A quick note about my blogs and how I schedule them. I plan out a set of six articles and when I finish a set, I plan out the next batch.This is the first article for a new set of six and I approached it a bit differently this time. My son helps out by taking pictures for me, for pay, and I provide him with a list article topics so he can take photographs that fit with the topic. This time, Instead of posting my ideas and giving them to my son, I asked for his input and built the list from that. That means that the photos may or may not go with the article I write. The theme for this week is ‘Vegetable and Fruit Still Life’.
Another difference is I’m writing this article early, yay me! It is a Saturday morning, I don’t have any chores I have to do at home, errands I have to run or other things which I spend time doing on the weekend. I slept well so I didn’t sleep late but I did read in bed before I got up. After getting up, while the house was still quiet, I fixed a cup of tea so I could sit outside. We are having a bit of warm weather, so it was sunny. We also had gusty winds, I had a flashback to living in Wyoming or Oklahoma instead of San Diego. Here in San Diego we normally get gentle ocean breezes that lovingly move across the sky, caressing tree branches as they make their way to the mountains.
Today we had gusts of wind that were bending trees over as they shoved their way through to their destination. The leaves were leaning out, like hundreds of little flags on the branches, the new growth fluttering a bright green in the morning sun. We’ve had several good rain storms in the last few weeks, so we are seeing new plant growth. The dead leaves of fall were blowing about, along with bits and pieces of debris that was loose and too light to stay put.
After my tea break, I went in and took care of some laundry and checked tasks on the computer. Eventually my son woke up and had breakfast. In the meantime, his cat was also awake and fascinated in watching outside. I thought that perhaps there were lizards or birds flitting about but when I looked out the window I didn’t see anything. Yet, he was on alert, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.
I stopped to watch and I realized that he was following the dry leaves that were blowing about. With the strong winds, the leaves were tumbling over the patio, rapidly moving by the windows, so our cat went into predator mode. He was ready and willing to attack! He would run by a window, then run to another window on the other side of the house in his attempt to try and follow the leaves. When he got to the other window, he would stop, look around, not see his leaf, so he would dash back to the original window, frantically trying to find the leave that was escaping. I smiled a lot as he went back and forth, trying to track the leaves flying around. Usually he likes to play with me and chase after a wiffle ball I throw but this morning the leaves were much more interesting.
My husband came down to join us, sitting at the dining room table while I puttered around in the kitchen. My son joined him and they chatted about computers and football, among other things. The cat would run under the table to the dining room window, then back to the family room while we just did our thing. It was such an ordinary moment, that I stopped for a minute to take it in and enjoy it.
I thought that there will never be another moment quite like that one, yet our lives are filled with these daily quiet times, of just being with other people, just living in spite of problems and worries about our lives. As I get older I find these times have even more value and I try to enjoy them when I can. It can be easy to look back and wish I had spent more time like this but since I can’t change the past, I work to change how I live in the now and in the future. No special message, just wanted to share a bit of homeyness and a little bit of my wonder at the extraordinariness of ordinary life.
Pictures by J.T. Harpster
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