A Daily Walk

"In every walk with nature 

one receives far more than he seeks."

That's a John Muir quote, and I agree.

Every evening, I have loaded Sadie into her stroller and taken an evening walk.  There's nothing like the smell of the desert, no matter the weather.  Even plants without flowers have a "spring" smell, if you take the time .....

As I walked, I decided to try to identify different scents:  the smell of someone's Asian-based cooking wafting out their window.  A few houses later, I could smell someone's spaghetti.  The forsythia that are blooming have a scent.  The yellow flowering of a palo verde.  The drifting scent of alyssum that blooms among a bunch of weeds. 

When we get to the grassy park, the smell of fresh mowed grass along with the earthy smell of the ground as it dries after these last rains.  Even the scent of cars on the road passing carries over the grass to our side of the block. 

Our noses are amazing - sometimes a smell brings back memories, especially good memories.  For me, the smell of dill and peas growing on the vine, warming in the morning sun remind me of my grandmother's farm in Minnesota.  I didn't live there, just vacationed a half dozen times, but the smells remain in my memory. 

Just as the scent of spearmint Dentyne reminds me of the paternal grandmother; she always brought a pack to share with us kids!

When you think of all the scents that cross our path each day, it's amazing how many differing scents we can cipher out.  Don't take it for granted!  Take a walk and see what tickles your nose!

Small Joys

This morning I woke up thinking about all the little things that bring us happy memories. 

Today's thought was back being a kid, traveling to Grandma's farm in Minnesota, and I remembered just how good the well water tasted.   We'd walk outside with the water pail and pump water from the ground.  There was running water in her house, but well water tasted that much better!  No matter the outdoor temp, the well water was always cold.  We'd dip it out of the water pail with a stainless steel cup.

Grandma always kept the water pail sitting on the counter near the back corner of the kitchen counter.  This is the only photo I could find where parts of the kitchen showed.  There's Grandma baking up some kind of dessert for after supper! 

Now that everyone (including me!) drinks water from a bottle, sourced from goodness knows where, or processed in some kind of facility, it's hard to remember how it was "back in the day".   I have to say that I think I miss those days.  Most of moments in every day was filled with little chores that needed doing in order to just keep going.   Living took thoughtful planning.  If you needed something for dinner, you didn't just open a freezer door and pop something in the microwave.  If you planned on a roast for dinner, most times you took it out of the freezer in the morning, left it to thaw, then began the cooking process in the afternoon.  If you wanted a cake for dessert, you needed to get baking in the late morning, or early afternoon, because both the cake pan and the roasting pan might not fit in the oven at the same time.   When the nearest grocery store was 20 miles to town, you made sure you bought what you needed for the week, because you couldn't just zip around the corner to grab something on your way home!  Although, if you were a mindful gardener, you could pick something out in the vegetable garden. 

"Sometimes, you never know the true value of of a moment until it becomes a memory."