Category: Gardening

Keeping Track of my Year has Made Me More Grateful

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I started using the app 1 Second Everyday last year when quarantine started up because I wanted a historical record of a historical event. As a result, I take more little snippets of video, which are so fun to watch of my kids. (I’m more of a still-image person, so video is a reach for me.) And the video at the end of 2020 with a one second snippet from every day of that monumental year? Amazing. So I’ve been keeping up with this year, too.

I was hardcore into some self help books at the beginning of 2021, because you know…2020 kinda whomped on all of us, and I noticed that a lot of them kept mentioning the importance of looking for things to be grateful for, trying to have a positive attitude, trying to frame things in a more positive light…all those rose-colored glasses suggestions that make me want to punch people, basically. BUT…I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try for a bit. Just an experiment. Watching the 1 Second Everyday video at the end of 2020 had helped me to remember a lot of good things that came out of that year…what if I also made an effort to write them down as I went along?

So I downloaded a handful of journaling apps and whatnot, started using them, and slowly uninstalled them as they annoyed me until I was left with one called Delightful. It’s a simple little app that asks you to write down three good things twice a day. I have reminders that go off in the morning and in the evening, and if I can’t think of anything, there’s questions to think about and answer. And if it’s a really terrible day, I don’t write down anything at all.

All of these Thanksgiving posts about gratitude had me feeling the pressure to write something similar, but I don’t really like writing those posts because they can come off as being boastful, and I’ve realized that I learned somewhere along the way that saying what I’m grateful for out loud is boastful and arrogant and show-offy. But I’ve also learned that’s not entirely true. Don’t get me wrong, I hate a humble brag, but being thankful and saying it out loud isn’t boastful.

I sat down with my Delightful gratitude app today, and it looks like I started recording my gratitudes on March 11, 2021. I’m rather hit-and-miss, but I do have 107 entries as of today, which is ~321 different things I’ve been grateful for this year. So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are some random things I’ve been thankful for this year:

  • Michael is a thoughtful dude
  • My Zoom tea party group and my Sunday Zoom knitting appointment
  • Quesnel, Charlotte, and Marshmallow do so many little things that make me laugh
  • Watching people succeed
  • Gaining strength through so much physical therapy
  • The kids got to go back to regular school and not have to do distance learning anymore
  • When Emms found out about the college they want to go to and got all excited that such a place existed
  • Nathaniel’s first time trying to play the trumpet
  • Nathaniel’s first baseball practice in the spring, when I got out my EPP kit and just started crying because it had been two years since I’d stitched at a baseball event. That that little normal thing was back.
  • So many things about gardening make me happy.
  • Playing Mario Kart with the kids
  • Free time
  • When an unexpected rainy day happens during a busy time in the garden and I’m forced to stay inside all day and I get to do extra sewing or knitting
  • Every time another member of our family was officially fully-vaccinated against COVID-19.
  • Michael made me a porch swing
  • Rachel’s newfound love for full, poufy skirts
  • Reading an article in a magazine about a town I’d never heard of and how fun it was to discover a new place I’d like to visit someday
  • Conversations with James and Denise
  • My neighbor planted a new species of grass in his yard and it was really delightful to listen to him be excited about it
  • Michael helps me a lot. Often.
  • People being really kind about my need to rest and heal after my foot surgery.
  • The drive to my kids’ schools has beautiful scenery, especially in the autumn
  • Renaissance’s work on her witch costume for Halloween
  • The kids like to cook and bake

This year has felt stressful and overwhelming almost every single day, but when I read back through these little entries I’m reminded of how much good there has been that I’m apparently blind to after the fact. I’m glad I embarked on this little experiment. And I’m not trying to pressure you into doing the same, because I always dislike it when the shiny, happy people give life advice. (And no, I’m not what I would classify as a “shiny, happy person.”) I’m just glad that a little experiment turned out well and that I have a way to see the good a little easier now. Life is always full of difficulty and good, and I appreciate any little trick to help me focus on the good a little bit more.

I hope you and yours have a lovely weekend. Given the international nature of my friends reading the blog these days, I wish my American friends a happy Thanksgiving, and my Celsius friends a fantastic end of November. Whether or not you have a holiday tomorrow, I hope the end of this week, and the rest of this year, treats you kindly. Thank you for being here and reading my words and writing your comments. All of those bloggy things bring little sparks of happiness into my world throughout the year, too, and I’m grateful that you allow me to experience them.

Also–I’m not affiliated with 1 Second Everyday or Delightful.
I just use those apps and like them a lot, so I wanted to share a good thing.

There is a House in Washington

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So, yes, our family made it safely to Washington almost two weeks ago.  We rolled into town just as the fireworks for the Fourth of July started going off, and it felt like the state was welcoming us with gusto.  (And added the much-appreciated side effect of lighting up the heavily-treed highway that was tough to navigate…but the cats weren’t big fans of the fireworks and may have peed…a lot…in their carriers.)

 

We signed the papers for our Washington home the next morning and officially had the keys by lunch.  My aunt made a beeline for us and helped us unload our truck and trailer, and our ward helped us finish the huge task later that evening.  We’ve been screeching, “Where is the [insert a million different items here]?!?!” ever since.

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20180713_131255Where we’re living is *lovely.*  It’s a little removed from Suburbia-proper, but only by a little bit, so running to the grocery store/Costco/Home Depot takes minutes, and the drive is lush and green and has a crazy spectacular view of Mt. Rainier the entire way.  Sometimes I have to sit and wait for the dairy’s cows to cross the road to get to their next milking, and there’s rivers, and hydrangea, and four different types of purple or pink flowers in bloom by the roadsides right now (Fireweed, Sweet Pea, Foxglove, and a plant that looks like Butterfly Bush) and I just…get so happy to see familiar plants again.  I figured out plants in Utah, but these are what I grew up with and can name without thinking because my dad taught them to me when I was in preschool.

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We’ve had family over TWICE in one week for dinner, which is crazy amazing and as fun as you’d expect, and we get to attend a family wedding this weekend because we don’t live fourteen hours away anymore.

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The house is bigger than our last house, which I’m loving a lot–six people in our old house got old about six years ago, so the extra space is much-appreciated by all of our family’s members.  Unfortunately, though, this house is painted in a very warm and earthy color palette, and I lean toward the cool and ocean-inspired color palette.  And the ceilings are painted the same color as the walls…the same, sand-brown light-absorbing color…even the twenty-feet-up ceilings in the front room.  Yep, I gotta paint ’em all…and that sand-brown color is just dark enough to warrant two coats of primer every. time.

So I’m busy for the rest of the month, and probably for most of August as well.

But it’s OK, because at the end of all the painting my kids will all have bedrooms with fully-finished walls painted the colors of their choosing, and everything will be just as lovely inside as it is outside.

We went and got our library cards today, which really does make you feel like you truly “belong” in your town.  And I forgot to turn on Google Maps for the drive home, but it didn’t matter because I got home just fine, with no special mental gymnastics.  I pulled up to this house in this new state without help, and my kids clambered out of the van like they always do, helped by dumping our purchases onto the kitchen table before running off to binge-read their library books like they always do, and in that moment it was clear: This house in Washington is now our home.

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Probably still a bit of time before Happy Crafting Times can recommence, but with each newly-unpacked box and newly-painted wall, I’m getting closer to reopening the fun conversations I get to have with my crafty friends!  I’ve missed you!

I garden for the knitting

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For the first time ever, I have my fall flowers planted before October.  There’s purple and green kale, yellow and purple pansies, and cream, yellow, and orange chrysanthemums.  Our front door doesn’t usually get a lot of foot traffic, but it is this autumn simply because I love to walk by all my flowers.  “No, Brookelets, we’re going in through the front door so Mama can gaze adoringly, yet again, upon the beauty she has planted around our home.  If you gaze adoringly with her, she’ll probably give you hot chocolate and pat you on the head while you drink.”

And what’s the point of having an autumn flower garden if you’re not going to use them as background for knitting pictures?

Who doesn’t look at flowering kale and envision how wonderfully it would pair with pumpkin tweed?

I’m amongst the crowd of people that possess no ability to deny themselves of pumpkins.  If it looks like pumpkin, smells like pumpkin, or tastes like pumpkin…I probably already own it.  I am powerless in the face of anything that reminds me of a pumpkin.
There’s a darling little cabled pumpkin baby hat pattern making its way around Ravelry, and I succumbed to the cuteness.  Problem is, none of the local yarn shops that I’m willing to drive to for a spontaneous yarn purchase have worsted-weight orange tweed.  (Insert sad face here.)  I picked up some Rowan Felted Tweed instead, but the DK-weight was not working with the pattern. So now I’m just knitting whatever cables I want to knit.  I’m excited about how this hat is going to turn out.  Pumpkin + cables + tweed = Perfect autumn knitting.

You know what else is perfect autumn knitting?  Aran cables, paired with rust-colored chrysanthemums:

Oh, the simple joy of undyed, Aran wool, the quintessential material of knitting season.  It’s traditional, it’s elegant, and it’s cozy.  Sometimes I wonder why I knit with anything else…until I see shelves of tweed yarn…or a skein of silk/merino laceweight.

My hollyhocks, those wonderful heralds of summer, have begun to turn brown and cast their seeds into the wind.  As they begin to fold into themselves for their long winter sleep, I couldn’t resist the urge to photograph them, drowned out by the afternoon sun, in contrast to this little token of life and joy:

A little one will join a friend’s family in the next week or so, and I was feeling like celebrating its impending arrival with handknits.  Just a simple little hat, so tiny that it covers my fist with very little room to spare.  Just a squishy little thing, only usable for a couple of weeks before it will be too small.

Sort of like my autumn flowers…you don’t get a lot of time with them, but they’re beautiful and make me smile, which makes them a good thing to include in life.

Baby hats, tweed, pumpkins, cables, cream wool, and jewel-toned pansies…autumn is so lovely.