Sunday afternoons can be a good time for me to enjoy God's creation in my nature notebook.
This process helps me notice more intricate details than when out on a walk snapping a photo like this milkweed on the prairie.
And it is fun to include details of what I noticed when outside... even when not particularly enjoyable, such as all the bugs biting me last week. Flipping through months or years later, I am brought back to good memories.
Do you have a nature notebook or journal to help you enjoy God's creativity and learn more about His creation?! Even if not, let's keep our eyes open in wonder and awe!
Long hours on the road this summer were brightened by a vase of flowers from our garden!
Did you notice my “garden” in the photo behind the orange juice*? Probably not. It’s all in one’s perspective!
That little patch of wildflowers between a highway and a hotel parking lot was a bright spot in an otherwise ugly setting. Especially when compared to our lush flowerbeds back home with rarely the sound of a vehicle on our gravel roads and fresh air blowing across the prairies… that month in an airless hotel room on the edge of a city was not a restful or healing place.
And yet God turned it into a time of healing the nervous system at deeper levels, just because it was so far from peaceful or natural. What mattered was that He had called me to these new challenges, and He was there to meet my needs. By wiring in the truth through brain rewiring (neuroplasticity) methods, my nervous system learned that even there, I was safe with Him!
*The orange juice itself was a brain rewiring win after more than a decade without! I enjoyed it most days at the hotel as well as training with some more "firsts" of a bagel, corn flakes, conventional ice-cream, and a waffle cone! Plus walking up to 3 miles at a time on the paths and sidewalks of our community.
When able, we got Dad out of the city altogether during his month of treatments at Mayo. On what turned out to be his best day in several months, we explored a state park that was new to us. Moss, bogs and wildflowers lined a pleasant path to the main feature of the park...
Our April Showers have been mostly white so far. See April 3rd for example:
But they did bring some April flowers! Can you spot our very first blooms in this April 13th picture?
No? I'll zoom in.
We recently learned the name of this hand-me-down bulb from Mom's mother, who got it from her mother in law, who got it from a community friend. (My great-grandma's journals are full of these neat facts that tie our life and things in our home back to her days.)
The plant is called Scilla or Squills. It is tiny and easy to miss completely. So glad I looked at the right time this year!
I also cut in some little lilac leaf-buds that day. Here is what they looked like at first.
And more green two days later...
Also last Sunday, I had some restful birdwatching and cloud-watching from deck and porch. The back-lit layers of rain clouds rolling in before sunset finally got me to pull out my watercolors again to add to my nature journal.
And yes, we identified 14 kinds of birds by sight and another by sound, plus there were more we couldn't name.
What a gift of an afternoon!
Have you tried Blind Contour Sketching? I had not... until today. And it was fun!
✒️ How freeing to know it won't turn out much like the subject but to enjoy the process anyway!
✒️ How clearing of a full mind to sit and stare at interesting shapes for 30-120 seconds without glancing away!
✒️ How therapeutic for an injured brain to make connections straight between eyes and hand!
✒️ And how healing to finally look down at the paper and laugh!
