simple pleasures

For the Love of Sparrow

Posted by Barbara Techel

As I walked over to my printer the other morning, it was this sweet sparrow that caught my eye outside Joyful Pause Cottage studio window.

So unassuming. Still as could be. Something about this struck me.

The image stayed with me for days.

A few times glancing again at the picture I’d captured, I’d feel my heart swell and tears spring to my eyes.

How often we only see beauty in the bright colors of the world.

The shades of brown not so much.

The sparrow often overlooked or underrated.

Yet, I found so much elegance in this scene outside my window.

While I don’t yet know why it struck me so or that this has continued to stay with me, I’m in gratitude to Sparrow.

For the feelings in my heart that stir even though I can’t name them.

But makes me that much more appreciative of this one precious life.

XO

Barb

    

The Ordinary Life

Posted by Barbara Techel

I can’t remember the name of this flower, but this stem — is the last of what is left of an annual now gone for the season.

I was attracted to them in early spring while visiting a local nursery. They looked so old-fashioned and like something you’d find in an English garden.

I have several small bud vases I’ve collected over the years. They dot my kitchen windowsill just for the purpose of collecting treasures I pick from my gardens in the summer months.

It was late afternoon on Sunday when I placed the single stem in the vase. I then placed it next to this framed photo of a favorite author of mine and someone I consider a mentor, even though she died in 2008, Tasha Tudor.

I’ve mentioned here before how I appreciate when I first heard Tasha say, “I don’t believe in hurry.”

It has become my mantra. Though at times I forget. It’s why I have a reminder on my windowsill.

Such an ordinary thing of creating this vision of loveliness upon my windowsill.

It filled my heart with complete and utter joy.

So many more of these moments I wish to make up my days.

My mind drifted to wondering…

When did we lose sight of the ordinary? How did we become consumed with wanting more?

What ache were we trying to fill?

When all along it was right here in front of us and within the space of ordinary life.

But we were too busy running here and there, chasing after this and that.

Ordinary life is about resting longer in the pause.

The in-between that by default offers to us, without any effort on our part, what’s really important.

xo,

Barbara

 

 

Connecting with my Inner Tasha Tudor?

Posted by Barbara Techel

We had a summer storm go through around 9 pm last night. At one point there was such a loud crack I sat straight up in bed. The first thought that ran through my mind when I heard it was, “Wake up America!” Not an unusual thought with all that has been unfolding in our world which has been so prevalent on my mind.

After that loud crack, I expected to hear sirens thinking surely something was hit, but fortunately, no sirens sounded.

But this morning there was evidence of the thrashing the trees took with many branches down that I saw on my early morning walk. Plus the many branches that fell from trees in our yard too.

I actually enjoy the ritual of gathering up the fallen twigs and branches. I used to put them in the garbage can to be hauled to the dump, but then last summer I started to save them to use for kindling in our chiminea. I like the idea of repurposing them.

John knows my love of Tasha Tudor, the children’s book illustrator and writer who I learned about in 2008 just as my first children’s book was published. Though that was the year she passed at the age of 92, I’d become enthralled with her as a woman with a gypsy-like spirit and her love of home and animals.

When I latch onto something as I did with Tasha, I have to learn all I can and it will be something I will talk about pretty much non-stop for quite some time. And John has endured.  🙂 

This led to John catching me in moments such as gathering twigs and branches, or weeding or walking about in my garden, etc. that he’d say, “You are Tudor-ing.” And it’s always said with such affection that it warms me all the way to my toes.

It has often made me think of how the author, Jon Katz often calls his artist wife, Maria Wulf (someone else I greatly admire as a free spirit) his Willa Cather girl. Willa Cather, a woman much like Tasha and a pioneer spirit, plus a writer, and a woman who walked to the beat of her own free spirit.

It’s this connecting to what feels like such a simple life as Tasha and Willa lived that gathering the fallen twigs as I was today that makes me feel grounded and grateful for this precious life.

I couldn’t help but see the image float across my mind of one of Tasha where she is gathering up twigs on the property she lived on in Vermont, that I have framed and is in my writing cottage. I have that image, plus two others in my house that are reminders to me that this is the life I love, and to not get influenced by the outside world that can be persuasive of making me think I need ‘more.’

So as I walked up the steps onto the deck I was grinning thinking of that image of Tasha. I could feel her spirit alive and well in me and just had to get a photo of my ‘inner Tasha’ that was now evident with my arms full of twigs….just like she was so many years ago.

xo,

Barbara