I am in full-on ostrich mode.

This week, though I am clear on the other side of the country from Boston and have never been a fan of Texas politics (hey, I’m a California girl!), has been very hard on my spirit – and I would *never* wish such hell as those two places and the people who live there have gone through this week. It’s been hard on the spirit of everyone I know, for that matter. The news (such as it is) has been unrelenting.

So without further ado, let me share what I harvested from my garden yesterday with you.

Artichokes, a small green pepper, strawberries, green onions, and spinach, all fresh from the garden.

This made an excellent salad, and leftover spinach went into my morning green machine drink (which helps keep my spirits up). The onion smelled sharp and the spinach was so thick, deep green, and crisp. Packaged spinach pales in comparison.

The garden in March, 2013

This picture leaves out five or six of the new beds that Tom and the boys put in this year, off to the left. Most of those beds have tomatoes and zucchini in them. And the firepit (a repurposed dryer drum) is where we sit and drink wine and Tom plays guitar as the sun sets.

In the garden, there are birds and bugs, bees and butterflies and beauty everywhere I look. It is a place where I can take out frustrations as I weed, where I can sink my hands into soil that we’ve amended with our own mulch pile, where I can feel the sun on my back and the wind in my face. Where I can plant, to add a bit of beauty to the world that seems in desperate need of beauty.

I’m supposed to go to work, I’m supposed to go see a friend in her play tonight, I’m supposed to…so many things. All I want to do is be an ostrich for a day and stay in my garden (with my booted foot and all) and think on simple things. Beautiful things.

Shaun Rosenberg says that watching the news is bad for you, and he’s not the only one. Here’s another post  at Disrupting the Rabblement on why watching the news is bad. James DelCamp Junior ALSO has a post on the news = bad. Google it yourself – you won’t run out of sites, trust me. It’s all over the place.

So I shall load  up my car with music, and I shall ignore newsfeeds about the outside world. If I need to get caught up, it won’t take long. In the meantime, my bloodpressure and my anxiety level will go down about a million points or whatever by not focusing on all the bad.

You shall find me, metaphorically at any rate, in my garden, looking at the flowers that wintered over just beautifully.

My “hit of happy”.

And if I’m not in my garden, I’m cuddling the biggest cat I’ve ever seen. Zaphod is a polydactyl and he prefers to sleep draped across my chest. If the husband is home, he likes sleeping across Tom’s throat. But he purrs and he licks and he head butts me, and I love him to bits.

Zaphod, weighing in on our receipt filing system.

Here’s hoping your weekend is better than your week has been; here’s hoping next week will be a better one for our country.

~oOo~

Be good to one another. Spend your love rashly instead of hoarding it, for by spreading it around, more will come back to you. Till the next time, hugs!