Thunders and Tomatoes

Hello beautiful people, how are doing today? I am tired. We had a thunderstorm that started this morning at around 3 am and went on for about an hour, and it kept me awake.

I do think thunderstorms are fascinating but I am scared of them, and in general I always struggle with sleeping while it rains.

I have mentioned this before, but I have always felt like rain demands attention. You can't just ignore rain, even if you don't go look at it from the window, like I do, you at least acknowledge it. Rain hardly ever goes unnoticed.

But even if it kept me up last night, I am still thankful for the rain. We really needed it because we have had 90⁰F + heat and the garden was starting to struggle.

Speaking of the garden, we are in the middle of gardening season. I don't remember when I last talked about the garden, but we have been harvesting for a few weeks now, and we have reached the point where we have something to harvest every day.

Our slicer tomatoes are almost ready and I think we will have our first tomato sandwich this weekend. I have been resisting the urge to eat all of the cherry tomatoes that we have so that I can use them to make tomato sauce.

We have picked about 5 to 10 eggs plants and we ate them on a pasta bake last week. I have also been drying all of our herbs so we can store them and use them the rest of the year.

With how warm it has been outside it is hard to spend quality time for more than a couple of minutes with sweating and wanting to be inside, but last Tuesday I was able to wake up at 6:30 am and spent two hours journaling outside.

Here is what I wrote:

Good morning, it is almost 7 am and I am outside again. I didn't quite finish my thoughts yesterday because I got distracted talking to and joking with Brandon. I made tacos last night, but not the usual easy-ground-meat-tacos, this time I made steak tacos, and they were really good. I wished I knew how to make tacos Al pastor because it has been such a long time since I have eaten them. I like journaling outside but I feel like I always end up getting distracted by nature and then don't write my thoughts out, which isn't very helpful for someone trying to be a writer. I have lots of thoughts but I always forget to write them down. I wish I could show you the amount of birds that are currently in the garden, all taking turns to eat from the bird feeder and chirping as if they are having a meeting or gathering among friends. What do you call a group of birds? A flock? I like the word "congregation" better, it makes it feel like they have gathered here with a purpose, like they come here to do more than just answer nature's call to satisfy their hunger. I like to think—perhaps imagine—that the garden is as sacred to them as it is to me. Can we call it a sanctuary? The garden I mean, the place where we both feel most at peace. Can we call it a sanctuary and treat it as such? Make it a place of no harm. If I declare the garden a sanctuary, will it be our place to meditate? Will it be the place we come to become or maybe un-become. The place we come to abandon the things that no longer serve us, and discover the things we are meant to be, or at least try to make sense of what we have and who we are. Maybe if I declare the garden a sanctuary, then it can be a place we come to heal, a place of safety. Perhaps, in all of the craziness of life, we have been given a slice of heaven, here in the garden where the birds congregate and bunnies sleep. With all of the things we do and all of the things we are expected to be, let this be a place where we simply exist. A place to set our guards down and let our feelings pour out of us like the heavy rain that so easily abandons the clouds. Let it be a place where our feet get muddy but our soul gets cleaned. Set them down, all of your secrets, all of your fears and doubts, all of your broken dreams, all the things that make you feel anxious or angry or sad, all of the things that hurt, bury them underground and watch as nature makes beauty out of the hardest things in life. After all, this is the place a robin chose for it's nest, and the place the cardinals come to sing early in the morning. This is the place where doves dance around each other as they fall in love. Here, where the weeds grow tall and the flowers are plenty, hiding amongst the overgrown plants, where the birds congregate, is our sanctuary. This is our garden.

What do you think? Do you also have a garden you love? Please let me know in the comments below.

That will be all for today, but before I go here is a picture of some flowers I picked from the garden.

Until next week, don't forget to share your love with everyone around you and do something that makes you happy!