summer | Change Is Hard

July 16, 2015
by dawnkinster 15 Comments

Walking through debate theory

Thinking about stuff

When you feel passionately about something it’s only natural that you’ll come across others that feel differently, people who are just as passionate about their own views. And with social media we often see up close and personal all the different opinions of the people we call friends. Where a political opinion or a religious comment might be left silent in our face to face dealings, the misplaced feeling of anonymity causes many of us to open right up about what we feel strongly about when we’re online.

I’ve never been a great debater. I don’t even like watching debates because I can see both sides of most arguments, and I don’t like to see anyone lose. But these days with politics continually running on 24/7 news stations there’s lots of fodder for posts. And people take sides loudly and regularly. Sometimes it’s made me uncomfortable…and a few times I’ve thought about unfriending folks who have vastly different opinions about religion and politics than my own.

But I’ve never unfriended anyone. Because if I unfriend someone because they think different than me how will I get to hear the other side of the argument? How can there be any expansion of my mind, any reconsideration of other points of view if I don’t even see their comments?

I thought about all of this yesterday during a morning walk. I was having a Facebook debate about a truck safety issue with a friend. We don’t agree on some things because we come from different life experiences. We base our opinions on the things we know. That’s what everyone does. Some things we will have to agree to disagree about. Other things will be resolved on common ground.

In the end what I came to realize on my walk is that friends don’t have to like the same things, think the same things, support the same things. Friends just have to be open to new ideas, respectful of different points of view. Debate, as uncomfortable as it is, is how change happens.

And change can be good, even when it’s hard.

July 15, 2015
by dawnkinster 15 Comments

Suburban wildlife – or- not so wordless Wednesday

It’s beginning to amaze me the beautiful things that are in my yard during any given day. And to think all this has been going on here at home for years while I’ve been off at work.

Katie likes to bark a warning to us humans sitting on the sofa. By the time we get up and look outside she has managed to chase whatever it was away. But just in the last two days I’ve noticed, on my own with no help from her, plenty of goings on in the yard.

Of course we have the Orioles visiting daily. Sometimes hourly. Do you think this one is a juvenile or just a wet female?

Looking for “more grape jelly lady!!”

It’s a good thing Katie didn’t see this little guy at the birdbath right outside her favorite window.

“Hey! Anybody in there?!”

Do you think the butterfly on the house realizes there are two garter snakes curled up sleepily below?

Look out below!

And just now, in the back yard we had a visitor. Katie didn’t see this either.

Looking for rabbits in all the right places.

Good thing she didn’t. All heck would have broken out.

What’s that smell over there?

So much going on in my own yard that I don’t have time for cooking and cleaning and such. Must keep vigilent, as a sheltie, who will remain nameless, seems to be napping on the job.

STILL no grape jelly lady!

July 13, 2015
by dawnkinster 27 Comments

Camping contemplations

Many of you know that Katie the dog and I went camping last week. What you might not have known is that the State Park where we pitched our tent is only one exit and six miles north of home.

This is my campsite!

But it’s a world away.

I’ve been thinking the last few days about why we’d go camping so close to home. Why not just pitch the tent in the back yard? (And you know we do that too.) Why go to the trouble of packing up the car with tent and bedroll, pillows, blankets, food, leashes, dog dishes, cameras, tinder, firewood. The dog and her crate.

Got any snacks mama?

Why walk almost 1500 steps to the bathroom and back in the middle of the night? Why drench yourself and the dog with bug spray and sunblock, sleep in two (or three) layers of clothes under several blankets, wake up with a start at every snapped branch in the woods.

Welcome to my tent!

Why not just take walks in the woods with your dog during the day and sleep in your own bed safe, sound and warm in your own house every night? Why, as soon as you get home, do you immediately want to plan the next trip?

And here’s what I’ve realized. When you’re out in the woods for hours on end, you slow down. You notice that bird you’ve never seen before. You listen to all the birds begin to sing long before the sun comes up. You read a book. You take a walk. You take a nap. Then you read some more, contemplate the campfire, maybe raise a roasted marshmallow in toast to the memories of camping with family all those years ago.

You relax.

Our perfect private site!

When you camp away from home there is no laundry that should be started, no gardens to weed, no groceries to be found, meals to be cooked. When you camp away from home you find peace and freedom and beauty and quiet joy.

And that’s why Katie and I are already thinking about our next adventure.

Close to home.

Wake up mama!

July 12, 2015
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Cee’s flower challenge

Check out Cee’s blog where she sports a beautiful sunflower and challenges us to show everyone a flower from our own yards.

Well, you’ve seen many of the flowers in my garden, but this one is interesting.

Will be bright red soon!

It’s a crocosmia. The foliage is green spiky leaves perhaps 3 or more feet tall which remind me of gladiola leaves. The flowers open up one by one from one end of this bud to the other. This one happens to be bright red, but I’ve seen them in other shades of red and orange. They are stunning.

It’s a perennial so it comes up year after year, and each year there are more. I’m going to have to move some of these to another spot, so if anyone who lives near would like a few for a corner of their own garden let me know! (Click the small photo to see more detail.)

Pretty

Wordless Wednesday

July 8, 2015 by dawnkinster 14 Comments

July 6, 2015
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Memories of black raspberries

Berries in bowl

Warm, sweet, juice running down your fingers. That’s the way I remember the black raspberries I picked behind my grandpa’s workshop on the farm years ago when I was a kid. We each got to spend a few days at grandma’s house during the summers back then. I tried to choose days when the black raspberries were ripe and if we were lucky Grandma and I had fresh berries on our cereal every morning.

Years later my sister came here for a visit and we went for a long bike ride. One of the highlights that day was coming across a huge patch of black raspberries, hundreds ripe for the picking. So we did, turning our fingers purple with memories.

This year in my own backyard, where I haven’t noticed any growing before, I found plump ripe berries today. Reaching into the thorny bushes for the perfect berry I was 12 again and back behind the workshop picking for my grandma’s breakfast.

It was sweet.

Grandpa’s workshop

July 5, 2015
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Yard treasures

Mr. Oriole comes for grape jelly.

One of the joys of being retired is time spent in my own back yard. There’s time to sit on the deck out back, watch the clouds scoot by, the light change on the birch trees, the birds coming in shifts to feed, even the grass growing. What a treat.

Ripening black raspberries.

I remember the days when, while backing out of the driveway on my way to work, I noticed the early morning sun on the front of the house and felt a pang that another beautiful day at home was going to slide by without me. Now I have to keep reminding myself that I get to stay and enjoy the peace.

Gift from blue jay.

I constantly catch myself feeling sad that a day is ending, a weekend finished, a week gone by. It’s as if my body is automatically gearing up to go back to work after a vacation, sad that it’s ending. And then I remember that it’s not.

Roses bloom.

So if you see me smiling quietly to myself you’ll know I’m just mentally pinching myself.

And enjoying the treasures in my own yard.

Mrs. Oriole visits for a snack.

July 4, 2015
by dawnkinster 3 Comments

WordPress Photo Challenge: Door II

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Another take on the WordPress photo challenge this week. These are doors at Fort Gratiot in Detroit. It was built in the 1840s and now is in disrepair but still fascinating. And beautiful in it’s own way.

Enjoy.

July 3, 2015
by dawnkinster 22 Comments

It’s hard to hear the frogs when the freeway roar is so loud

Private camp site

Katie and I camped out last night. In the backyard. I know, I know, only a crazy woman and her crazy dog would choose to sleep in the damp and cold only yards from a comfy king sized bed. Right?

Well call us crazy.

The moon was full and beckoned us out into the dark around 11:30. We trooped through the already dewy wet grass carrying all the essentials, pillows, blankets, flashlight, phone, Katie tugging at the leash. It was her first backyard camping adventure of the season and she knew exactly where she wanted to be.

I’ll keep watch mama!

On her pillow in her tent guarding her yard.

I have a romantic notion about sleeping in the backyard; I like to listen to the frogs in the pond across the road. There are at least a couple of different kinds including the bull frogs’ deep voices and I love to hear them in the evening from the deck. Falling asleep to the frog choir always seems like such a lovely idea.

The reality, however, is that I am constantly surprised how loud the freeway is at night. It’s a mile away but across a lake from us and I guess that magnifies the sound. Because what I don’t notice much during the day is suddenly a deafening roar in the middle of the night. Still, how many loud cars and trucks and motorcycles would be roaring down the freeway at 3 in the morning?

Turns out quite a few.

So many in fact that I really couldn’t hear the frogs at all. Katie-girl and I are going to have to go on another camping adventure in a real campground very soon. Hopefully far away from a freeway. Before she settled in for her morning nap today she urged me to start planning. A girl needs her outdoor time.

Don’t you know.

Morning moon hanging on

June 30, 2015
by dawnkinster 12 Comments

Elasticity of time

Fields of summer

I’ve been retired a month now. My hope before I left work was that time would unfold in the slow dreamy way summer days did when I was a kid.

You remember those days don’t you? Warm summer days when you got up with the morning light and lingered over breakfast, wandered outside later in the day, climbed a few trees, goofed off with neighborhood kids, stayed out late into the evening chasing fireflies.

Each day stretched out indefinitely.

Retirement started out that way. The first few days, perhaps the first week, seemed to last forever. Even now most of the day I don’t know what time it is, and that’s fine with me. And I’ve long since lost track of what day of the week it might be.

But time is speeding up now, just as my grandmother told me, years ago, it would.

Suddenly it’s Tuesday, another weekend ended, another week already moving along, a whole month gone since I last commuted to work. Midsummer and the 4th of July are right around the corner. Somehow a quick after lunch nap stretches into early evening, a few minutes reading on the deck out back and the morning is gone, check Facebook and the sun drops below the horizon without warning.

Time seems to be an elastic band snapping back at me with intensity, a pendulum swinging toward the future at increasing speed. The world seems to be screaming past, daring me to catch a ride, to fling myself up into the speeding vehicle moving toward something unknown. But I’m dragging my feet, hanging on to the golden sun, the misty mornings, the glowing fireflies.

I’m hanging on, trying to slow time down. Just for a little bit longer.

Golden summer marches on.

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: summer