I’ve been lazy this week.  After morning meditation, I’ve been going back to bed for a few hours, sometimes checking Facebook on the iPad awhile first.  I’ll close the darkout curtains before dawn begins to show, but the mother cardinal will begin to peck on the sliding glass door two feet from my pillow as the sun rises to reflect on the glass.  I use her “tap, tap, tap” to bring myself to an awareness of my breathing, as I keep my attention focused on my third eye and breathe in and out from my heart center.  We may continue this dance for an hour or two, me drifting in and out of sleep, then I’m up and into the office.  After a few hours’ work, I went to the Melbourne Beach Farmer’s Market and bought onions, organic celery, red and yellow peppers and tomatoes. Lunch was a vegetarian beanless chili atop a little wild rice. 

After lunch, I worked a few more hours then went out to play in the yard. I noticed I lost my banana tree in last week’s frost. She’ll be back, it’s happened before.  I trimmed the giant bird of paradise outside the master suite so I can see more of the east garden from the stone patio I laid just outside the sliding glass door. To give the patio privacy from the street, I sunk two 4x4x6′s and hung lattice on it, then hung potted plants and wove palmetto fronds and big bird of paradise leaves into the lattice. It literally doubled my patio area.

As soon as Spring comes, my night blooming jasmine will fill out again so the lattice will come down. For now it makes it cozy and private to look into the east garden, not another house in sight.  I can enjoy the eastern sky from the chaise lounge there, or do yoga on the patio.  I like having different areas of the yard to do yoga in, or to sit and meditate in, different times of day.

As it neared sundown, I began collecting the kindling for the evening fire.  I decided tonight it would be in the chimenea on the back porch, small and cozy.  Two bricks in the bottom, I put several crumpled up pages of old Horizons on top, then a pyramid of kindling, then a small pyramid of dried branches.  My evening fire is also my evening puja: the time I give thanks for the bounty of the day, to burn any concerns into clarity and any conflicts into forgiveness.  As I poke and stir the burning coals, ideas and insights stir in my mind.  Hindsight is 20/20 so I had several realizations about recent events.  Being so self centered, I can be blind to the obvious. I smile at myself.  There are no regrets, only further illuminations of why things are as they are and how they will be. I don’t take score so soon.  Everything is a cycle.  Everything is an open window.