Planning For Your Life

The children in our neighborhood will be heading back to school next week so I guess that signals the end of summer.

For me the signal for the end of summer is the waning produce from my garden. It has been a good summer and the garden produced some good crops of peas, beans, spinach, squash, peppers and tomatoes. I managed to freeze or can a lot of it and look forward to using it into the winter ahead.

Here is a picture of some of the squash.

Today I tilled the squash under and prepared the soil for a second crop of green beans. I hope to get one last good crop before it freezes so I can have some beans this winter.

I know that we will have many more days of warm weather ahead but it is always sad to see the end of the garden. It is a signal that things are changing, evolving and slowing down.

Life, however, never slows down. In fact, as we grow older it seems to move ever faster and we have to work at slowing it down. A garden, though, is a great way to slow time down because there is nothing you can do to make plants grow and produce any faster.

And when you are working in the garden you need to stop and take notice of every little aspect of it. What is new that you missed yesterday, what needs special attention, what needs to be harvested today? And if you have a particularly small crop (mine was a pepper called Tai Hot) that you need to get right down on to pick and that has hundreds of fruit, time can really slow down.

I’m lucky that my kids are grown and gone so that I can have the time to contemplate and work in my garden. If you have kids, especially young ones, your life is probably in a constant whirl of activity. I remember those days of after school activities and constant juggling of schedules to make it to the events.

But even if your life looks like this it might be a good idea to find something in your life to slow you down. To slow you down long enough to appreciate LIFE. Maybe it is yoga, or meditation, or a walk around the block or your garden.

With school back in session it might seem like things just got more hectic, that time just sped up a little more, but if you take some time to just consciously slow it down you might find that small piece of time where you can take notice of that most important thing just in front of you right now. A moment just to be present to life, your life and a chance to say “thank you”.

Here’s hoping that as your summer comes to a close you find a moment just for You.

Marc

———————————————————————–

Have you ever wanted to make a difference? Have you heard of the concept of Pay it Forward?

There are a group of people with just such a mission and you can join them.

http:/www.payitforward.name

For more great content, remember to subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe