A Country Moving Forward: More Gratitude, Less Attitude

June 29, 2015June 30, 2015 / Ally Bean / 19 Comments

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

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Yesterday was a rainy, cold Monday. I spent the day inside, not doing much of anything.

Lost in contemplation.

Humming the hymn that I’d heard on Friday while watching the funeral in Charleston for Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

Remembering my Southern church lady aunt who used to hum that particular hymn while tidying up around her home.

Which, really, is what I should have been doing.

My plan for the day had been to use the time to weed the garden. Our vacation travels followed by a busy week of getting back into daily routines had given the weeds a chance to take over.

Not pretty.

But instead of jumping into any activity at all, I found myself thinking about how proud I am of this country for moving forward in a peaceful way on social issues that impact everyone.

Somehow.

I realize that people are whining and opining all over the place on FB and cable news outlets, but when you get down to it, this country in pretty damned amazing.

The change process worked, both on a national judicial level and on a state executive level.

Homophobia and racism, spotlighted last week like they were, are now officially acknowledged as behaviors that do not help make our country strong.

Hate never does.

It really is that simple. We’ve moved forward. Hallelujah!

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Do not be afraid of the hate surfacing. Backlash is an inevitable side effect of progress. Cruelty is simply fear’s death knell. Carry on.

~ Glennon Doyle Melton

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.

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

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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.

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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?

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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. 😉

“If This Is Correct, Press 1”

June 2, 2015 / Ally Bean / 24 Comments

I’m in awe of this woman. I don’t know who she is, but I would not be so gracious under similar circumstances.

Because what happened must happen to her, and her family, almost daily. And only a bunch of saints could be this cheerful about the mistake I made.

An honest mistake, but a stupid one.

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You see, on Sunday morning around 7:00 a.m. I decided to call the automated Kroger pharmacy line to refill my prescription. I was out of Restasis, my favorite eye drops ever.

Being half awake + a bit blurry-eyed [see previous sentence] I goofed while dialing the phone for the pharmacy. Instead of getting the “Hello. Thank you for calling your Kroger pharmacy.” message, I got a real person whose home I’d just called.

The woman who answered said your basic “Hello!” then heard me babble: “Oh no. I dialed wrong. Oh dear. Sorry to have bothered you this early. On Sunday. Oh my.”

And without missing a beat this polite woman said: “Trying to reach Kroger pharmacy?”

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I answered, in a most pathetic voice: “Yes.”

All I heard on the other end of the line was her laugh and then she said: “Our phone number is close to theirs. You just misdialed. Try again. It happens here all the time.”

Grateful to be talking with someone who was not yelling at me for waking him or her up early on a weekend morning, I said: “Thank you. Sorry to have bothered you.”

Then with another laugh I heard her say: “No problem. Bye, bye!”

And so it came to be that on Sunday morning I spoke with a saint. I now have proof that they walk and talk among us.

Hallelujah & Amen.

Of Slow Cooker Wisdom And Simple Garden Plans

May 5, 2015May 5, 2015 / Ally Bean / 44 Comments

“Knowledge is the process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”

~ Martin H. Fischer, Physician and Author

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WE SPENT MOST of this past warm and beautiful spring weekend working in the garden.

My goal, influenced by the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook , is to have what I’ve come to call a slow cooker garden.

A space filled with variety, but put together in a way that is simple to understand. Pleasant to look at, but requiring less and less effort each year to maintain.

That is, we’re going to fix it now with perennials, paths and stones; then forget about changing anything out there for the next decade.

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SO WHAT HAVE we got going on? Well, we’ve got:

a plethora of roses + daisies + hostas in planting beds beside stone and/or concrete steps that circle the house;
a landscape island in the front yard near the street filled with grasses and mostly purple flowers;
a newly installed dry faux creek bed under the deck; AND
a lower terrace in the back yard down by the woods that features stone steps, grasses, roses plus the recent addition of difficult-to-find milkweed. *yeah*

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I’M NOT SURE how our garden ended up being so multi-faceted and unique, but over the years, little by little, it did.

My hope is that when it comes time to sell this property, like the HGTV show CURBAPPEAL suggests, the awe-inspiring exterior of the property will be so amazing that this house’s relatively small square footage won’t hinder a sale.

However, be that as it may, in the mean time, I’m not worrying about real estate business-y things like ROI. Instead, I’m going to groove on all that we have going on in our pretty, pretty garden.

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