolve to: Ask for help and either clap five times or click my heels together.

In the meantime, even when it's not Halloween, I will put on the costume of confidence, and wear it daily. I will go to sleep with it at night so I remember who I really am each morning. For I am Dawn!

Who are you! and what cheers do you want to hear from your Inner Cheerleader?

I'm Gonna Have to Face It, I'm Addicted to Mums

Bob and I have picked possibly the last beans of my inaugural gardening season. Everything but the beets, eggplants and lettuce have come to an end. Even the cherry tomatoes I wrote of
recently have met a watery demise as rains continue to fall.

Bob became my gardening go-to guy late in the growing season. We found one another in mid-August just after he had moved into a local store. There he sat on a shelf awaiting the holidays. Now he sits in my garden awaiting the next task. He's been spared the endless cycle of holiday tunes that play endlessly starting November 1st and I've gotten a gardening partner.

People complain about not being able to find 'good' help. Bob's in the garden 24/7. Always wearing the same content expression; he's reliable, steadfast and wise. When the bugs ate two of my three broccoli plants, Bob reminded me this opened space for green beans. When the cauliflower succumbed to the same bugs, he reminded that not only do I not eat cauliflower, but that space is good, just space, the empty rich void of garden soil. Bob's detached and never reactive. His motto? Don't just do something. Be here. Bob's Buddhist stance wasn't on the box alongside his tractor with the honking horn and gurgling engine.

Why Bob? Bob's derived from many musical Bob's. First there's Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame acclaimed recently for his Grammy with Nashville's Allison Krauss for "Raising Sand." We still think it should have been "Raising Crops." This Robert also co-wrote "Dirt in a Hole" which we thought might be "our" song, until we discovered it's more about a funeral than a garden. Then there's Blue's musician Robert Cray who I discovered in the very late Nineties (I'm slow). I love this Robert's song "Playing in the Dirt." Bob being a man of morals refuses to play the way the song suggests yet we still dig the song.

I should probably be embarrassed by the last Bob who was actually the first musical Robert who came to mind as Bob's namesake. This Robert made famous the 80's "Addicted to Love" - Robert Palmer, that is. Remember "You're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love." I know you're thinking, 'Dawn, you're gonna have to face it this is a really bad song from a musically lack luster era.'

Think what you must, we're proudly claiming "Addicted to Love" as our personal anthem, addicted to loving the Earth, that is.

Love, in our case, manifests in nature with plants and animals. I love nature except when an occasional hawk swoops down and grabs one of 'my' birds. With Bob's help, most days I can eventually love the hawk. It's tougher loving people. I've a hard time with hunters as evidenced with my former story, as well as politicians, tv preachers and people who think Mother Earth is their ashtray. It's not that I don't like people, but I can be in the foulest of moods and put me in the yard and my spirit rebounds.

Being someone who lives most of her life according to plans, my addiction to loving life intensifies when I synchronistically come upon real life go-to gardening guys. Sorry, Bob. While taking a slightly different route to the country last weekend, I passed a nursery advertising mums. I wasn't thinking about mums. Mums weren't on my 'to buy' list, yet I couldn't resist seeing what kind of mum one could buy when the sign read: Ten for $30. These mums would surely be Bob-sized. I'm gonna have to make amends to Bob.

I turned around and pulled into Burgess Falls Nursery where moments later Jay, the owner, was loading my trunk with mums about to bloom into the most gentle colors. These were not your usual brilliant purples and yellows for sale everywhere in Fall that eventually die and end up in the trash or compost if they're lucky. These mums were on the verge of blossoming into soothing pastels. To make it even better, they spread if their feet are kept dry with proper drainage.

Sitting on the counter, small brown bags with curious names written on the side enticed me. Inside were garlic bulbs which Jay noted would soon be ready for planting. Who could resist names like Susanville, Bogatyr, Chesnok Red or Music Pink? I drove away with garlic, directions for planting and a mum-filled trunk. Most importantly I sensed having met a kindred spirit. Spontaneous moments and meetings heighten my loving life and help me return to the flow when I don't even know I'm out of it.

Damp from the downpour that passed over during the mum spree, I wiped myself off with a towel from the floorboard. Dirt from my shoes sprinkled my face. Bob says we're here to learn from the plants. They don't complain when wet and dirty. On the contrary, they thrive. So should I.

Happily I stopped in next to see Mike at Mmkm Family Produce Market just down the road. We've only grown green beans so Mike's garden this Fall has provided us with white ones. On this particular day, I buy beans that once shelled are white with purple flecks. I walk out with a with a bag of beans, a handful of potatoes and squash for $4 and best of all the bag was biodegradable.

I wonder sometimes how long this new found love will last until I realize that's the whisper of fear in my ear. Fear says I'm fickle and will grow tired of playing in the dirt. Bob reminds me as long as I'm having fun, sowing and growing will never grow tiring.

In the meantime, as I lay to rest this years plants, next year's garden is being dreamed. Bob clears his throat at this juncture, a signal that I must confess, my dreams are coming to fruition. My order from http://www.gardners.com/ for tomato and veggie cages as well as potato bins and bean grids arrived this week.

I'm happy to report that Bob and I rose early the next day, moving in day, and welcomed twenty six new souls to their home in our garden. Yes, I made another mum run and thanks to Jay returned with fourteen more. Now Bob sings, "Dawn, you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to mums."

At days end as I put away my tools, I thought, 'If this is my last day on earth, I have done exactly as I wanted, creating home for the mum souls entrusted to me for as French poet Gerard de Nerval said, "Every flower is a soul blossoming into nature." (from the Burgess Falls Nursery website).

I had found kindred souls at the nursery in plant and human form and lest I forget, earlier this summer in Bob form. As for amends, Bob says, "The only thing needing amending is this soil. Let's learn about composting these leaves and start playing in the dirt."

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, dawn@imaginetheshift.com