A Poem and my BIRTHDAY!

Coneflower or echinacea. I love these.

Cute Mr. bumblebee that was cold from the fall night temperatures.
You can pet them, you know? I pet him and he waved his little feets at me.

Nasturtium. I love this buttery yellow variety

Love the antique color of this hydrangea in my old driveway.

This is a garden I re-designed and cared for for 8 years in MA.
It was a glorious shade garden. SO lush and happy.

So, it's officially May 6th. That means it's only 24 days until my beloved birthday. I turn 50 this year and I personally do not understand people who do not love their birthday and who are afraid to say how old they really are.

I'm proud of my 50 years. I've had friends who didn't make it to their 50th, so I am thankful for that large number with the zero on the end of it.

Who cares?

There's that cliche about age just being a number and that your TRUE age is how you feel and act. I think it's true. I have known people who are in their 20s and they are FAR more responsible than I'll ever be. They are "adult" in their actions and their sort of staid manners.

I'm not "adult" if you wanna use those terms. Staid? Moi? Nope!

I find "adult" humans to be rather boring and most times they take themselves far too seriously.

On the other hand, they are the people who have those steady jobs and incomes and a big, fat retirement waiting for them the moment they decide to do that thing.

On the other other hand, I've had a fun and interesting life. I don't have a big, juicy paycheck. I don't have a big fat retirement waiting for me. I will tell you this, though, I've got no regrets. I've never stayed in a miserable job, working in a cubicle, making myself miserable with my 2.5 children and a job that pays just the right amount for my mortgage, food, bills and putting my 2.5 kids into the "right" school and blah blah blah.

Oh, I find the whole idea of living like that completely suffocating.

Never have I wanted to work inside a building. Ever. Ew.

The moment I had a "break" or lunch or whatever when I was working my few short stints as a working stiff, I'd get outside as quickly as possible. If I couldn't be outside, I'd be near a window at least gazing out at the birds or trees or whatever.

I HATE hate hate being in rooms where there are no windows. Ugh. I don't know how people do it. I really really don't.

My days start here in Alaska with the window behind my head cracked open for fresh air and also so I can hear the little cheepy birds start singing at about 4am. They are rose-breasted nuthatch and a couple different kinds of chickadees with their chick-a-dee dee dee dee dee songs and calls.

Upon arising, first thing I do is look out to see the birds and the greenery of the trees. Alaska is amazing in that when spring arrives, it does so fiercely and SOOOO quickly. We already have nearly 17 hours of sunlight. Incredible.

The birch trees have already leafed out with their bright green new leaves. Stunningly bright and beautiful. My Chinese poppies out front are over a foot tall and I just saw that my bleeding heart is about ready to bloom! WOW!! And it's only May 6th! Yeesh!

Generally my puppy dog and I head out into the back yard quickly so she can do her business and I can watch the birds flitting around the yard. SO many of them. Several pairs of chickadees, nuthatch, robins, starlings, warblers, Stellar's jays and more.

It's really quite loud, but so glorious to hear them and to see the amazing growth of the plants and grass back there even in a 24 hour span.

So, the big and little natures have sort of ruled my life. Animals and plants are my gig. People are okay sometimes, but I like most people in sort of smaller doses and I loathe small talk, so it's kind of a weird measured way I lead my existence.

My husband (the current one!) finds me to be extremely flamboyant and overly trusting. I will take both of those adjectives as major compliments.

The opposite of flamboyant?

Dull
Plain
Restrained

Yuck!

The opposite of being trusting?

Distrustful
Suspicious

Again, YUCK. Who'd want to be running around like that?

There it is. Fine. I'm okay with being flamboyant and trusting. 100%. No issues with that.

And I tend to make friends who are just like that. My bestest friend, Karen, is TOTALLY flamboyant - she makes me look like a shrinking violet! I adore her crazy, out-there-ness. Love it. I love that she doesn't apologize for how she is. If you don't like it? You can lump it.

I was told, by another really good friend, that there comes a time in a woman's life that she just basically doesn't give a sh*t what other people think of her or how she dresses or any of those things. I am exactly who I am and seriously, if you make me monitor myself and how I do my stuff and how I dress and how I speak and my opinions on certain things? Well, I'm just not gonna play in your sand box.

Of course there are social tenets like not swearing in certain situations and having a sense of decorum near children or certain others and not breaking laws, etc. - I get that and you know what I'm talking about when I say things like not giving a rat's *ss about others...

I'm nice to people even sometimes when they don't deserve it. I choose to be nice because it makes me feel better about life. I'm not a nasty person - never have been and never will be. However, if you make the mistake of being icky to me over and over, well? Then you've just gotten yourself kicked out of MY sandbox!

Homie don't play dat. (That's a blast from the past - thank you In Living Color!)

So, all in all, I guess today's rant is about that same stuff I've been touting for months now. It's the thing about being nice to others and frankly, if you don't have something nice to say to me? Then ZIP IT.

Certainly I've done my share of speaking ill about others. I'm not immune to it. And, in particular there was that young person who scammed me out of a bunch of money and caused a lot of heartache. But I don't think that constitutes gossip. I wasn't making up stories. I was talking about what happened to me and I didn't want her to scam any of my other friends she knew. So, I do have room for people explaining their own experiences - especially when it involves a schmuck.

In closing, I will leave you with two things.

First, yaaaay for our new Mayor of Anchorage, Ethan Berkowitz. Major yaaay there! Phew. Dodged a proverbial bullet with the other candidate.

Second, a poem by one of my favorites, Robert Frost. It's called "A Passing Glimpse"

I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.

I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.

I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt -

Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth -
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.

Was something brushed across my mind
That no one on earth will ever find?

Heaven gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.

My bestie during our "princess" Halloween phase!

Montauk daisies I grew in MA.