Back In My Own Sweet Little World

Look at the pollen on that bee. 
Oh wait. I just looked it up and it's not a bee. It's a mason wasp. But it's a pollinator and as such, welcome in my garden any day of the year. Hell, I'd welcome it just for those blue wings. 
Now this guy? 

Not so much. It's more of a terminator than a pollinator. 
I know I've posted too many pictures of these things but I'm not sure I've ever seen as many in the years previously as I have this year. I just let this one be. I really cannot stand to smash them. At this point they can pretty much eat what they want of the garden but I do realize that every one I don't kill could represent literally hundreds of offspring. 

It's been feeling a little different here in the mornings when I get up. Perhaps a bit cooler, a little less humid, and the sky is taking on that blue which fall brings. The trees are still very much leafed but if you've lived here a long time, you can feel it. A very, very subtle change. Quite possibly so subtle in fact, that you can't consciously name what the change feels like. And yet, it's there. 
This morning I was tossing a dead roach wrapped in the ghost spider webs out the back porch door and I saw this.

The first hurricane lily I've seen this year. Usually, I start thinking about them right before they shoot up but this one came as a complete surprise to me. 
Well. There you are. Hello! 
I've never seen one growing in that particular place so it was a little disconcerting to find it there. That bed, which is between the house and the little pathway under the wisteria arbor is one that I am yearning to clear out. I mean, it's almost a physical need to get on my knees in there and pull out that nasty crocosmia which never blooms and the border grass gone wild and the random weeds. But right now I'm working on that bed beside the kitchen and the library. 

I try to think of the work as resistance strength training as the chenille plant and border grass definitely resist my efforts to pull it up. I can handle about an hour there while it's still in shade and I think a few more days of work will be enough to get it done and then I can move on around the corner to that other mess that I so yearn to get my trowel on. 
A little bit at a time. 

Maybe it was the way the air felt or maybe it was seeing that hurricane lily but I suddenly felt the impulse to plant a few greens seeds. I went through my last year's seeds and collected a very few collard seeds, along with kale and turnips. I cleaned out some of the grow bags and worked some sort of organic fertilizer in them and then did a casual pressing down of the seeds into the dirt. And then I turned on the water and wished them luck. I need to buy more collard seeds and I will. I just wanted to get some in the ground now.
The okra seeds I planted are up and looking pretty happy although I still have my doubts about whether there will be time for them to mature enough to make pods before they die back. I did the tiniest amount of thinning of the arugula, but enough to go into tonight's salad. 

It just felt good to be out there, getting something in the ground. Oh, how I would love to have enough greens to cook a big pot for Thanksgiving! 

I had great plans to do the outside work and then come in and finish up the neckline of my shirt and also do some more painting on my leaf platter and we all know how that turned out. 
Eh. Not quite. 
Before I got started on that I made some lemon bars to take to pottery tomorrow. It's Shelly's and teacher Gail's birthday and I think a few treats are called for. Somehow I don't think I'd ever made lemon bars before and I have no idea if these will be any good. I used a recipe I found online from The Pioneer Woman's blog. They were easy and pretty fast to make but still, I had to give some time to it. And for the first time ever, I used Glen's mama's citrus juicer which I've had on the shelf in the kitchen for the 22 years we've lived here. It's such a pretty thing, and functional too. 

It has to be made for lemons and limes, because it's way too small to hold the juice of an orange half. Even an entire lemon filled it to capacity. I realized that what looks like a decorative feature around the center part is a seed trap. How cool! 
I just hope the bars can be cut and transported tomorrow morning and that they taste good, of course. They're in the refrigerator now. 

By the time I got around to my shirt, it was already getting late but I got some more done. Here's what it's looking like. 

Now you know I only showed you the part that looks best. All hail the feather stitch which is so easy and as I said yesterday, does not require absolute consistency. It's...feathery. Right? And I'm having a good time with it. 
I didn't even have time to think about my caladium but that will happen tomorrow. Hopefully, my brain has been thinking about it all week and has some ideas as to colors. 

Overall though, I have felt rather cheerfully grateful today for the time and energy to do things that please me. That's a good way to feel, isn't it? Gratefulness can be a therapeutic tool, or so I hear (I wonder how many gratefulness journals Oprah sold?) but that sort of gratefulness, dredged up when your heart is closed and tight and your mind is raging and roaring, can feel like painting on a lipsticked smile to try and make yourself believe that DAMMIT, I AM HAPPY! JUST LOOK AT ME! 
I mean, okay. I get the idea but for me, counting all the things I feel grateful for when I am trying to keep my head above water only adds to the general guilt and shame I feel about myself for somehow managing to be so unhappy when I am obviously the luckiest woman in the world. 
And I have just found the most perfect video in the world to show exactly how genuine this feels to me. I beg of you, do not watch more than perhaps 20-30 seconds of this dreck because I fear it may cause brain damage to go any further. We used to sing this song in school when I was a child, especially at Thanksgiving. Even then, I tried so hard to believe. 
Even then, it never worked. 

But when the gratefulness comes easily and freely from the heart- well, that's one of the very best things in the world. 
Or at least it's pretty damn good. 
In my opinion. 

And as we all know, I have as many opinions as I have theories. 

See you tomorrow, should you choose to come back and hear more of both. 

Love...Ms. Moon