CHAPTER I: PROLOGUE

It was the last days of August and the fields were high with corn. In the orchard the last of the plums clung to their branches and the apples were showing their first pinkish blush. The vegetable garden overflowed with produce: peppers, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and so on.

The days grew long and hot.

But soon we will miss this (sometimes unbearable) heat.

Yes, when fall comes, kicking summer out sometime after the midpoint of September, it will stay awhile like an old friend that we have missed.

DONATE / SUPPORT ME SO I CAN CREATE MORE QUALITY CONTENT!

CHAPTER II: THE WILD GEESE

Let's go kayaking today!

Here we have a pretty dense network of small rivers, that we wanted to do kayaking ever since we moved here last year.
But somehow it kept getting pushed back.

Being on the water for hours brings me peace.
I think of the poem "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver.
It's a beautiful poem, a guidance on how to live our life.
That we are human, and to be a human, means we are an animal.
That we should not let societal pressures guide us.
We face shared struggles in our human existence, but it we look outside ourselves, the natural world will exist in the same way, despite our troubles.

"Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountain and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again."

If we could act as free as the wild geese, maybe we could find our place and purpose, to find solace, to return home... again.

I license a lot of music for my videos here - Sign up using the link below to get 2 extra months free :)

https://bit.ly/3NgdrIY
https://share.epidemicsound.com/npm4hd

CHAPTER III: THE HEALING GARDEN

Gardening not only yields fresh food and flowers, it also feeds the mind and soul.
It rewards and renews all the senses.
I feel more in control.
I don't have to be anything when I'm in my garden.

A friend of mine told me:

"It's almost like something instinctual takes over and I get swept up in the force of it.
Like it's not me doing it.
The garden is doing it to me."

Here the magic arises.

The hard edges of life seem to soften as shapes, colors, and textures – rounded shrubs, bringt brunching blooms, sprays of variegated foliage – work their way into our mind.