Monthly Archives: August 2025

August Was

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August was fleeting. It came and now it’s on the way out. I do not remember much of it except that it was hot and dry for the last half. It made a loud exit yesterday with two big and quick thunder showers leaving a stream of water flowing down the back alley. It was all welcomed by me.The air was quickly cooled and the garden quenched.

Funky as this spring and summer has been, August brought a bountiful harvest. I have been harvesting buckets of tomatoes. I’ve been blanching and freezing peas and beans. Our city allotment garden has been very productive with beets, potatoes, corn and squash. Yesterday I harvested 15 kohlrabi, 4 cabbages and a handful of goji berries. We shall have a full larder for the winter. I am grateful.

August Heat

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Another hot 30℃ August day, the kind of heat we wanted in July but never got. Makes me wonder what kind of winter we will have. So many unusual and unpredictable weather patterns. How will we navigate the future? Will our planet survive what we have been doing to it? And can/will we change our ways? We seem to be hell bent on going down the same path – fast everything, more money and more stuff.

I am not hopeful but at the same time, I am not hopeless either. I am still interested and engaged in this little life of mine. I am doing my best in not adding to the stress of the planet. Perhaps it means little to the grand scheme of things to say I recycle. But I do. I recycle and compost. I save rain water. I even save water I wash my vegetables with. Perhaps I do go a little overboard sometimes and exhaust myself. But I’m happy to have that extra water to throw on the strawberry plants. They pay back with beautiful delicious red fruits.

I feel very fortunate that I am able to do the work of growing my own food and to share some with family and friends. I am grateful that I find joy and fulfillment in working the soil. It keeps me sane and grounded when life is hard. And it is always hard.

This Time Last Year

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Another beautiful sunny August morning, the kind that you want to last forever. I know it can’t. And so I linger in it and savour, taking in as much as I can in these moments. This time last year my mother was still alive, still breathing, still getting up. This time last year, I was going to the Asian Market to get the things she wanted to cook with. This time last year my greenhouse was full of bitter melon vines and fruit. What a difference a year makes.

This year there is no mother. She has departed 10 months now. Life feels strange without her and yet it goes on. We go on. This year there is no bitter melon in the greenhouse. They would not and did not thrive. Perhaps there has been enough bitterness this year. And I did grow them for her though I love them, too. Maybe next year I can try growing them again. There is a time for everything.

No Reason At All

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Another beautiful sunny August morning. I’m on my second cup of tea. I should be getting on with my day but I haven’t been able to give up this indulgence. It’s harmless and maybe helpful and healthful. So let me indulge away. Beautiful as these August days are, I have to remind myself the days are getting shorter. The sun rises later and sets earlier. Sometimes I find my moods turning on a dime, feeling bad all of a sudden, for no reasonable reason.

I turn on myself, not being kind or generous. It takes a moment before the light bulb clicks on. I realize then that it is late August and perhaps it is my old friend, SAD, calling again. I feel better that there is a reason, a cause and that I am not just a miserable good for nothing person. I haven’t yet ascended to the level where I can accept that it is ok to feel whatever I feel without a reason. But I am better at letting these moods pass on their own. I am not so dogged at ‘fixing myself’. Perhaps I am at last learning about acceptance.

Sunrise

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It was so beautiful and comforting to see the sunrise this morning. I took a moment to give thanks to whoever/whatever is responsible for this day. I took time to sit in silence with my morning tea, for this day will not come again. The sun will still rise every day but the light and air will never be quite the same. Nor will the petunias and all the living things. I, too, will never see, hear or feel the same as I do in this very moement.

It is an astounding realization of how precious the present moment is. It brings to mind Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day. 

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Pausing

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They say a change is as good as a rest. Pausing is certainly a change for me. Not knowing, undecided as to what to do, I did the big pause yesterday. I gave up fussing, thinking and plopped myself in the recliner, covered myelf with my little blanket and gave myself up to nothingness. It felt strange and uncomfortable at first. I had to resist from getting up and start doing. Then slowly I began to feel ease and warmth seeping in. It was wonderful. I luxuriated in the moment.

I had frequent pauses in the past. I reveled in idleness, sipping my tea and listening to CBC in the mornings. I felt no rush, urgencies or emergencies. I was a happy sloth even though I did wished for more vim and rigor. Now that I got my wish and became an Eveready Bunny, I don’t quite like it. It’s not who I am. Once energized and wound up, I couldn’t stop. I went on and on, one thing after another. I didn’t feel any better, more efficient or more accomplished. What I felt more of was tiredness, of being distracted, forgetful and short tempered.

Yesterday was a pause, a gift. I can see and feel more clearly now.

A Privilege

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It’s another day in August. Not too many more days left now. It’s starting to feel like autumn. Not that we’ve had much of a summer. I’m not complaining but learning to appreciate what we have. I’ve been listening to my favourite muse, Caroline Myss, again. She has said many times that it is a privilege to be living in these times. So as hard and painful life has been, I am grateful to be alive and awake to what we have today. I shall take this gift to explore and learn.

“This is an era of dynamic change, as well as chaos—but truly, it is a privilege to be alive at a time when we are discovering so much about the power of our own nature.“

Though I try not to scroll in the morning, it is hard to escape the headlines. This morning it was the news of a crematorium with 381 bodies thrown indiscriminately on the floor without being cremated. A horrible story, not good for the soul but one that needed to be told. We need to know that light and darkness exist in this world we live in. I am an adult. I am strong. I must not turn away and hide my head in the sand. Evil and goodness do exist.

My list of Hard to Dos

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Life is hard. It doesn’t seem fair that it is so. There’s nothing I can do to change all that. The only thing I can change is myself and my attitudes. It is easy to make resolutions but not so to fulfill them. It is hard to get out of the ruts and harder still to stay out. I gravitate towards easy and the couch with a snack. But at least I’ve found my way to the keyboard. It’s a beginning of a journey towards doing the hard stuff.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m buried under an avalanche of hard to do stuff. When I think about it, I don’t understand why they are so hard. Why is the garbage hard to take out? Why is picking up something off the floor hard to do? All that is required is movement but I am often frozen, immobilized, my synapses not snapping and my limbs not moving. That is the why I come to the keyboard. I’m tapping for guidance. I’m tapping for motivation. I’m tapping for energy.

Kitchen and bathroom floors are more of the hard to do stuff. I’ve washed both this morning. Once I got started it didn’t feel so difficult and I wonder why I felt that it was so hard. By now I know not to vow to do them more often. I’ve vowed often enough and it has never happened. I have accepted some things will always feel distasteful and hard to do. That’s just how it is.

It is the end of the day. I’m sipping my decaf, waiting for supper, trying to bring this post to an end. My days are always busy. I am never bored. There’s always things to do – the garden and greenhouse to water, tomatoes to pick, cucumbers to harvest, seedlings to transplant. I’m hoping for a second crop of kohlrabi. These things are not hard to do. They come naturally without thought. But I am tired. My body and head need a rest.

Resolves, faults and truths

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Resolves are so easy to make but carrying them out is not so easy to do. Being human I will most likely continue to make resolves and procrastinate. It is unfortunate that some things are not as natural as breathing. It is difficult to start anything. It is easy to see others’ faults but we are blind to our own. When others try to point it out to us, we evade and make excuses. We hate to face our truths. I’m more awake now and seeing that in myself . I am resolving to do my best in changing my ways.

It helps to come to my keyboard and cement my thoughts and feelings in words. They are not so easily swept under clouds of forgetfulness. It is hard for me to show up these days without a challenge like the Ultimate Blog Challenge, the100dayproject and the dyicad. I have been feeling rudderless without words to tap and pictures to draw and paint. It is good that I still have Susannah Conway’s August Break photo challenge to start/end each day in August.

So I resolve to come to the keyboard each day even if it is a short stint. I will try to make a small art every day. I resolve not to dwell on mine or others’ faults. I will not push for others to face their truths. I will accept our human frailities. Excuses protect our fragility. Somethimes we need that. Sometimes we can’t face being broken open. And what good is being broken?

Lost

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It’s been awhile since I’ve been here. 18 days feels like a long time. I’m at a loss for words. Each day I had intentions of finding my way back to the keyboard. I’m finding that intentions means beans as each day ends without results. Today without setting any goals and intentions, I’ve finally found myself back to this place. Though it did not get very good reviews on Goodreads, reading a few pages of Julia Cameron’s The Listening Path this morning helped guide me back.Whatever works is good.

It’s ten months since my mother has passed. Ten months feels short and long at the same time. Time is a funny thing. So is life and death. I’m at a loss of many things besides words. How am I to express myself? How am I to find myself back to normal? What a cunundrum. So I am writing for guidance. I am reading Julia Cameron to quiet my brain and to learn to listen. I’ve just discovered that my head is a busy, noisy place. It is full of chaos. I have no order of thoughts. I must quiet myself and sort out the mess. I must find the way back to morning and afternoon meditations, even if it is only 5 minutes.