Make No Assumptions. It’s Greenery For The Win.

February 3, 2017February 14, 2023 / Ally Bean / 49 Comments

AS A WAY OF adding some color into our lives during this mid-winter gray time of year, I went to Lowes this week where I bought some little houseplants in little plastic pots.

I’m not a full on hippy dippy plant lady yet, so fear not. But I could be headed that way. [And really, would that be such a terrible thing?]

While transplanting each plant into a proper terra-cotta pot, it drifted into my addled mind that Pantone’s Color of the Year 2017 is Greenery.

I also remembered that when I first saw this color in early December I wasn’t taken with it, thinking that this particular shade of yellowish-green was almost garish. A color I’d never want to see in my house.

Was. not. a. fan. and. said. so.

But you know what? I was wrong in my snap judgement.

“Greenery is a fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring when nature’s greens revive, restore and renew.” via Pantone

I HAD TO ADMIT this to myself as I placed the new houseplants around the house– and realized that they were exactly Greenery green. And as such, they blended beautifully with our neutral color scheme of khaki golds + creamy whites + warm grays.

In fact, the new houseplants added much-needed splashes of spring-y color everywhere, proving to be an amazingly easy, cost-effective way of lifting my winter spirits.

So the moral of this little story is that when it comes to unfamiliar colors reserve your judgment until you’ve given the new color a chance to dazzle you.

For all you know the new color might be the perfect thing ever to grace your life… on a gray winter day.

Disliked While Waiting In The Doctor’s Office

September 27, 2016February 14, 2023 / Ally Bean / 48 Comments

I dunno. This is a weird one…

• • •

LATE LAST WEEK I WAS sitting in my PCP’s waiting room. I was there for my annual check-up.

I had on my basic summer look: v-neck short sleeve t-shirt, bermuda shorts, leather sandals. Curly hair pulled back with two barrettes. Hoop earrings. Recent pedicure. Nice purse. Rimless glasses.

And I was reading a book, a mystery.

Another patient, a conservatively dressed 40-something woman, checked-in at the reception desk, then walked by me to sit directly across from me.

As she went by I moved my feet under my seat so that she wouldn’t trip. This movement, which people generally acknowledge with a tip of their head or a thank you, earned me a glare.

• • •

BUT IT DIDN’T END THERE.

After this woman, who had long straight hair and was wearing a long skirt, long-sleeved cotton blouse buttoned up to her neck and ballet flats got settled into her seat, she continued to glare at me, looking me up and down.

I began to wonder what she was seeing when she looked at me:

A wanton harlot with bright red toenail polish?
A stoned hippy wearing Birkenstocks?
A liberal feminist reading, of all things, a novel?

I smiled back at her, as polite people do, then went back to reading my book.

• • •

SHORTLY THEREAFTER HER NAME WAS called, and because of the waiting room chair configuration, she had to walk by me again.

This time she glared + snorted derisively as she walked by me; she needed for me to know that she didn’t approve of me.

For some reason. Nonspecific.

[Another patient across the way, a woman dressed about like I was, rolled her eyes and grinned at me as it happened.]

• • •

NOW OBVIOUSLY I’M NOT LOOKING for validation from strangers who I encounter in my daily life, but the fact that something about me really irritated this conservative woman fascinated me.

And truth be told, I was equally fascinated by the fact that I rather enjoyed the sense of power it gave me over her.

I mean, if I can bother someone by merely existing in their view, imagine what I can do when I decide to speak. 😉

• • •

Question of the Day:

Have you ever found yourself on the receiving end of a stranger’s hateful stare for reasons you could not figure out? And if so, how did it make you feel?

• • •

Friends Of The Family, Groovy Fauna Edition

June 12, 2015February 14, 2023 / Ally Bean / 22 Comments

At the risk of sounding hippy dippy I’ll share with you that morning & evening I like to go outside into the garden with a beverage and commune with nature.

~ ~ • ~ ~

I enjoy the aloneness of it. Tossing my thoughts aside. Being in the moment. Enjoying the colors of the flora. Trippy.

~ • ~ ~

~ ~ • ~ ~

But this Spring I’ve come to realize that often when I’m outside doing my Earth Mother thing, I am not alone. There be more than flora, there be fauna, too.

~ ~ • ~ ~

And this fauna doesn’t seem to give a flying fig through a donut hole that I’m out there too. You’d think that they would care, wouldn’t ‘ya?

~ ~ • ~ ~

But they don’t seem to groove on the idea that this is my garden– and not theirs. They just keep on keeping on like they belong out there. Far out man. 😉

In Which I Just Keep Truckin On, Like The Do-Dah Man

June 6, 2014February 14, 2023 / Ally Bean / 15 Comments

“Sometimes the lights all shinin on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip its been.”

~ Truckin, Grateful Dead

~ • ~

If weeks had subtexts, then I’d say that this week’s subtext has been: HIPPIE-NESS. [a word?] Do you, gentle readers, have weeks like this when one unusual subject keeps turning up repeatedly?

I’m not kidding, every day this week I’ve been part of a conversation that has centered one way or another around topics that belong smack dab in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Sock it to me, sock it to me.

~ • ~

I’ve talked about:

Birkenstocks [which are now fashion forward again, btw]

AND

senior citizens who like a little toke to start the day [former neighbors, in case you’re wondering]

AND

a slightly insane off-the-grid genius who spent most of the 60s building a castle from stones he found along a river bank [photos coming next week]

AND

Colorado vacations [where weed is now legal, like you didn’t know]

AND

mothers in the 1960s who dressed their children in brightly colored matching outfits [not sure if this is technically hippie-ness, but it was a thing back then].

~ • ~

Yes, it’s been a groovy week– and I’ve loved it. I’d forgotten how the hippie culture which influenced the late 1960s and early 1970s was so much less uptight and so much more in the moment than today’s world of goals and analytics and marketing and– oh, whatever.

Like, far out, man.

So what better way to end this post than to leave you, my gentle readers, with this song by the Grateful Dead that has run through my head all week?

Guess I’ll just hang it up now and see what tomorrow brings! 😉