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Sadly I have to bid farewell to my blooming peonies, these are the last of them in the pitcher up above, all of the rest have faded to rest and store up their nutrients for next year’s blooms. I can’t complain, I have three gorgeous sets of peonies, each a bit different from the other and they get bigger and fuller each year.

Today is a beautiful, breezy day in Blandford, hot but pleasant due to our strong mountain breeze. I think that the rest of the week will be a wet one for the Northeast, we’ll be in New York for most of it. When I was young, I remember being none too happy whenever it rained, but as I have gotten older and became impassioned with gardening, rain has become my friend. I also don’t have to reel out the two water hoses, drag them back and forth and then have to reel them back in, not a question of it being too hard, more a question of feeling a little bit lazy. 

Water has always been a precious resource, but we have been treating it as a commodity and I think that has been a big mistake for us as a society. I am so grateful to live in an area that rarely gets to be in a drought situation and similarly rarely gets flooded. I know how lucky we are in the Northeast, despite having lived through  several devastating hurricanes and ice storms, on average we do much better than millions of others throughout the world on an annual basis.

Compassion, gratitude, humility and optimism are characteristics that I actively try to nurture in myself every day, I think that it helps with life in general being aware of these traits and trying to apply them to your own experiences. I think that it puts a lot of things in a more manageable perspective.