Wednesday night during one of my several dreams, I had to solve a word game where every other word in a phrase was missing and I had to fill in the missing words and the phrase was a lyric from a Rolling Stones song…”you can’t always get what you want”. Thursday morning when I got in the car to leave for SHARE and started the engine, that song came out of the radio starting with that exact phrase. Whoa! And the really interesting thing is that that song and the rest of the lyric…”but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need”…has always been one of my guiding mantras or life themes.
Other song lyrics had a big impact too…”sometimes we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key” from Already Gone by the Eagles; “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” from The End by the Beatles.
Others just from general wisdom like ‘what goes around comes around’, or from the Navaho story of Spider Woman about the importance of balance in your life and the danger of perfectionism; or from a sign in my friend Gene’s studio which said simply ‘PERSEVERE’.
But the one I probably focused on the most especially during trying times, days or years of struggle, was straight from my own head…’this is only temporary’, a distillation I suppose of ‘the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes’.
Three other things. I made cheese enchiladas with meat sauce for dinner last night. Finally getting the hang of it. This time and the previous attempt came out really good.
My night blooming cereus, queen of the night, bloomed last night for the fourth time this year. Only half as many flowers as the previous three blooms but this time I remembered and went out after 10 pm with my flashlight and breathed in the sweet scent on the air.
Sitting here this morning reading blogs, hearing Cat thumping around the door to the little bathroom, figured she had brought in an anole. Finally got up to rescue the little creature. She was in the bathroom peering between the door and the wall. I looked, and her persistence over at the old turtle pond paid off. Not an anole but a leopard frog, still alive.
Dammit Cat. Don’t know if she chased it into the house or carried it in through the open back door. I picked it up and it croaked, examined it for damage, didn’t find any, carried it back to the old turtle pond, put it on the edge and it leapt back into the water.
Fingers crossed for the frog! Those photos of the cereus are breathtaking, as always.
ReplyDeleteI keep telling Cat to leave my frogs alone. I'm surprised she managed to get one.
DeleteThat night blooming cereus is beyond magnificent.
ReplyDeleteThe enchiladas look very fine.
it has gotten so big that it's a challenge to get it in the garage for the winter. may have to cut it back some this year.
DeleteLet's hope that frog, now that you saved him, will turn into a charming prince who will occasionally help you with your burn pile and other heavy garden work.
ReplyDeleteThat cereus just blows my mind!
As teenagers, we never knew what the lyrics were about, imagine! Our English wasn't good or even non existing. Rock music was music. Lyrics were more like poetry, not essential. I remember trying to translate "Bridge over troubled water" with the help of a basic tourist dictionary and gave up on troubled, how could water be troubled? WTF? It felt weird later to think that English native speakers could understand even the trashiest song lyrics all the time - and still enjoy the music.
frog to prince...if only! I like listening to songs in another language. I can just let the music and the sound of the lyrics give me the gist instead of trying to understand the lyrics in my own language which I'm terribly bad at.
DeleteWeird coincidences like that happen to me all of the time! Like I got a plant from my friend to bring to my daughter tomorrow and she wrote down the name of what it is on a note: " night blooming cereus"! And here are your pictures of that exact plant, altho, ours looks nothing like yours - just a few floppy leaves and these long tendrils!?! Wacky! Can she keep it as a house plant or is it supposed to be planted outside? (We are in Illinois.)
ReplyDeletemine is in a pot and lives under the magnolia tree and gets filtered sunlight. I bring it into the garage against an inside wall for the winter along with my other tropicals in pots once it starts getting below 40˚, draping a big tarp around them with a little space heater for the coldest nights of which we only have a few. but yeah, long floppy leaves and long finger thick tendrils for lack of a better word. I have no idea how it will fare up in Illinois. inside for the winter, outside when weather permits. may need more sun than mine gets because our sun is very intense. if she puts it in the ground it will die over the winter.
DeleteThanks for your advice! She has lots of plants inside with a plant light over them so I hope it does well.
DeleteThose cereus photos are calling out to be framed.
ReplyDeletethe blooms are seriously gorgeous and only last one night. big too, span 6 - 8 inches.
Deletethe top photo of the cereus looks fake- like how can anything be so beautiful and perfect? Another painting for you to paint, maybe?
ReplyDeleteThanks for saving the attractive frog!!
painting the cereus flower is intimidating! I love my leopard frogs.
DeleteBeautiful, beautiful cereus. Thanks for going out for it.
ReplyDeleteI almost forgot...again. I was naked in bed when I remembered. Put on my robe and grabbed the flashlight.
DeleteI love it when you photograph the cereus in bloom. They're such an exquisite flower.
ReplyDeleteit's a shame they only last one night but I guess that's part of their ephemeral beauty.
DeleteTrying times, good point. In my worse moments I knew they wouldn't last. Nothing lasts. But it never goes away.
ReplyDeleteno but you do get intermediate relief.
DeleteThanks for saving the Leopard Frog. That counts as your saintly deed for the week.
ReplyDeleteEnchiladas for breakfast? Yes, please! They look wonderful. So do your cereus blooms, of course. I came across a gardenia bush in bloom last week, and can only imagine how sweet yours smells. As for lyrics, there's nothing better than the Traveling Wilbury's "End of the Line." The entire song is filled with wisdom -- not to mention a great beat produced by one of the best collaborative groups ever formed. I especially like, "It's all right, even if you're old and gray. It's all right -- you've still got something to say."
ReplyDeleteenchiladas were for dinner. I have never been successful growing gardenias, they would always die in less than a year. I finally had one plant that did well, grew and bloomed and then we had the killer arctic vortex that froze it to the ground. it came back but never did well again and after the third year in a row of hard freezes and it freezing and coming back less and less, I put the poor thing out of its misery and dug it up.
DeleteI love the Traveling Wilbury's! That whole album is great, but yes that song in particular.
DeleteOMG ... I love that cereus flower ... so stunning!
ReplyDeletedefinitely worth waiting up for. a shame they only last one night.
DeleteThat is just such a gorgeous flower! The inside of the bloom is so complicated!
ReplyDeletethey are amazing.
DeleteAll that talk about the Queen of the Night, and all I hear in my head is Mozart’s best aria.
ReplyDeleteI'll give it a listen.
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