Tuning Into the Details
Last month, my perennials began putting on a show. I suddenly had a sea of yellow swamp sunflowers and orange cosmos towering above a patch of lavender verbena. The orchid-like blooms of my toad lilies were popping open near the delicate, tubular flowers of our summer savory. Orange day lilies started another round of blooms and scarlet sage continued to thrive throughout the flower beds. In the backyard, plumbago and spiderwort displayed purple flowers among the warmer shades of the red pinecone ginger, a coral water lily, ripening satsumas and multi-colored lantana. The sweet scent of the butterfly ginger could be smelled all day while the giant, bell-shaped blooms of the angel’s trumpet provided the most fragrance at night.
Photos of individual blooms impress friends, but a passerby who is used to a well-manicured landscape might consider our yard to be a bit wild. Some shrubs are overgrown, herbs need to be divided and all kinds of weeds are intermingling with our showy flowers.
We are often encouraged to see the big picture in order to gain a fresh perspective on a problem that we face, but taking the opposite approach can be constructive as well. When things feel overwhelming—the divisive politics of our country, global issues that feel out of our control, growing to-do lists that remain unfinished—it can be grounding to cut out all the distractions for a bit. In other words, until we’re ready to face the weeds in our lives, we can choose to focus on little things that generate a sense of gratitude within us.
In this month’s Fit Body article, “Body Gratitude”, we learn how appreciating our own body can motivate and empower us to maintain a healthy workout routine. Enjoy tips and recipes from “Giving Thanks for a Healthy Feast” before planning your Thanksgiving meal and familiarize yourself with the history of Alabama’s only federally-recognized tribe, the Poarch Creek Indians, in “Enduring Injustice to Thrive as a Community”.
As we move through this month of thanksgiving, remember that we all have some superhuman days when it feels easy to be our best and we have days when we feel like we’re in survival mode. Life is too short to feel discouraged or defeated, so when you do, seek inspiration from the little things that bring you joy. Someday soon we’ll have the time and motivation to tame our wild landscape, but for now I’ll enjoy zooming in on one flower at a time—cropping out the prolific rattlesnake weed that pops up all over our yard and standing close to the sunflowers so I don’t notice their post-hurricane lean. As I’m tuned into the details that make each bloom unique, all I see is beauty, and for that I am grateful.
Peace,
Meredith Montgomery, Publisher
