simple life

Stacking Wood, Collage, and a Mind that Wanders Back to Center

Posted by Barbara Techel

While the wren image – a photograph I took – dried on the collage piece I worked on earlier this week, I decided to stack some wood – wood we use for our chiminea.

Stacking wood, just like creating the collage is like an art form, I think. When we first got our chiminea I would get upset if John hadn’t stacked wood and we’d have to take time out to gather it before we could build a fire. But then one day I decided I’d stack it myself, and keep it stacked, even though I wasn’t too crazy about the idea at first.

But now I’ve really come to enjoy it. It makes me think about how sometimes we grumble about household chores, which I can still be guilty of at times. But when I remind myself to do them with mindfulness or view it as an art form, it feels centering and also makes me feel a sense of accomplishment.

Fitting the pieces of wood together to get as much as I can on the stand, is somewhat like doing a collage too – keeping an eye out for how everything fits together.

As I worked some more on the collage after I was done stacking wood I had the movie Bridges of Madison County playing in the background. 

That scene where Francesca and her husband are in their truck and behind the truck of Robert Kincaid, at the stop sign, the rain pouring down, and Francesca puts her hand on the handle of the door, torn between whether to stay with her husband or run off with Robert, is palpable.

Each time it makes me think how sometimes the grass can seem greener on the other side. But how often it does not turn out that way. It brings me back to thinking about how when things were getting difficult with health challenges with Gidget two years before she passed and how I felt like I was missing out on so much in life. There were times, I too wanted to run.

But in the end, as I wrote about in my new memoir, it was a wake-up call to do the inner work I’d been called to do to come back to what really mattered to me – that was the path I was meant to take. Even though it wasn’t easy, and at times I felt torn, the more I stayed with what I was feeling, the more that yearning subsided.

Over a year later since she’s been gone, this is what continues to deepen in my gratitude for her – that the last year of her life was so beautiful as our relationship grew exponentially. I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on that as it remains with me as some of my most fond and meaningful memories.

Going through the pandemic of the virus this year has also been a reminder to me of how much I love my home, my gardens, my time with John, seeing wildlife outside my windows, fires in the chiminea, etc. How often it is that all we need is right here in front of us and within us.

These are the moments of a mind wandering that bring me back to the center of my heart that I’m grateful for.

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

 

 

Windowsill Meditation

Posted by Barbara Techel

Teach us the delight of simple things. ~Rudyard Kipling

Most Fridays I try to set aside as my self-care and errand day, though I do sometimes sprinkle in a bit of work, too.

But part of my self-care of what I titled this post as “windowsill meditation” is that I take delight in my ever-changing windowsill in my kitchen because it is like a form of meditation to me.

This time of year I’ve taken back out of storage from the blue curio cabinet in my living room a few of the small vases I’ve collected over the years. This vintage one in the photo is one I’m particularly fond of.

I knew it would be perfect to hold a single ranunculus flower I cut from a pot of them I’m growing. And after placing it in the vase, I moved a few things around on the windowsill to create this little vignette.

Something so simple that produced so much joy and gave my mind a rest. 

There is so much we can’t control, but how often I continue to be pulled back to the simple things and how it doesn’t take much to remind me what matters most.

xo,

Barbara