UBC Day 10 – Resolves and Excuses

Posted on July 10, 2023 by hafong

I had intentions of showing up here in the morning. I had intentions of going to the gym this morning. I’ve done neither. So much for intentions and resolves. My desire for the gym dissolved quickly with thoughts of a day of cuppa and relaxing on the deck. I didn’t do that either. I stepped out to the garden and that was it. The morning was gone. It has been hot with no rain for awhile. The haskaps were drooping and looking poorly. We were fortunate our rain catchment still had enough water to water the 3 haskap and cherry bushes. Even though I took care with putting the netting over them, the birds can still get in. I found one flopping around in it and took a bit to help it out. Even though the berries are under the branches and not easily visible to us, they can still detect them. If not for the netting, there would be no fruit for us.

One thing always lead to another. I had to check the tomatoes for suckers and that they are clipped adequately to the trelis. The Big Beefs are big like their name and getting weighty. They must be in their sweet spot. Most of the plants are sporting 15 fruits so far. It’s a strange growing season. It’s still early July and they’re so advanced. I have one Roma tomato ripe and ready to eat. Meanwhile our garlic was harvested yesterday and drying in the shed.

Then I had to check the raised beds. The greens bed was overgrown with kale and Swiss Chard. There’s only so much 2 people can consume. It was hard but I thinned out quite a bit. They’re now compost. The spinach met the same fate as they’ve flowered and gone to seed. It all freed up some room for a second crop of cabbage. Meanwhile the new little gem lettuce is looking quite nice. I’m a happy camper.

New cabbage planted in with the lettle, kale and Swiss Chard

I could go on but it is almost 2 pm. I have laundry to hang and our plots in the community garden to water. Enough is enough. Tomorrow is another day.

UBC DAY 9 – Changing Routines/Feelings

Posted on July 9, 2023 by hafong

It’s morning and I’m at my keyboard. I’m trying to see if changing the time I do things will change my success. I’m still harbouring some of my ‘ill feelings’ of last evening. In my mind’s eye, I can see that it is of no benefit to me. It is what is meant by shooting oneself in the foot. I surely don’t want to do that. I’m learning to let go and change the way I feel. Changing either will not be an easy task. Habits and feelings have deep roots. And it is easy to go the way of the well known rut. I will probably still shoot myself in the foot many times in the process. But now I am aware.

Do I want to succeed or not? Do I want to feel better or not? These are the questions I have to ask myself frequently to keep on track when I revert back to the old ways. The small start I made here earlier is giving me a springboard for more. Even though I was interrupted by breakfast and watering the garden, the threads are still there. I just have to gather them up and weave them together. In the meantime they had time to develop more in the back of my mind.

I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea to incorporate other little changes during this writing challenge. It could be fun and help develop a new and better neural network. I’m putting it to a test right off. Instead of my usual cuppa Orange Pekoe or decaf coffee, I’m sipping fresh chocolate mint right from my herb spiral. The other day I tried the ‘weed’ plantain. It was quite pleasant. Last night I sipped bitter melon to dispel the bitterness in my soul. Whether it will work is another matter but I do like the bitter taste. I have quite a few of the plants growing in the greenhouse. I have endless supply of leaves for tea. There’s quite a few fruits developing, too. In the morning, the fragrance of their blooms is heavenly. Bitter fruit from sweet blossoms. Is that the same as no mud, no lotus?

UBC Day 8 – Daily Struggle

Posted on July 8, 2023 by hafong

I got caught by the procrastination bug. I am now just sitting down to my keyboard. It was easier to delay than fight my lassitude. Now time is running out. It is a must or bust. Can I write something out of nothing? Things seem to work better mornings. I work better mornings. My head is better, free of the day’s debris. Why is it that I don’t do my writing in the morning?

Though I can face a blank index card, draw and paint a picture, it’s harder with works and a blank screen. So I dilly dally, fooling, telling myself I will get to it after this and that. By the time when I’m finally here, the ideas and thoughts I had are gone. I am left scratching my head, moaning ‘why didn’t I do this sooner.’ It is worth remembering that old wise saying ‘No use crying over spilt milk.’

I am not crying but feeling rather ‘unfriendly’ and ‘unpleasant’. It is apt that I’m sitting here sipping bitter melon tea. It is pleasant and cool out here on the deck and still fairly light at 9:30 in evening. I shall sit here with the evening and listen to the Saturday night traffic for awhile. Though it is frustrating, I do love the struggle of writing. What a miracle it is to have words to spill onto the page/screen. They can paint pictures and feelings. They can tell stories. Where would we be without them?

UBC DAY 6 & 7 – It Will Work Out

Posted on July 7, 2023 by hafong

It pays to come to the keyboard daily. I took a day off yesterday and delayed today. Here I am finally with not a word or idea. But it will work out somehow because I can’t publish or share a blank post. My excuse was I was tired and a little off yesterday and still so today. It was easy to give in and lose myself in a John Grisham novel, Gray Mountain. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was an easy to read and hard to put down. I am quite surprised to find so many negative reviews on Goodreads.

I’m not sure taking a day off from my routine was a good idea. I felt more ‘off’ having done so. Routines are so grounding. I’m working to find my way back to them. When I’m feeling lost, I can always find myself in the garden. So that’s where I spent most of today. I have alot of garden. It took most of the morning just watering the tomatoes and squash, filling the 3 raised garden beds in the backyard and 3 in the front. I spent the afternoon watering and weeding the flower beds. Then there’s the greenhouse and the main garden. There’s no lack of work. I enjoy it all once I get started. There is satisfaction seeing the results and a guarantee of a good night’s sleep from the physical labour.

UBC DAY 5 – Pink Elephant

Posted on July 5, 2023 by hafong

Besides this writing challenge, I’m halfway through the Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Ch allenge. I’ve been doing that for a few years with very smooth sailing this year. Words conjure up pictures and pictures evoke words. It creates a very happy creative space for me. I’m working a day ahead with the word prompt ‘imaginary‘. The picture that popped up in my head was a pink elephant. We all know that the only pink elephants that exist are in our imagination/hallucination. We can’t really see it but we surely feels the weight of it. Yet most of us do not speak of it.

I’m a bit of an exception, being contrary and all that. My experiences of pointing out the pink elephant in the room have been all negative. It did not help one tiny bit but caused friction and rift in my relationships. My advice is to just paint them. Do not address them verbally. Just know that all the parties are aware of that pink elephant in the room. Being wiser now, if I see a pink elephant I would walk out and go into a different room.

UBC Day 4 – Disconnect and Distress

Posted on July 4, 2023 by hafong

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I think I was premature in saying that I’m doing well inspite of the weather. I should be careful in speaking too soon. Shortly after that, things happened. Our Wifi and landline went kaputs. Also our TV since it’s on Wifi. But we had our cellphones and that’s how we could call our provider for help. It wasn’t all that easy to connect with them. When we did, we learned that they couldn’t come till Friday, which was 4 days away. I didn’t know how addicted I was to be connected 24/7. I didn’t know I could get so distressed. Life hadn’t changed except that I couldn’t get Internet and watch TV. I still have a phone. But I felt like I was in a vacuum, closed in and jittery.

I must say that our provider has some very kind and able workers. They gave us extra data on our phone so that we could use the Hotspot to access the Internet and how to use it. They moved our appointment up a day. I think she heard me say that I could go crazy by Friday. The best news was they phoned back to say they had a cancellation and someone came today. Everything was fixed in a very short time. The technician gave me some helpful technical pointers. So Yay! I felt so much better that the TV was on for background noise. I felt part of the world again.

This experience made me realize how vulnerable and dependent we are on technology. What if the whole system crashed and everyone was out of service. I can’t imagine a multitude of people like me going bonkers and twitching at the same time. I think I will try to schedule regular technology-free days to calm myself and disengage from this rat race. I feel very much like a kid who has to push every button he sees. What did we do before when there was no cellphones, Wifi, computers and Internet?

Oh, yes, I still blame the weather. Today is cloudy and even cooler than yesteray. I am wearing fleece. At least I haven’t turn on the furnace. It is July, isn’t it?

UBC DAY 3 – Change

Posted on July 3, 2023 by hafong

Just like that, overnight, the blistering heat of 30℃ dropped. It’s a cool cloudy windy 18℃ at 10:30 in the morning. There’s smoke in the air. These are not inviting conditions for me to wander out for my walk in the garden. I’m not overly keen on weeding either. However, I have made a short trek to the greenhouse to see if there are cucumber and bittermelon blossoms to pollinate. I’ve found and pollinate one of each.

This is what our summer is like this year, constant change. It’s the 3rd of July but it feels like fall today. A few days ago it was hot, hot with thunderstorms and thankfully rain. So despite this weird extreme pattern, the garden is doing well. Surprisingly, weather sensitive me, is too. After half a life time of complaining about the weather, I realized that it doesn’t help one little bit. I can’t change the weather, but I can learn to change how it affects me.

So today is not a great day for me to be outdoors. But I can finally open the blinds in the sunroom. They’ve been closed 24/7 because of the sun and heat. It’s a relief to have natural light and to be able to look out the windows. I’m not weeding in the garden but at last I’m ‘weeding’ a wee bit inside, doing some necessary dusting and picking up a few scattered odds and ends. It’s not as much fun but if I do it often enough, it will become a habit. The results – a clean, neat house where most things can be found can lead to a new found joy.

JULY – UBC – DAY 2, Work

Posted on July 2, 2023 by hafong

Now that I have delt with the why of this challenge, I like to talk about how I’m going to succeed. For that to happen I need to put in the time and effort. In other words, I have to work. It wouldn’t hurt to be more thoughtful about goals and planning. Besides the love of words and writing, what do I hope to gain from this exercise? Having a daily practice gives me structure. It channels my energy into something useful and sometimes beautiful. My daily morning weeding has resulted in such. I hope my daily July writing will do the same.

This year I have been gardening since March. I started off first with starting seeds for the greenhouse. I had no written plans. They were all in my head based on the previous year’s experience. Perhaps if I had kept a written garden journal, I would have much more success. I did make a start, jotting down what seeds, dates of seeding and germination. But as the season got busier, it all got left by the wayside. The thing is, I started. I have some written records. I have not failed. I can pick it up again now that I’m writing about it. I can make notes of what is doing well and what is not. I can make notes of where the sweet spots are for certain veggies. The celery certainly are doing well in the raised beds. I’m having my first real success with the cabbages and broccoli by having them planted early, early in the spring.

It takes time to see the fruits of your labour. Having a vision of my goal gives me directions of where to go and how to get there. Patience is a great teacher. My garden and yard is a wonderful laboratory to experiment, learn and work in. There are no mistakes. Some things work better than others. It is always evolving like our lives. The page can be another growing space. Words and sentences are my garden tools here. But I have to put in the time and effort. I have to show up daily.

THE WAY I AM

Posted on January 19, 2020 by hafong

There’s no denying myself. I am what I am though I would like to be a little different. I would like to be more organized, tidier, more timely, more mellow, more energetic, more of many things. I said I would like to be. I did not say I aspire. If I did, I would be more successful than just wishing for. One does not get by yearning. One must do.

I must learn to aspire to do whatever I wish for. Or else I must accept my repeated echoes of my daily failures – wishing for a different outcome by doing the same thing. It is what Dr. Phil and other head doctors call insanity. It seems simple enough. Change what I do. But is it that simple? So easy to fall back into the default mode, doing the same old, same old. What to do next?

It would help to make a list of changes I want to see. Make one change at a time and work on it for a week. Then add another change and work on it for a week. And so on and on. I must get on it tomorrow and make my list. Then proceed from there, building one thing at a time and adding on. I can do it. The alternative is living in daily disarray, wasting time and energy looking and searching for things, trying to get on top of the game, feeling guilty, feeling incompetitent, feeling lousy, feeling d-r-a-g-g-e-d out. You get the picture.

I aspire to be organized, tidy, focused and on top of things so I can relax and have some nothing times. I aspire to have some empty times when I’m not thinking of ‘doing’ constantly. The only time I’m not doing is 20 minutes in the morning when I’m meditating. I want MORE. There! The end of day 19 of UBC and another video featuring Sheba.

onethousandandtwo

Looking at Infinity

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