First bee glimpsed in 2011.

Yes, our pollinator friends, harbingers of spring, are back!

And hey, so am I.

I’m not quite sure what to write yet.  That first entry after a long absence feels wobbly, I’m learning, like the first day out and about after the flu.  Of course I was inclined to write the apology first, along with the obligatory explanation for my disappearing act, and then the thank-you note for all the messages of support and not-so-random (well, not to me) acts of kindness over the past six weeks.

But frankly, I’d rather just get on with it and write about, you know, the usual — bees, sky, seeds and roots; seasons, harvests, growth and change; love, joy, patience, beauty, gratitude, wonder.  Y’all know I’d have been here all along, writing away and sharing images, if I’d been able to manage it.  (Don’t you?)

And I hope you know how very glad I am to be able to come back to this space and pick up my virtual pen again to communicate with you.

I’ll be back here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  This new schedule makes more sense for my circumstances now.  I look forward to witnessing what unfolds in 2011 here at The Enchanted Earth.  With all of the uncertainties F. and I are juggling at the moment, I anticipate at the very least an interesting journey — maybe even an exciting, beautiful, creative and meaningful one, too.

As always, I’m so grateful you’re along for the ride.

Namasté, y’all.

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There's a little love hidden here, for those with eyes to see it.

During our reading session yesterday, M. stumbled across a word she didn’t know:  plenty.

At first I tried synonyms to explain her new vocabulary word.  Plenty is ample, abundant, bountiful.  But none of those clicked.

Plenty can also be requisite, sufficient, satisfactory.  No, she still wasn’t getting the message.

I tried again.  “Hmm… basically, plenty is more than you need.  It could be a lot more than you need, or just barely over the amount you need.”

M. tilted her head to the side, her big brown eyes thoughtful.  Then she nodded and bent to write it in her ever-expanding vocabulary notebook.

When she looked up again, I asked, “How can you tell when you have more than you need?”  Besides wanting to solidify the lesson and use the word “plenty” in a few sentences, I was genuinely curious as to her response.  Keep in mind M. was born in a trailer park and has been raised in poverty.  Even now, her family would be in trouble without food stamps and regular trips to the local food pantry.

Slowly a smile spread across her face, the smile that says that she thinks I’m joking or being silly.  “You’re still alive!” she shouted out proudly, as though this were the winning answer to a game show question.

Kind of puts things into perspective; don’t you think?

Today is Thanksgiving Day in my country.  It’s a time for us to pause and remember with gratitude the people in our lives and the simple and beautiful blessings we tend to take for granted every day.  It’s a moment to revel in our plenty, whatever that is for each of us.

For all my American friends, I wish you a wonderful holiday, complete with laughter and joy and homemade pecan pie (because I’m not too fond of the pumpkin version) — and an extra special dose of tolerance for that one relative who just gets on your last nerve.

And for everyone, regardless of nationality, I wish you a heart that overflows with wonder and gratitude for the beauty around you, for the moments of peace you are privileged to experience, for all the love in your life… and for the very Earth that supports each footstep and every breath you take.

We are so very fortunate to be alive.  It’s as simple as that.

Namasté, y’all.

A wild grapevine displays a high-flying golden heart.

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This spot of enchanted forest is the new view from my back door — once the tree-cutting crews came through to make a right of way for a power line.  I was really upset about the losses at first, but now I am starting to see that the beauty is still there.  Sometimes I’m even able to appreciate the gaping hole in our forest, noticing, for instance, how I can appreciate the sunset for much longer now that there is nothing impeding the view.

Usually not.  But sometimes I manage it.

Anyway, I’ve had more than the usual opportunity recently to observe the views here.  I’ve been limited to whatever I can see from inside the house for the past several days.  My illness, which I’d imagined as nearly finished, completely wiped me out last week.  I’m still pretty weak.

And then, the very day the flu took a turn for the worse, my computer died.  Well, it turns out it’s only the screen that’s died, and luckily for me, F. is very handy with computers.  Still, it was rotten timing.

Basically I was on standby for a while there, in all senses of the word.

Coming back from standby, though, you suddenly appreciate your everyday, normal life so much more.  Just stepping outside to greet autumn in full swing is a delight.

What a privilege it is to revel in the crunch of pine needles underfoot, to breathe in and be able to smell the neighbor’s woodsmoke, the scent of pine sap in my cat’s thick, black fur, to have a fat rust-colored leaf brush my hair as it spirals down to join its fellows.  What a wonder, to look up into a golden tent and hear the wren’s concert live from the crooked branch.

What a miracle, to be able to walk into the amber and scarlet and blue tapestry that I’ve only been able to glimpse from the bedroom window for so long.  It really is like having a wall-hanging spring to life, three-dimensional, all of a sudden.  The effect reminds me of the scene in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when the painting of the title ship is suddenly moving, her sails creaking, her crew at work on deck, through a sea whose waves soon spring up to drench the children observing all this in the bedroom where the artwork hangs.

The only response I seem capable of at this moment is deep gratitude.  I take so much for granted.

Including my connection to you.  I’m thankful you’re here, and I want you to know how touched I was to receive all those get-well wishes.  Y’all are lovely.

I’ll probably take a few more days to recover properly and then try to return to a more regular posting schedule.  Until then, here’s wishing you an awareness of the wonderful details of your everyday, normal life that you usually take for granted.  May you take joy in your life as it is now!

Namasté, y’all.

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I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.

~William Shakespeare

So, yeah, I’m not doing very well.  I think I am officially going to take a blog hiatus and just allow myself to grieve and process and all that stuff.

Last week, just after the funeral, I was convinced that the best thing for me would be to dive right back into “normal” life and keep myself busy.  But I see now that’s just not going to work.  I need space, and stillness, time in the garden and time within the covers of my trusty notebook, time with F. and time with family and friends and, yes, time alone.  Solitude, especially in Nature, has always been essential to my optimum health.

So I’m going to take that time and make that space.  I’m sure y’all will understand.

I have managed to answer very few of the lovely comments since just before I got the call about Granddaddy being in the hospital.  As late as last night, I was feeling very guilty about that, and I did try to catch up, starting about four posts back.  Mostly because I’ve so appreciated your kind and supportive words, and I want to let you know, individually, how much.  But when I woke up this morning, I realized I could let you all know here how much it’s meant to me, how touched I am that you care.

Thank you, my virtual friends.

If you want to see me online, I may well be Twittering.  Although I am considering taking a hiatus there, too, for now this format seems more doable to me because it requires less effort and involvement on my part.  Even so, part of me is campaigning for a full release from online activity, and if I become convinced that this is the correct path for me, my Twitter feed may go dormant for a time, too.

Should you really need an Enchanted Earth fix, don’t forget to stroll through the archives and to enjoy some Soul Food in the sidebar.  (Of course, this won’t work for you old-timers who’ve been with me since the beginning.  You’ll just have to be patient, I guess.)

I also plan to stop by your blogs and enjoy your words and pictures.  It may be a more irregular thing than before, but I’ll still try to keep in touch.

Nonetheless, I am sure that I will miss you all, and I look forward to the day I can get back to my regularly scheduled life.  For now, this is my life, and I accept the full and awesome range of it, its beauty and sadness, confusion and splendor, grace and loss, laughter and wonder and pain.  I am grateful for each and every milestone in my path, whether joyful or sorrowful — or a complicated mix of both.

Namasté, y’all.

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A random number generator selected comments numbers 44 and 28.  That means congratulations are in order for Donna & Raul.

I will contact you both soon via e-mail to request your snail-mail addresses.

Once again, thank you all for visiting and commenting on my blogaversary post.  The celebration was just beautiful, and so encouraging and joyful for me.  Who could ever deserve such an outpouring of support and such wonderful blog-friends?  It’s humbling — and wonderful.

Beautyberry bush, one of the winners in the wildlife garden, for sure.

Even though I could not give you each a packet of my custom stationery, I believe you are all deserving of a gift from me — for your support and friendship, for your kind comments and suggestions, and for just being you.  The best I could do is right over there in the sidebar.  Clicking the square marked “Soul Food” will take you there, with my sincere appreciation.

And now, while we’re discussing winnings and gifts, I will officially accept The Beautiful Blogger Award, given to me way back in late spring by the lovely Kathy Johnson over at Catching Happiness.  I’m so touched by this award — especially because of what Kathy said when she presented it.

You’re too kind, Kathy.

(But I loved every word!)

The rules for acceptance of this award are twofold.  First, I need to tell you 10 random facts you probably don’t already know about moi.

Hmmm… this gets harder the longer I blog.  Still, here goes:

1. I have a Magic 8 ball in my house, and I sometimes consult it, for fun.  F. wanted to cut it open to see what was inside, but settled for finding the detailed report of the guy who already did that, and posted it all on the internet.

2.  My cats’ full proper names are Leo Chapo and Bootemius Flip-Flip Wickham-Watson.  (No joke.)

3.  I make an incredible carrot cake, from a recipe passed on to me years ago by my first boss out of college, who just happened to be a sweet, gracious hostess and a magnificent Southern cook in addition to her considerable professional credentials.  The final result is three layers high and requires a double batch of buttercream icing with walnuts.  Even people who are “meh” about carrot cake fall into raptures at first bite.

4.  I wrote my first story at age 6.  (It was a tragedy.)  I announced to the world at large that I planned to be a writer when I was 9.  My magnum opus at that point was an 11-page ghost story which got points taken off for being too long, violating the parameters of the assignment, being turned in late, sprawling into the margins, and not having an ending yet.

Not much changes, I guess.

5. The way the gardening gene turned on at age 18:  I fell in love with roses, and promptly wiped out my pitiful college-student savings account purchasing 40 (yes, you read that right) hybrid tea, antique, and David Austen English roses which I planted in my parents’ yard in the course of one spring weekend.  Obsession is probably the word you’re looking for here.

(For fellow rosarians, the Austen roses are still going strong, almost two decades later, with minimal intervention by my parents.)

6.  I speak two languages.

In fact, a few years ago, I would have confidently told you I’d achieved near-native fluency in French.  Opportunities to speak French are rather thin on the ground here, however, so I was thinking I’d have to seriously downgrade my skill designation pretty soon.  But then I ran into a Haitian family at my optometrist’s office, desperate to be understood, and after interpreting for them and the receptionist and the doctor, felt like I might not have lost my chops yet.

Shortly thereafter, I ran into a bewildered Frenchman at a gas station in metro Atlanta.  After I’d cleared up the confusion at the pump, we chatted a bit, and he and his girlfriend expressed shock that I was not, in fact, French.  I was relieved.  Now that I am attempting to learn F.’s native language, I am in awe of the capacity for memorization and mimicry that I had in my teens and early 20s, and the possibility of true fluency in a third language appears more and more like a mirage.

7.  I daydream of learning to sew.  Oh, and learning to knit so that I can make socks.  Even though I don’t really like wearing socks.  Somehow I’m convinced that if I, myself, make them out of super soft baby alpaca yarn, I will change my mind.  Also, it would be really cool to make nice socks for loved ones who do appreciate nice socks, like F., and my sister, and my mom.

8.  I spent a weekend homeless in Paris at age 16.  It was amazing and scary and awesome and brutal and hilarious, and if I ever write a memoir, that experience will be in there.

9.  Part of me is convinced that nowhere on Earth is as beautiful as North Georgia.  But I’m also intensely curious about the Pacific Northwest and would like to experience more of this region where I was born and lived the first two months of my life.  And I also want to one day return to the Louisiana Bayou and to the American Southwest, two places where the land had an incredible mystical pull for me.  Québec (in summer) and the French countryside were pretty awesome, too.  [Note:  Québec in winter made me want to curl up into a little ball and die.]

Maybe I just have the capacity to love lots of places — as long as the temperatures there are not 40 below zero with your breath freezing an ice patch on the scarf that covers half your face.  That’s just asking too much of a Southern girl.

10.  I have a real soft spot for a particular weed:  Queen Anne’s Lace, or Daucus carota, wild carrot.

It’s a nostalgia thing.  We go way back.

And now I get to pass this award on to four blogs whose authors I consider beautiful.  Honestly, this part of the process is very difficult for me because I consider so many bloggers to be beautiful souls, and I am continually amazed by the creativity and beauty that I find in the blog-o-sphere.

Nonetheless, these four stand out for me as superb examples of beauty, inspiration, and wonder.  Their authors are generous souls who have created places of peace, love, and joy that I look forward to visiting every time.

Mesmerising Moments:  because the world is full of wonder

Necessary Room:  Enter with a happy heart…

Unfolding Your Path to Joy:  optimistic inspirational resources for a joy-filled life

Vie Boheme:  Art and Photography from the Gaia Path

You will not regret a visit to any of these gems of the internet.  Each one is definitely a winner in my book.

Thanks for hanging out in the winners’ circle today.

Namasté, y’all.

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One of the red cabbages did not make a head.  Each of its interior levels grew above the one before, forming a strange, flowery tower as it went.

Frankly, it looks weird.

Being a little weird myself, though, I let it have garden room.  It didn’t get harvested with all the others, either, but continued to add levels.

(If I were a serious gardener, of course, this mutant cabbage would have been removed quickly, to be replaced with something more productive or pretty.  But you’ve probably figured out by now that curiosity and playfulness and fun have equally strong presences in my garden as either of those two.)

As time passed, I even began to grow fond of this aberrant cabbage and, without realizing I’d done so, gave it a name, rather like I did with Mophead in last year’s kitchen garden.

After surveying the wreckage of our latest fallen tree and having a lovely encounter with a preying mantis a few days ago, I realized Pagoda was glowing in the half-light of dusk, clearly wanting to have his portrait taken.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage it without the flash.  But you get the idea….

I wonder how tall the structure can go before first frost.

Remember, it’s still not too late to enter into the random drawing for free blog-birthday presents.  Here’s the link to do so.  Entries will close tonight at midnight, Eastern Standard time.

I’ve been touched and honored by all your lovely responses so far.  It was a much bigger bash than I was expecting, and your kindness and generosity mean more than I can say.

Thank you for celebrating with me.

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