Tag: flowers

Scattering Seeds, Rebalancing

Thursday, September 25, 2025

This fall, I can’t seem to get flowers, bees, and butterflies out of my mind. These days are shortening, and there’s more chill creeping in, yet my mind keeps circling around things like nectar-rich blooms and winged visitors returning to them one day.

It’s probably due to the pressures in my outside retail job. The store is busier this time of year — new displays, seasonal merchandise, constantly shifting schedules, and the steady press of customer interactions. Additionally, leadership weighs on me. I cringe at being micromanaged and pushed toward difficult-to-achieve sales goals. These leave me off-balance, make me want to establish my own pace and direction. At home, my mind keeps wandering toward slower, more sustaining rhythms.

Now, here in Central Oregon, fall is sharpening the air. Mornings begin with thin frost, afternoons flash with sudden sun, and evenings drift early toward darkness. The horses’ and my donkey’s coats are thickening; my dogs race across grasses that crunch under their paws; and a more expansive sky above the Cascades creates dramatic clarity.

In these everyday seasonal scenes, I find myself searching for emotional balance. My thoughts aren’t just passing, but they’re pulls–to scatter wildflower seeds, to trust the earth to hold and protect them through winter, and then, see blooms rising with bees and butterflies dancing among them again in spring.

It’s a way of offsetting the grind — those hours measured in transactions, sales goals, and schedules. I yearn, instead, for another continuity — the hum of bees, the shimmer of butterfly wings, the quiet return of flowers after their winter’s sleep.

And besides, there’s a larger picture. Planting seeds for pollinators is also planting seeds for myself — a reminder of beauty’s return after seasons of dormancy. Renewal doesn’t require much — just clearing a patch of ground, scattering seeds, and trusting in nature’s quiet magic.

Maybe my fall thoughts aren’t only about flowers and creatures. They might also be pointing me toward deeper needs, like toward balancing the seasons of my own life. What I’m sure of right now is that scattering seeds feels like an excellent step forward.

These small actions will matter — for bees, for butterflies, and, in many quiet ways, for me too.

— Diana

Season’s Musing

Thursday, December 12, 2024

I’m nursing sore muscles after my first trip in years to the gym. My poor legs, hips, and shoulders were pushed to work a little harder for a couple of hours. I’ll feel them more today as the muscles move me around, generally nonstop, in my part-time department store job.

This morning’s thin blanket of snow is pretty. All that white has me imagining a Poinsettia on my picture window shelf in the foreground. Now, wishing for seasonal inspiration from a bright Poinsettia, I will bring one home after work.

I wanted to know more about the plant’s significance. I understand now that poinsettias are native to Mexico and have been cultivated there since Aztec times. Aztecs used the plant to decorate and to produce dyes and medicines.

In the 19th century, Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, introduced poinsettias to the United States. He cultivated the plant in his South Carolina greenhouse and shared it with friends and colleagues.

Eventually, creative American growers saw innovative marketing possibilities. By employing the relatively new medium of television, they marketed poinsettias for background-coloring TV’s giant Christmas specials. Eventually, Americans saw the plant’s inherent beauty and associated poinsettias with Christmas, and now as beloved holiday decorations.

Dear Friends: “Random thoughts” don’t rise from nowhere. Diana