Highlighted by the Sun

Born in darkness and stubborn in nature, its growth is exposed to the light. 

Obstinate it chooses the instantaneous and artificial in the mockery of its inheritance. The temporary perfection that can never be enough, becoming all consuming. A continuous submergence into darkness, masking the genuine and blocking the light. Yet it never stops reaching, longing to be restored.

 

One day it refuses the imperious serpentine in the howling wasteland and returns to whom it was meant to be, who it was all along. And the longer it spends with the sun, the more it longs to be like it. A little every day and some more than others, it soon dances in the wind, twirling in golden rays. The ends, the wiser of the strands, now assimilating the incandescence. And after decades it learns to be more transparent, wisdom birthing and radiating the light from within. No longer hiding in the shadows but celebrating the return home. 

 

Proverbs 16:31

The silver-haired head is a crown of splendor and glory;

It is found in the way of righteousness.

Proverbs 20:29

The glory of young men is their physical strength; and the honor of aged men is their gray head (representing wisdom and experience).

 

John 15:20

So he got up and started back to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. He ran and threw his arms around him and kissed him warmly.

 

           

My Lips Forever Salty

 

The North Pacific and I share an ever-changing relationship built on elation, cloaked in a heavy respect I’d never turn my back on. Wild beauty in tremendous strength able to change the land as easy as it does ones character. Moodiest of the melancholy during the seasonal storms and celebratory as the sun that sparkles off it’s spirited glassy surface.

Mostly magnificently unexplored and delightedly unmapped, leaving a perpetual adventure of the unknown and home to millions of beautifully strange creatures. 

Fixated on the water, surreptitiously building, I wait anxiously to jump between the tumult agitations that long to pull me into their influence. I take a carefully timed leap bordering speculation. Submerged in translucent envelopment I pause my breath until I break the surface again. Before my heart gets accustomed to the quickening I grab for the jagged coastline and find a foot hold. I sneak out quickly before I awaken the deep and it’s invisible grasp returns to pull me back in. Upright I wait on the edge and pour over the Pacific once more. 

I drift off to sleep by it’s powerful devotion to keep moving, lulling me into the depth of slow wave sleep. It’s deafening rogues spring me awake with rebellious estrangement. I sink back

feeling the rumble of the island. The moon high in the sky yet pulling the tides. 

The coast and my lips forever salty. 

Grow with What You've Got

 

Plants gone wild (Bee Balm, Echinacea, Kale, Squash, Concord grapes) 

 My vegetable and herbal tea garden in Tennessee would start with a fresh all dirt showing when it was still technically winter. After spring hinted its arrival, I started sowing and as the teeny seedlings began to emerge, it would quickly turn into a wild beautiful landscape filled with flowers, veggies, bees and butterflies. Okra as tall my fence, bergamot as tall as me, everything growing with everything creating a treasure hunt for each day's harvest. Every year it got bigger as I added and previous years plantings returned. 

Seedlings in their starting rows - On your mark, get set, GO! 

   I've been yearning for my garden lately. Collecting plants in my head. I've tried things off and on here in Hawaii on the coast but most everything hates salt water. They seem to do well for a month or so until high surf arrives and the salt spray kills them. Among the deceased are a number of ghost pepper plants (not just a clever name) and jalapeño. Still hangin' on though are 3 pineapples (crowns started in a glass then put in the ground) and a couple of local chili peppers. I'm still waiting on them with bated breath to bring forth their pickable heat. It's a mini hot sauce garden really. Who doesn't love pineapple in their hot sauce? 

Pineapples, Hawaiian Chili Peppers

   I found a couple of what I thought were prickly pear paddles that turned out to be cochineal cacti on the bike lane just down the road. They'd taken a free dive off the mother cactus spilling over the rock wall border of a tropical domicile. I instinctively thought to save them since surely they'd parish on the concrete, and lo and behold one had grown roots to grip the road. Okay, that one is a survivor. I found a couple others that were more recent jumpers. 

The Street-wise Cactus 

I came home and found a terracotta pot of previously tried herbs that said absolutely not to the salt air and disintegrated into the dirt for which they came. The grow your own community said Cacti like succulent soil.. quick search on what's in that...but also keeping in mind that one was growing on the concrete. Is buying special soil really necessary? Prickly yes, but not picky. I decided to make my own concoction with "a little of this and a little of that" (my motto) in soil, sand and rocks around the property. They need to also set out and form a callus over the part that came off the mother before you set them in soil so they don't just rot when you water them. This can take anywhere from days to a month. Wrong again! Maybe it was the desert climate here combined with laying on the concrete but they were already callused. Moving right along...I stuck them in the soil, watered and waited. After a week they didn't appear to be rotting and by week two they had roots!!! 

Father & Son

And then those babies bloomed! 

This was a tad disappointing as this is the full bloom
and not what looks to be a amazing bloom about to break forth!

   Next I wanted a hanging basket of mint. In my previous setup, I had hanging baskets of various kinds of mint just outside my backdoor. My coffee/tea area was just inside the door, making it very easy to pick a couple of sprigs to throw in my coffee or tea. The Salty outside had already killed the herbs so I wanted to try the sunny frosted window in the kitchen. It's not that the air inside the house is any less salty really but there's less without the additional spray from the waves. I found a couple of baskets but needed a plastic saucer with high sides since they tilted. Nothing workable in the recycle stuff, but surely I had a container in the fridge I could cut down soon that would work. The basket was in-between size for store bought trays but really there sides weren't high enough anyway. 

Then I tried the Bitchin' Sauce tub that I was nearly finished with and it fit like a glove! A perfect water tray! And the Costco super sized Bitchin' was the perfect size to re-pot the square potted herbs! It's so satisfying to reuse food containers, especially when it's a staple item. =) This one needed a video. 

When they cut back the coconut palms, they'd left me a couple stocks of green coconuts. I'd bought a nifty coconut opener on Amazon that is basically a corkscrew with a sharp end to pop the top. What I learned while opening green coconuts is all you need is a steak knife. It's like cutting into an apple. I also learned that you will get sprayed in the face, every single time. No matter where you do it or how slow. They are premature guys. No video for that one. There is so much yummy water in the green ones before they absorb it all and fully ripen into the brownish ones you see, which are more about the meat inside. 

Pop the top stem and cut a hole in the middle...mind the overspray.

Choke full of water and a surprise days later when the water I'd collected from a few coconuts had turned PINK! I looked this up immediately. I had seen pink coconut water in the store but never from the fresh out the coconut kind. Oxidation and the sugar content are the culprits, which is why it started out clear and gradually got more pink...or should I say more beautiful. Another reuse...those Costco vodka and gin containers. This was someone else's!! I have a cocktail about 5 times a year these days. haha      It was too cool of a glass container just to toss in the garbage. 

Truly A Two's Day!

  

Happy Tuesday, truly a two’s day 2/22/22 

I’m just a little bit jealous of anyone born on this day, getting married or really anything else with a celebration in print. If only I was able to renew my drivers license today to have all those 2’s on something legit.

Two, Dois, Due, Duex, Duo, Elua, Twee, Tva, Zwei, =, ll

It’s how much in cents your personal opinion is worth. When children figure out they have a will of their own. The max amount of notches we feel are acceptable to take someone down. 

And shit’s numerical name. 

But then there is pair, couple, duet and two of a kind… 

I’ve been living on an Island for 2 years now. 4,252 miles from my previous residence. 2 thousand of those miles being vast open ocean. 

I’ve lived on an Island many times before throughout my life but this time around was an entirely fresh adventure. Perhaps part of it was age and the changing of one’s priorities. Perhaps it was a pandemic that plagued me with the virus not once but twice! The sickest I’ve ever been, the worst I’ve ever felt and the most scared I’ve ever been…and yet…I’d go through it again to know the other year and a half of experiences and the river of hope that continues to supply my days. 

The beauty and strength of gentleness, the quiet peace of patience, the unmovable trust of faith and filled to overflowing of the greatest of these, Love. 

I experienced Love at 38 years old. Sure I’d said it lots of times before then but it was the knowledge of Love, the longing for it that uttered those words. I’d heard throughout my life “well, there are different kinds of Love”. I come out of agreement with that. It lets you justify there are levels of love which introduces confusion…is this love? I love chocolate and I love my grandmother are surely not the same love? There’s Love and there’s not love. Almost love is still not love. ‘Kind of’ is ‘sort of’ and still not love. 

My previous installments of ‘sort of’ Love in hindsight (20/20) was more akin to caring, duty, and again longing for it. It was a matter of principles or loyalty to the fact that, well I said it so I can’t take it back, rather than anything true and selfless. I knew it existed despite my continuous failed attempts. 

I tried pretending, considering myself an expert in the world of make believe, having spent so much of my life there. It’s a nice place to visit, until I realized it’s main exports are distraction and escape. Shouldn’t I be enjoying the living while I’m still living? Pretend love is, you guessed it, also not love. 

This post took a turn I was not expecting. Sometimes when I don’t know what to write about, I begin typing enthusiastically and see what springs forth. 

I was listening to love songs today (Particularly Eva Cassidy, John Denver, Both Elvis’s: The and Costello). Not songs of loss like most love songs are, but songs of loving. Songs that before my experience of love didn’t get past the first layer. 

Now the experience is something else entirely that I am still surprised by and can't quite articulate yet. 

While various emotions and human experiences may fill you up for a time, love fills to overflowing. Love flows through you from a higher place that is infinite. It pours out your heart, your pores, your eyes, your mouth and extends to cover everyone around you. You want to improve the lives of anyone breathing, even the jerks. You suddenly understand why people have babies and even, more than one baby. Because it’s so enormous and glorious, you are compelled to share it. And it's the only thing that actually gets bigger when you give it away.

I was not an A student when it came to the essay. I vaguely remember it was the conclusion that my professor could never find. Well, it’s because nothing is ever concluded! 

This is ongoing, there is no conclusion. =) 

But I will end with this hope I have for you the reader.

I hope you were encouraged. Please know the experience far surpasses the knowledge. 

Early to late bloomers alike find Love to always be right on time. I hope for you the filled to overflowing experience of love. 

1 John 3:18

Dear ones, let us not love merely in theory, with word or with tongue [giving lip service to compassion], but in action and in truth, in practice and in sincerity, because practical acts of love are more than words.

Colossians 3:14

Beyond all these things put on and wrap yourselves in unselfish love, which is the perfect bond of unity for everything is bound together in agreement when each one seeks the best for others. 

1 Corinthians 16:14

Let everything you do be done in love.

I want to be spilled out, I want to be spilled out

I want to go all out in my love for you

Beau Maddox “Keep My Heart Tender”