These cards are all from a deck of artist inspiration cards I keep in my office for people to choose the ones that speak to them. The artist is Kate Allen, who is a mental health author and illustrator. This set of cards is all work appropriate, but if you are looking at more on her website, they are not always work language. I really like them because they are so soothing and also very realistic and normalize mental health concerns. I hope they inspire you today! Here’s her website if you want to see more. https://www.thelatestkate.art/
I said I was keeping some pictures in reserve for a wintery day and since our driveway is currently a sheet of ice in most places, I thought this might be a good refresher of what summer feels like. Enjoy!
This is why I currently have snake plants in my office. They were so pretty!
It’s interesting to write this post about powerful words for a couple different reasons. I’m fascinated by the messages in the pictures for one, but also by how much words can affect our daily life. As an LPC, my entire job is word based, even if the client in question doesn’t know what words to use, or a child who maybe speaks through play instead of vocally. And it’s kind of meta to be writing a blog post about words, even if I know only a few people will read it.
I follow a lot of librarians and indie bookstore owners too on different social media sites (shout out to Bettie’s Pages and Blackstone Books and Cultural Center) and it’s been very interesting to see what has come up during Banned Books Week. Words are important. We should be choosing our words and our time to speak more carefully. Whether you are speaking about something you’re passionate about, something you’re concerned about, or with joy, our words have impacted others more than we know. They also impact our own sense of self and worth.
With that in mind, I’d like to share some more pictures from Meadowbrook Art in the Elements. One of the artists created floral sculptures based on the work of Masaru Emoto who proposes that molecules of water can be affected by our words, thoughts, and feelings. He froze the water and photographed the crystalline formations that he claimed represented each type of thought or sound. While his theory has come under criticism and is reportedly flawed, it still can make us think about the ways we talk to ourselves and others. Whether or not you believe it, the floral sculptures were beautiful and I hope inspire you.
At the end of the exhibit there were two bouquets that you were invited to either write positive or negative messages or words on their vases. I didn’t see the end result of this, as we came on the last day. But here are the bouquets for your viewing.
I hope this has inspired you, even though it may be a silly thing. We are 60% water after all. Speak kindly to yourselves, friends!
I went on a fantastic Girls’ Night with some friends to Mt. Tabor Trails in Buchanan, Michigan. It is a trail between two wineries where you can take your drink with you. Each winery has different specials and such. The two wineries are called Round Barn Winery and Mt. Tabor Winery. Here’s the website if you want to check it out. https://moerschhg.com/trails
We hung out for dinner with live music on Friday after hiking and it was lovely! I had a honey hard cider and a frose- Frozen rose wine. Both were delicious! Anyway, on to the pictures!
Hello and welcome to the blog post where I have garden fever and muse about how best to run off the squirrels! if you have any tips, please let me know!
We had a really nice weekend last weekend and ended up getting my third garden bed started! We need about 10 more bricks to make it two layers and are going to be getting garden dirt in two weeks. A friend who gardens as well has a truck and we’re going to be splitting a yard of garden dirt with her. I think the beds will like a nice soil refresh. I also put as many worms as I could find into them while we moved things around. We also got fancy and added pea gravel around the beds to keep the weeds down hopefully. We’re going to get another batch of it and make it a thicker layer around the front and on the sides of the garden.
Here’s the third bed. It’s positioned under the apple tree somewhat, so will be my shade loving plant bed. I’m planning on moving the rhubarb there too.
Sorry for the weird angle. I was attempting not to get the neighbor in the picture. He’s a little grumpy, so we try not to irritate him. This bed is one brick smaller than the other beds for ease of reaching across. I think it will work out really well. I think the middle bed will be tomatoes, as they seemed to do the best there. The last bed will be berries.
So far, I think my blueberry bush is coming back. I’ll have to get some more and am going to try to look for the bush varieties that might do better in the raised bed. My strawberries have come back as well, but I will be moving them into the planters, I think. My raspberries are growing new canes. I need to trim them down before planting them in the bed. I’m planning on trying to stay on top of them so I don’t end up with all raspberries. We may also get some black berries. The rhubarb came back on it’s own, even after I left the pot out all winter and it got snowed on. It seems to be very enthusiastic this year. As I have lots of rhubarb recipes, I’m very excited to see that.
We’re going to try making a pallet into a vertical herb garden this year. A certain Piggy likes to graze on my herbs as well as my tomatoes, so this might help with that. Basically, you take landscape fabric and staple it around the pallet, fill the cracks with dirt, and then go planting happy! It will hopefully work really well, but we’ll see. We got the pallet for free as it had the cinderblocks on it, so even if it doesn’t work out, it won’t have cost much.
I’ve started seeds for the garden and they seem to be working out. I used a bigger seed starting box this year and went all out with my seeds. I found a purple tomatillo variety, which will be fun! Also, several kinds of tomatoes, of course. I believe I have beefsteak, a bunch of container cherry tomatoes, pineapple tomatoes, and some other kinds I cannot remember. Also peppers, both hot and bell. We’re planning on planting the sprouting garlic cloves, but I will probably put them in pots. The onion we planted last year after it sprouted inside survived, but I have no idea how to tell when we should pick it. We have several other onions currently sprouting and my seeds are finally working.
I have also kept several houseplants alive both at home and in my office! I know that seems like a weird thing to brag about, but our house is really dark and seems to have a bad effect on houseplants. The one side of the hallway where we all have offices is slowly infecting everyone else with plant fever. It’s nice to have a window and to be able to keep the not pet friendly plants there. Three plants are currently calling my office home. The original aloe plant is thriving. It’s growing slowly, but it has developed two new shoots since I moved it there.
I also have a huge spider plant named Marvin, with a baby that has been christened Darvin. I’m going to pot Darvin soon, I just keep forgetting the soil. He lives on my bookshelf because he was too big to keep on that little shelf. I’ve hidden some of my lego creations in the leaves.
I have a Croton plant as well. I’m keeping that with no name as Croton sounds like an awesome super hero name. That one is being tricky. I think it needs to be misted regularly. I have repotted it into a pretty white pot, since the picture was taken.
My plants at home are a Christmas Cactus cutting, which seems to be having issues, a nerve plant which is super dramatic, and another peperomia- I killed the first one by overwatering. I also have a ZZ plant which apparently thrives on neglect. It needs watering once every three to four weeks. It also really likes low light, which is perfect for the house.
The coolest plant I have is probably the prayer plant. The Husband christened it Planty the Potted Plant after a character in Phineas and Ferb, a cartoon about these two kids and their secret spy platypus. It’s actually a wholesome and hilarious tv show and we all adore it. It’s put out another leaf since I brought it home and has two more starting. The neat thing about it though is that it closes at night time (Hence the name.) It’s super fun!
Here it is during the day.
The Husband has been notified that he should expect to see more plants when he gets back from his business trips now that he can travel again. I mean, I might be lonely and plants don’t judge (or beg for) the Nutella snack at midnight. 😉
