Divergent Thinking..

I picked up some fabric on the recent quilt show outing for the express purpose of making cards.  New additions to the stash/inventory often kick start a creative spurt.    LOVE that!  Another part of creative process is seeing things other people create, in totally different media, and applying it to things I like to create.  Other times I walk into my little space and see the bits that are lying around and put together become a lovely card, I guess that's why I don't toss them out right away.

Saturdays are chore day at our house.  We all band together and "git 'er done" before we scatter and do our own things.  This week,with the boys all out of the house on various pre-breakfast outings, I snuck downstairs with my morning coffee and made cards.   I'm a big fan of using my energy to get all the work done and THEN enjoying the reward of accomplishment and relaxation.  So many ideas...so little time. 

I saw a short video on education and divergent thinking this week.   Part of it gave a scathing critique on how the education system teaches imagination right out of our kids by forcing them all along the same learning path at the same rate....   It's good to step off the path and provide different learning activities that offer different ways of learning to engage more students more of the time.  Over the years I've learned how tactile I am and how much love working with things and moving them with my hands.   I love the feel of fabric!! I love tattering and fraying edges.   I love how words pour out of my heart through the pen in my hand and seeing the words appear on the page of a great notebook.   It's a totally different feeling than watching the letters appear one by one on a screen amid the clatter of keyboard keys...but I love that too.   (I think I love everything!!)  I love creating in response to a nudge, knowing that there is Someone much more creative than I behind it all.   I LOVE being an conduit...

Starting my Saturday in a different way changed the whole outlook of the day.   Using that fresh energy in a creative process instead of things of no consequence.   (Well....one might argue that an empty socks and underwear drawer does have consequences that affect the greater good of society....).  I thought it would be appropriate to test this theory on a weekday as well making a card on a morning before brekkie!! :)

Maybe everyone has little little things in their life by which they can measure their inner gladness; when your "song" flows fluidly, when you can stop and think and hear God's whisper, and it's as close to how things should be...when you have time to stop and listen and hear and think and  respond and make and create.  These thimbles full of "free time" and creative solitude, a space in which the Spirit can move.

 I know that all around me there are people in need, who are not in a season of gladness, who hurt over brokenness, and can't engage in this luxury.  At the same time there are people out there with blessings to celebrate;  New jobs, new marriages, new paths, and new babies!!     It has been good for life to slow down and be able to respond when someone needs a card; to be a conduit of Grace rather than a cog in the wheel.

Basil Cam...

 ....wouldn't that be neat?  Time-lapse photography of herbs "hatching".  I'm just amazed by this little miracle every spring. Cooking with fresh herbs is so easy (if you can cook with the dried stuff....you can cook with the fresh stuff!) and growing them is too.   You should try it.   Seriously!  You'll love it.  
This year I am growing basil, cilantro (I hate the smell of it on my hands but it's sooooo good in fresh salsa!), and I'm trying rosemary for the first time (it costs a fortune to buy it fresh in the store and a packet of seeds costs less than a bunch of (wilted) herbs!)  And we always plant some romaine lettuce.  

I can never resist the poppy although the foliage never makes it through our windy, monsoon rainy spring weather....the stalks are sprawled all over the driveway...every single year....but I just can't give up on them.  They're too spectacular :)  Some years I remember to put a bungee cord around the plant before the rain hits.  This year?   ...not so much.

And we had a bit of a "spritz" this morning.  A bag of garbage floated by and got stranded in the middle of the road.  I was as amused as one can get at 5am. The dog was not happy about the storm...I always thought she was indifferent.  I think she sneaked into my room...I thought Craig was walking around but apparently he took her collar off when the constant jingle that accompanied her restless pacing was keeping him from going back to sleep.   Hmm.

Every year I buy a few annuals. I don't plan to buy many...it just sort of happens.  I suppose it is inevitable when you wander around the garden centre for a few days.   I love perennials because they're low maintenance....we suit one another that way...but annuals are great for a few pots on my patio (close to the tap...I wasn't kidding when I said low maintenance !)  There is always something different out there in the garden centre and I think...I just want to try that one.

I really like lobelia. No...I LOVE lobelia, and it reminds me of my friend Rita.  I love things that remind me of people.  She once told me the story of how she loves lobelia too, but that it's so hard to keep in our warm (okay...stinkin' hot) summers, especially in planters that get a lot of sun. Her sweet man wondered why she keeps buying it?   And still we indulge, even in things that aren't practical.  There is a bit of shade conveniently provided by the railing of the deck, and the little spot or two at the back of some of my planters around the yard for some of these pretty little flowers.  .A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do :)

My eyes love to see these pretty things.   These ordinary everyday little miracles; seeds that burst with new life, and flowers that bloom in places that they shouldn't.