Taking time to smell the roses

The evening is warm and my front porch welcoming after a long day. The roses that edge my driveway and cabin entrance are humming with bumblebees and hummingbirds. Each night I accomplish another project around my home, last night -potting my flowers, the night before -mowing the lawn....again. Tonight I am just allowing myself to rest and enjoy the hour before the sun dips behind the mountain and the temperature drops once more. We all have lists of tasks that is never ending. Once we check off a job, we add four more to the list. Tomorrow is a very big day for me at my job, a chance for me to showcase the research I have been doing with the cherry growers. Tonight I rest.

If I had it all

I was allowing myself a little daydream as I drove home from work today. I thought about what life would be like if I had all the money I wanted, the partner I dream of, the house overlooking the water that I imagine....if only I had those things I would be able to write stories full time. I would write and exercise and eat healthy food prepared with time and energy.

Really? I had to stop myself right there. If I had all the money I wanted, I'd be floating around the Mediterranean on an amazing yacht or in some other exotic land tasting the pleasures of life. Maybe I would write if I ever became bored. I’m sure I would have the best of intentions but what would be the motivation? Would I be prompted to write or paint or express myself?

I think of famous artists and authors who have endured heartaches and devastation. Their imaginative novels and paintings have been an outlet for their passions and pain. Our trials and tribulations provide a wellspring of material to draw upon for inspired works. It is our desire and our quest for more that spurs us ever onward. It is the times when we have conquered our fears or fallen in love or had an economic collapse that can provide the experience to produce something truly grand.

I wonder why that is. Does it make us feel closer to others to share our experiences? Is it an emotional release to create something from nothing? Is it our caring for others that impels us to make an object of beauty for others to enjoy? More to ponder for another night.

Characters

We are here on this planet for the experience. Our soul has orchestrated with other souls situations and dramas that allow us to experience all types of emotions. When we are not in a human body, it is all light and love; we are in complete union with our Creator.   On Earth, we feel the illusion of separation. We can experience what we are not.

We can manifest rage, rejection, hatred, humiliation and a sundry of other uncomfortable emotions. These emotions we cannot feel once we have transitioned.  We can continue to do this until we decide to make other choices. The decision is ours alone. Sometimes I truly question decisions I have made and yet when I look back, I have to think – “wow, I must have really wanted to feel that emotion deeply, what a great job I did inviting in all the right characters. Those characters played their roles perfectly.”

You cant feel betrayal to its maximum unless you have loved completely  and then had your loved one turn to another in dishonesty. You cant feel humiliation until all of your friends and family have learned of something that you did not want them to know. You cant know rage or heart ache unless a character comes to help you experience this emotion.

These negative emotions melt away in the light of wisdom. When you realize that your soul has arranged these situations and you have chosen to have these emotions in response you can make another choice. You can bless the characters as they arrive and say, “No, thank you. I have had this experience, I have felt these emotions and I choose to not do that again. I choose to only bring in characters that allow me to experience peace and harmony.” Your soul will probably bring in a few more to make sure you are solid in your choice. We came here to experience and as we see our part as director, we set a course to a life more in line with the life we have on the other side. We can come closer and closer to that life of love, light and a union with our Creator.

An excellent read is Neale Donald Walsh’s Little Soul and the Sun. He describes this concept in his children's book. I just love it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571740872?ie=UTF8&tag=enlightnetwor-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1571740872

Fish

Ok, so I have some friends that keep tellling me I should try online dating to meet new people. I thought, "what the heck, you can look at photos for free." So I put in my zip code and age range and looked at some photos of men in my area. I just have one question...why do so many men have a photo of themselves with a stringer of fish? Is this supposed to attract women or other sportsmen? Does this say, "honey, I can bring home food, dont you worry, or no matter what you want me to do with you, sweetie, I'm going fishing, or I have the biggest fish and I can prove it? I guess I'll leave that for some other ladies to figure out. For now, I'm not bitin'. 

What I would miss

If I should leave Montana, I would miss these June evenings. It is still dusk at 11:00pm and when I wake at 3:30 am I can see the dawn beginning to rise. I admit it was not easy getting used to going to bed while the sun was still up my first summer here. Natives laughed at my weary appearance. I was still out working in the yard on projects at 9:00 and hadnt had supper. That alarm seemed to ring pretty early when it took forever to fall asleep. I love the hummingbirds and  bluebirds  nesting in my yard. I am thrilled with the flowers I have planted around this cabin the past four years. Each year they try to out grow and perform each other. First it is the daffodils and tulips, then the iris, poppies and peonies, next lupines, delphiniums, lilies, hydrangeas and roses, last are the rudbekia and coreopsis. I'm sure I've missed a few in my list but I enjoy them all. My favorite time is on a weekend morning, coffee  in hand ,just as the sun comes over the mountain, when the grass is still wet with dew - to sit with my barefeet on the retaining wall and listen to nothing but the finches at the feeder or the turkeys on the hill. Sometimes the coyotes have not gone to bed and their yipping rolls down the hill. I sit among my flowers behind my cabin and bask in the early morning rays. This is my church and my time to give thanks for all of my blessings.

Sunflowers, snapdragons, blanket flowers, rudbeckias - late summer color.

Sweet cherry research

Sometimes I think my life has got to slow down. There are just too many great things to do in the world. I picked up my cherry growers, Tom, Bruce and Joe at 6:00 am after getting to bed after the cattle drive after 11:00. Back up at 4:00 to get ready and meet the guys. Helping the Flathead Lake cherry growers with research that mitigates their risk has been very rewarding to me. The cherry variety trials are now in their third year and we should see fruit this year. At the end of this month will be a field day where we showcase these trials to all 150 growers on the lake. Exciting times. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for this research but that is ok. Sometimes you have to do what you know is right in your heart.

Bruce Johnson, me, Tom Lawrence and Joe Hurst
 at the WSU experiment station in Prosser, WA

Driving cattle

Waiting for the cows

Dave Brandt's cattle drive is a great annual event. We push the cows about 12 miles up past Roger's Lake. This year we had 13 riders and 23 cow/calf pairs. Someone joked about "everyone just pick a cow". It's a fun time even if it poured rain. Lakota decided to be afraid of water...again... even after we thought we were over that...another story for the relationship - horse section, I think. Just when you think you have a problem licked, it comes back to test you one more time. She was super with the cows; we had several escapees in the woods that had to be driven back. My horse doesnt fit between those lodge poles as well as some of the smaller ones. The end of the ride culminates with hot sirloin stew, fresh bicuits and Flathead cherry cobbler cooked in dutch ovens over the campfire. I got home about 10:00pm then packed for an early trip to Prosser, WA for the cherry research update.