the present, gifted

This afternoon in the pouring rain I put on my raincoat and welly boots and went out to dig. I had this luxury because my kind dh took everyone swimming. A blissful two hours to do what ever I pleased. I surfed, I cried over something pretty lovely online and then felt in need of being outdoors, desperately so, despite the rain. I have this tree that I stand by, it's on the way to the vegetable patch and from it I can look each way along the stream and just breathe in every inch of greenness and dampness and musty end of Autumn. It's a good place to stand still, put my hand against the wet bark and feel the gratitude and endless present-moment of life. The earth and mist of the stream mingle to create a dankness and rich wetness that extends into the soil of the veg patch. It's standing there lost in the surroundings (a meditation I suppose) that I get little jolts of inspiration and those feelings of In The Moment Bliss. It's where I stood and begged the earth, my ancestral spirits, the life force within life (many many times, every day mostly towards the end of that pregnancy) to let me live through the birth of Esmé (I really did fear death so very much). It's where I stood this week and where the thought came to me seek health and you shall find it. In those exact words. It made me smile. I am health, I will look for that and be sure - I will find it.

I pulled parsnips and onion and a few leeks and then huge pale swathes of old nasturtiums, nettles, bindweed.... I flung most of it into the stream, to be carried off by the chocolaty-white-mud-froth that is the water right now.

I downloaded this new e-book from Shazzie and it's Good (and free!). Lots of stuff we should remember but seem to forget. A little treat to read and savour, like:

This eternal moment is a gift,
that’s why they call it the
present. Preoccupation with the
past and future causes anxiety.
Staying present creates peace within. Your
thoughts, feelings and actions in this moment
determine your quality of life.



Being in the present is something having children pulls you toward. You can resist and so resist *them* but that's just not a satisfying existence.

The boys and I made stained glass windows for the hall.

The Beauty gets busy setting up her play things.



In between rain bursts we get out and about and I try to take everything in with the wonder it deserves. Because it does. And when you forget you find life is reflected right back at you so that you do remember.