Category healing

Transitions

llzranch 2 Comments
September Sunset

September is glorious sunrises and sunsets, warm days, open-window cool nights, and a sense of time stretching forever. It’s a time of transition from summer to fall, air conditioning to heating, garden harvest to preserving food for winter.

I had a large apple harvest this year. I made a lot of applesauce.

http://dish.allrecipes.com/how-to-make-applesauce/

Weather changes affect mood

In Autumn, September’s warm, balmy days switch to October’s variability. October can be a glorious display of tree colors, visits to pumpkin patches, and bountiful fall harvests. October can also turn into soggy, overcast dreary days stretching into an early winter. October is a time of Halloween parties, fun decorations, and playing dress-up for kids of all ages. October is usually a combination of all those transitions moving us gradually or suddenly toward winter in the northern hemisphere.

We move from fourteen hours of daylight in August to ten by the end of the October. I move my houseplants back in the house after a summer in the bright light. Most of them have adjustment issues in the dimmer indoor light. When plants have difficulty adjusting to less light, drop their leaves, and become semi-dormant, it’s an alert that people face the same challenge.

Depression is a difficult mental health condition for many. With the lowering of light levels during the winter months, depression can heighten for those already challenged. Known as Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, winter depression affects people who feel fine in the summer months but lapse into depression in the winter. These folks often dread winter for many reasons. Getting up in the dark, shoveling snow, traveling on icy roads, and coping with everyday challenges is heightened during the dark months ahead.

Help is available

Counselors can help their clients make these transitions and prepare for low light conditions. Knowing that last’s years depression can return with the change in light level, helps people know that it’s time to check in with their mental health professional, begin to care for themselves, and consider adding extra light to one’s routine; e.g. setting a timer to your bed side light so it lights your room before the alarm begins your day.  Each person’s situation often has multiple challenges. It’s always a good idea to talk over your issues with a professional.

Timing

llzranch 1 Comment
Milkweed flowers begin to open

When to prune and when to let go

Mowing for Monarchs 101
7/27/2019
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Gardens, lawns, fields, roadsides, right-of-ways all provide vital habitat for monarchs and other pollinators. How we manage this habitat must be done with care to help protect our monarchs!

by Rebecca Chandler
Garden Educator, Naturalist and Ethnobotanist

So many things depend on timing. I am reminded of this by the radio in my sewing room that reliably turns itself on at 8:00 am every day, runs for a few minutes, then shuts off. I’ve tried to re-program it without result. I’m writing this from my office, a floor above the sewing room, where sound carries surprisingly well. I could turn down the sound, unplug the radio, or, gasp, read the radio’s directions, but I’m leaving it alone because the alarm has a role to play in my day.

As the author of the Mowing for Monarch 101 article states so well, we can manage our green spaces to promote butterfly life. I believe we can manage our time to create a more peaceful life, and we can support each other during good times and bad.

This year there’s some monarchs, a few yellow swallowtails, and a flamboyance of painted ladies in my yard. They draw nectar from lilies, phlox, swamp weed butterfly plant, and asters that are just coming into bloom. When I stand still in the garden, they light on my shoulder and in my hair.

Swamp weed butterfly plant loaded with butterflies

There have been multiple articles published recently recounting the benefits of gardening where we get our hands dirty. This one is a good example, https://gardeninggonewild.com/13-reasons-why-gardening-is-good-for-your-health/. Another example is my poem, Garden Therapy, published in Nebraska Life Magazine this month http://www.nebraskalife.com/July-2019/July-August-2019/

Time spent outside away from social media is good for young and old alike. Ordinarily, I’d be outside taking care of pruning, harvesting, or mowing on a sunny August day, rather than writing this blog. However, it’s one of those 90 degree days with high humidity that makes it feel close to 100 degrees. It’s as if Mother Nature is having a hot flash and just wants to be left alone. I’m happy to oblige her and let go.

City Travel

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Welcome, new visitors to my blog. I typically write about country life, and as the readers who follow my posts are aware, I live on a ranch in a rural area, remote from most urban settings. 

Last weekend I ventured into Minneapolis with a friend.  We saw the musical, Guys and Dolls, at the Guthrie Theatre, spent a day at the Minneapolis Art Institute’s special exhibit of Native Women’s Art, and attended the air show, Wings of the North, among other urban adventures.

It’s tough to get used to so much traffic, Minneapolis’ complex interstate system, and limited or expensive parking when my daily drive is usually over gravel roads and parking is never an issue. The only obstacles in my area are slow-moving tractors conveying large equipment from one place to another.

Guthrie Theatre: https://www.guthrietheater.org/

Guthrie Theatre Sign under a full moon above & stage set for Guys and Dolls below

A windowless hotel room, conspired with my touch of vertigo, to disrupt my sense of direction in the city.  Thanks to GPS, we got to our destinations, even though I believed west was east the entire time.  My internal direction-finder began to function again, as we drove toward home, in bright sunshine.

Minneapolis Art Institute: Hearts of our People Native Women Artists exhibit https://new.artsmia.org/

Blanket Totem Pole above and Egyptian Horse below

  Wings of the North: https://www.wotn.org/airexpo/  

 Biplane pictured first. One of the two B-52’s still flying, from WWII, flew over the airshow, pictured second.

The special events were wonderful and I’m glad I was there, but my favorite stops were to the Next Chapter Booksellers https://www.nextchapterbooksellers.com/ and Dunn Bros coffee shop http://www.dunnbrosgrand.com/.  I prefer to spend my book dollars in an indie bookstore, rather than online at a commercial giant, like Amazon.  There’s nothing like a good cup of coffee and a treat, like this delicious tiramisu, after book shopping.

Both establishments are located across the street from Macalester College https://www.macalester.edu/. The campus is tree-covered, and no doubt storied, for the undergraduates of this liberal arts college.  I love walking around college and university campuses when visiting college towns or neighborhoods.  It’s fun to imaging having attended there.  It’s probably not a surprise that I feel “warm and fuzzy” about higher education.  After all, I graduated from two universities and worked for a college in a third town, for nearly forty years.

We stopped at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Shop in La Mars for a final treat of chocolate cones before heading home.  Terrific ice cream and fun little blue bunnies are all over the shop. https://www.bluebunny.com/  

Gardening

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I started my vegetable garden later than usual this spring due to the unusually cool, wet, spring in Nebraska. It’s taking off just fine now and is producing many veggies as well as inspiration for writing and therapy.

Garden 2019

My poem Garden Therapy was published by Nebraska Life in the July/August 2019 issue. http://www.nebraskalife.com/

 I try to spend some time in the garden every day, but especially when there’s a knotty problem to solve, or to help with loss of a loved one. A dear friend recently died after a tough bout with cancer. I wrote about her death in my last blog. I’m thinking about her again today as her family gathers in her home state for a second memorial service.

An article that offers some science behind my supposition that gardening is therapeutic, can be found at https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/antidepressant-microbes-soil.htm?fbclid=IwAR3LjWhkRiADzn9Nk4x6Bqm

Gardening Sestina, another gardening-related poem, was just published in Fine Lines, summer 2019, Volume 28, Issue 2, Edited by David Martin and available at http://finelines.org/

I’m very fond of flower gardens. My rural place has many perennial beds. Something is always blooming in the garden from the season’s first tulips in April (occasionally as early as March), to the last of the October blooms. I have house plants that bloom inside during winter months to cheer those cold days.

Tulips
Daisies

And some poems depict imaginary gardens such as Cherimoya Vine, and Corpse Flower published online in Poppy Road Review. https://poppyroadreview.blogspot.com/search?q=lin+brummels