The Grass is Greener

The water tastes sweeter here, the rain more gentle and frequent, the dew last longer and the scent of dirt is stronger. The grass is greener with lushness and the air is filled with floral freshness that wakes you up and says "YES!". There is nothing like Connecticut country living.
The hills roll more roundly here and the country roads more curvy. There is an abundance of everything that has you breath deeply more often and sigh...more green, more rain, more song birds and more daffodils that bloom again and again. More acreage, more horses, more stone walls covered in flat minty green lichen. More geese, more morning doves, more wild herbs and more love of good hard work. Maybe it's all the beauty around us or the change of seasons that drive us, whatever it is, New Englander's have more gumption. We are do-it-yourselfer's boot strappin' folk. We don't pay nobody to do something we can do ourselves. The satisfaction is what country living is about.

Doing it all myself has gotten me in a bit of trouble here and there though...a lot of last minute scrambling and projects not quite what I wanted ...and I have been expanding my mindset after living in California for twelve years. I am still a country girl at heart, and I got a dose of fast-walking-New-York-City girl blood in me after ten years of pounding the pavement there, but as a California girl, I learned to slow down, to look people in the eye and say hi and enjoy it. I have learned to connect, create partnership, play nice and work well with others. I have learned that you get more done with a team and yes, honey does work better than vinegar, and no it doesn't always work to get mad when people are late and or do everything myself. California has taught me it's okay to chill and play, to see the abundance and roll in it. To feast my eyes on greenness and not see work, shrubs that need to be trimmed or weeds that need to be whacked, but to see the dew drops and spider webs and marvel at them so long that my knees ache. I am grateful for the shift in my perspective from having lived in New York and California. I see Connecticut as more delightful now, and my gratitude has me be at ease.

Enjoying Connecticut living has me be more quiet now too. There is no air of having to prove something like I take on in California. I can drive for an hour with my Dad and just stare at the trees hugging the roads. I can stain cedar siding with my brother and just enjoy the satisfaction of working together. I can sit by the pond with my Mom and just point to a Great Blue Heron. Everything else is said with a sigh of appreciation. We can just be in Connecticut.

There is something magical in being in nature for the boys too. They hardly fight. They run and play and catch dragon flies and leopard frogs and then fish and throw pine cones at snakes. They interact with nature. They break sticks and dig stuff up. They revel in the stink of Skunk Cabbage and marvel at the glow of a Buttercup flower under their chins. They run with bare feet and fall on gravel and get up with determination. They get dirty and crusty toed. But somehow they seem cleaner than ever. They have to be wrangled into a shower once a week. Their hair is thick and shiny and their skin is rosey and clear. Their shouts of glee when they catch something is worth more than the fee of a summer camp. Their faces of awe when their uncle builds them a tree fort is worth more than their weight in gold. Summer in Connecticut is priceless. I hope you get to experience nature like this often in your life.

The Golden Hour

There is that perfect time of day to fish. Just when the golden rays of the sun hit the tops of the pine trees and the water bugs start skirting across the surface in the pond, is when the bass start hunting. Pond fishing has a peace and excitement all it’s own. Staring at an orange bobber against the bright blue reflection is natural meditative pop art. Listening for and hearing when the bullfrogs start their deep throaty chorus just has you feel as settled with the day as a piece of warm apple pie. And when that fish bits and the fight is on and the rod bends with the weight of a fresh water fish and you pull your prize into the boat, there ain’t nothing better or more fun.

The Golden Hour is when the work is done enough, when the beer, if you are drinking, is cooled just right, and the dinner is slow cooking up in the house while the Misses sits on the shore with a lemonade. The Golden Hour is the time for sitting and talking about nothing and everything. Sometimes, in the talking, you laugh at life so loud you think you might turn the boat…or at least scare the fish a mile away. But that’s what fishing at the Golden Hour is about. ..nothing and everything and being with your bud. Catching the Granddaddy of all time or at least catching a few good ones and getting a glimpse of the Granddaddy that makes people guffaw when you describe his girth. The fish stories from Golden Hour could feed a storyteller for a week even if the fish don't. It’s that time of day when, with every other cast, someone is getting a bite or reeling one in with a hoot and a holler that could rattle the cattle.

It’s prime scratching your head at the foolishness of the neighbors time, telling one on the school teacher down the road, or even on yourself, time. The Golden Hour is when silent promises are made in between grunts to acknowledge the listening. You just know...whatever your bud is saying, you get each other. And when you don’t you still agree to laugh and cast instead.

My bud was my son tonight. And instead of his Dad, as the voice of my writing implies, I am his Mom settin' in for his Dad, because sometimes a Mom gets to do the Dad things, because your boy is still a boy no matter whether you want to gut a fish or not. So I fished with my nine year old bud and we talked idly of the day’s doings and we caught enough fish to have leftovers for a cat if we had one. There was peace and pride in living. He knew when Golden Hour was over, when the trees were just graying and his pants were wet enough. As I gutted the fish by the waterfall to the “eeewws” and the “uuughs” of my three boys, and had him cut a tail off, he had a good enough dose of being a hunter to walk with men.

I realized that, sometimes what it means to be a good woman and a good Mom is to step in as a man. Not to be a better man, but to allow access for our boys to express their almost man-ness. Get dirty, get sweaty, gut a fish and get covered in slime and scales. Just like we expect the Dads now, to step in and do the dishes and pick up the tutu for the dance recital, it’s just as important for us women to “man up” and do the gross, dirty, heavy lifting things when our man is not available. You might even find it’s funner than a tea party.

I know it’s an hour my son and I will never forget. I am inspired by my son and my husband, who usually does all the fishing with him. It takes patience and fortitude to connect with nature and then kill something and prepare it for eating. It takes a hunter. I have had the privilege of hunting and gutting fish with my son.
As the bats dart through the darkening sky and we swat mosquito’s on our way into the house to fry up the fish my son caught, the smile on my hunter boy's face is worth all the gold in the world to me.

Zen Honeycutt

Courageous and Creative

Today I invented the possibility with my accountability partners (yes I have two...it takes two to keep me in line:) of being Courageous and Creative.
That is my theme for this year.
No more business as usual.

That means some thing are changing. I am completing things that aren't working. I am giving up things I once loved to create a new future. I am purging my home of the unnecessary and unused. I am catching myself when I speak the usual broken record words or sounding like my parents in their frustrated moments. Not always, but an astonishing amount of miracles are emerging where I would least expect them.
Simple miracles in simple moments, that become the most meaningful.

Today, after school, I picked up my eldest son at the second pick up for the day, the sixth errand perhaps, and because I told my accountability partner that I would, and because I knew I could, I asked my children what they wanted to do.
"What would we do if we were being courageous and creative?"

Now normally, my son would get in the car, they might bicker a bit, talking over each other, vying for attention suddenly, and we would go home, spread out to our corners...Ben on homework near me on the computer, and Bodee playing with a toy, back to Bronson to protect his momentary obsession. We would have snack together, maybe read a few books, but the day would continue predictably for the rest of the evening, including much whining as I am cooking dinner and terse reminders that the dinner table is not a trough and we are not pigs.

But this time, today was different. I am committed to being and causing Courage and Creativity!

We declare Hike Time! and then Ben suggests afterwards we go home and write about it. "That would be creative!" he says cleverly.
We hike through a new area by a secret marsh in Irvine. Being courageous, it's a new area and we don't have a map. As soon as Bodee even sniffs a whiff of boredom I suddenly stop in my tracks and point "BIGFOOT! TRACKS!" The boys are on high alert and we urgently inspect the huge tracks of what seems to have been a very large footed walker. Then..."SNAKE!!! The longest snake in the WOOOORLD!" I shout...at a long striped water hose.
"Oh Mommy, you're funny, that's not a snake..." I am inspired by being considered funny.
"Are you suuuuure?" I say slyly, and they realize they are not sure and boldly approach anyway.

We courageously go off the path and walk through winding trails. The boys pee in the bushes with glee and we Christen it the "Pee Bush", walking past it with our noses pinched.
The afternoon is a delightful adventure of nature, trees, rocks, mud, birds, lizards, flowers, marsh ponds and singing boys filled with freedom.



We go home and their drawings and writing about the adventure was as if we had gone to Disneyland.
Bodee also created an apology letter to a boy in school that he insulted. It took great courage for him to acknowledge that he did that and he very creatively wrote "There were two boys who were MAD and then became friends."
Instead of "There, ARE YOU HAPPY?" like he wanted to. It took courage for me not to get angry with him and to create understanding and the freedom to express himself...even if it did take three attempts at an apology.

We ate a delicious dinner and made a video for Daddy who was working late. Bodee and the boys sang a song about how much they love Daddy. Priceless.
We even did a Venus Fly Trap science project afterwards...even though I really wanted to check out and write...because my children wanted to create something WITH ME.
And it matters that it's me that does it with them.

I am inspired by our creation.
Inspired by the joy and glee in my children. When I bought them a pack of gum on one of the errands they sang songs for ten minutes about Happy Glee Gum. When we found a new path they shouted at the top of their lungs with bravado.What if we created like that? Expressed joy like that?
When my boys saw a tiny path, they took it, regardless of knowing where it might go. What if we were courageous in everyday actions...what new things, what miracles might show up?

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Why do we Have To be Nice to Nature?

” Mommy, why do we have to be nice to nature?” asked my 5 year old Bodee on a sunny hike through a nature reserve. We were on our Sunday family hike and I had curtailed his desire to crush anthills and smash flowers and he didn’t like it. And yet, he really authentically wanted to know why…

” First of all, we don’t HAVE to be. And alot of people aren’t nice to nature. You don’t have to be. It’s a choice. You can be. As your Mommy I ask you to be nice to nature, and you can choose to be. Why do you think we might want to be nice to nature?’

He thought carefully” Because they do to us what we do to it. ”

He was roughly quoting the Golden Rule that we had discussed earlier when a squabble erupted between he and his 2 year old brother.

“Great Bodee!….Ben, why do You think we might choose to be nice to nature?” My 8 year old was listening in on the conversation and I was curious to know what gears were churning in his brain.

“Because we ARE nature.” he said simply and dashed over a dirt slope, off the lead the way on our adventure.

We ARE nature.

With the natural disasters happening in Japan and in so many parts of the globe, with such devastating, unthinkable results, it would behoove us to think about our intricate connection to the nature we are.

We are 78% water. If our water sources are endangered, polluted, hoarded or scarce. WE are.

We are consumers of food, which come from nature. If our food is polluted, sprayed with pesticides, highly processed, sprinkled with preservatives or genetically engineered, WE are too.

We are breathers of air. If we create pollution and it goes into the air, through exhaust pipes, factories chimneys, radiation or reactors, and the result is polluted air, WE are polluted too.

We are creators, doers, we Cause as well…we are producers of pollution, which impact nature and ourselves in ways we cannot always see or measure. Just like not crushing an anthill or leaving a flower for a hummingbird to draw nectar from has an unimaginable impact on nature….regardless of how minute we think it is…nature has unimaginable impact on us.

Just imagine, all of human kind’s existence, if measured in distance, would be the thickness of a human hair compared to the existence of the universe and planets. When you think of it that way, one earthquake begins to look a little like grains of sand for an ant hill to the universe.

Sounds like a blasphemous trivialization, doesn’t it? AND what’s so is that the earth will shift again, and will we make up that God is angry and it’s the end of the world, and be victims and raise our stress levels or will we look to an empowering context for our feelings and meaning in life. We can be nice to ourselves or not.

And nature doesn’t care about NICE by the way. Nature, the universe…doesn’t know what nice is. It just is. The plates move. The water flows. The mud slides. There is no meaning of nice or not nice about it. We humans add the meaning of nice or not.

Yes, the results to us are unthinkable…but the source of the tragedy is not in the plates shifting or the water flowing. The source of the tragedy actually comes from a blessed place. It is a tragedy because we love. We care, we are connected to other human beings, to their dreams, their lives, their children. We are related to what matters to them and those they love.

That’s where a situation becomes a tradgedy…when my child is present to what the ants are up to, he chooses on his own, not to crush the anthill. He chooses not to create a tragedy for them. He is a child with imagination and choice.

Nature however, will continue to ebb and flow, rocks and water do not imagine or think about what they are going to do today. God even, if you believe, I assert created the earth and nature as it is, perfect and whole and complete, and just like human beings, nature does what it does. Only it doesn’t have choice. If we can acknowledge the source of the tragedy of natural disasters is within US, and it comes from a source of LOVE, that we are amazing, then we are empowered and peace and creation can begin.

How can we be nice to nature, and to ourselves, today?

Wishing you and your loved ones peace.

With Love,

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Ode to California

I Live Where….

I live where the seasons sing in songs of sun,
Glowing,encouraging ,
Searing white light,
Gentle, comforting,
And soft, furtive sun.

I live where the Eucalyptus kiss the sky,
Swaying with long tendrils of sophisticated leaves,
Trunks reveal ridiculous peach and lavender
beneath layers of delicate cool grey skin.

I live where the freeways and fences are draped with gentle jasmine,
Hypnotically intoxicating.
Where walls between dense apartment complexes are topped with
Fiercely fuscia Bougainville, screaming “Fiesta!”

I live where hummingbirds bob between Bottlebrush,
Lush pink balls of nectar and flirty fun.
Where fluorescent purple Jacaranda scatter their petals like confetti
On grateful sidewalks…giving morning dogwalkers and
moms with strollers a reason to wonder…What color, What beauty!

I live where the luscious ocean goes on forever,
Licking my feet in the soft millennial sand.
Smoothing the purple, spotted and green jade rocks,
Unleashing wave after wave after wave endlessly…

I live where the rolling hills of green velvet
turn into brown and yellow fodder for fires.
Where earthquakes roll through Easter brunch and we…
Californians…
laugh and sit and sip our lemonade by the pool,
in the sublime sun and the shade of the palms.


Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Follow the Leader...or else.

It is a bright white sun light kind of Sunday afternoon. We are at El Moro Canyon on the coast of Laguna Beach for a hike with dear dear family friends. The hillsides are several shades of silky green, with patches of yellow wildflowers. The ocean breeze tousles my children's hair and they jump and skip in anticipation at the base of the gravel path. I am present to just how incredibly amazing the day is, the air, the location and our friends. Where we live is gorgeous.

My son Bodee is also gorgeous. He is days away from five, on the cusp of Big Boy-dom.
I am not sure it means anything, but he is the sign of Aries (fire sign, like me) and the Chinese horoscope Rooster (like my husband) and we sometimes lovingly joke that he is often like a Rooster with his A** on fire.
He is at the head of our pack of six kids and three adults, jogging in place, calling us forth, electric energy exuding from all pores.
We follow. He runs, he explores. He throws rocks at bugs and smashes snake holes. He is a mighty warrior through and through.
Suddenly, our mildly strenuous hike up the gently sloping hill is interrupted by his scream that is in the realm of a mortally wounded wild boar. Bodee comes running back, away from the head of the group screaming, "They are trying to get in front of me! They are cheating! They are making me not the leader!"

His misery is heart wrenching. He sulks, hangs back and pouts angrily. After some time he can't help himself but to try to be the leader again, but this time he is fierce, muttering under his breath, eyes shifting back and forth, watching his peripherals with paranoid anger. He may be the leader, but he is not having fun. He is ferociously on guard, preventing that scenario from happening again. He will NOT be bested!

I have experienced that human beings have a way of being exactly the way Bodee behaved. I know I have. We strive forth, we explore and conquer. And then somebody does something. Somebody alllways does something..that we don't like. Or something goes the way we didn't want it to go. And that's it. Forget it. Pointless, useless, and definitely less fun.

We may pick ourselves up and try again....ask a different girl to dance, work harder, work longer, and yet that past experience hangs onto us like a paranoid monkey on our back with its hands over our eyes. We can't see what's really in front of us ...which is nothing....we can only see the past experience lurking, looming, breathing down our necks threatening the future we think we are creating. THAT's not going to happen to us again! It's why wars are started and borders are created, politicians filibust and siblings and spouses silently hold grudges for years.

On the way down Bodee runs with his brothers and friends until he collapses in his fathers arms, and Todd carries him the rest of the way. He is tired from leading. He rests and restores himself. Children can sleep anywhere.

In the silence of the easy hike downward, just the sound of gravel crunching softly beneath our feet, we are present not just to nature but to human nature. I am present to how perfect he is, exactly the way he is. His striving to be a leader is an expression, as my mother would say, of life itself.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

"Home" - childhood Connecticut home

Home

I live where,
after a burst of summer rain,
the air smells rich of earth and soil.
Where the sweet green leaves
hug the winding road,
and damp nights
beckon bumpy old toads.

I live where the spring water
runs pure and cool and deep,
and the summer hum of crickets
lull me to sleep.

I live where,
as the night breathes,
the stars sprinkle the earth with an etheral silence.
Where brooks gurgle endless
endless bubbly tunes
and squeaking black bats
dart around a golden moon.

-Zen LaBossiere Honeycutt
about Still Waters, Voluntown, Connecticut
when I was 13 yrs old

I found this in a dusty notebook from my high school days a few weeks ago. It was the seed revived...that I am a good writer. I have something to say and can express it freely. Words are just words until we put them together and create something new. I create images that dance in my head until I let them go...free like ballerinas pirouetting across the page. Growing up so connected to nature had me see the beauty in merely being alive and seeing what was in front of me. Not having television in the house from 4th grade on had me read a hundred times more...imagining...immersing myself in a world of words.
My father read to us at night and as I leaned on his chest and heard his voice rumble, I saw the robbers and kidnappers of "O'Henry's" musings. I loved those stories at night. I loved being outside during the day, laying in the new cool grass of spring...inspecting crawfish hiding in the water's edge...floating in an inner tube in the pond, staring up at the serene blue sky and feeling both an emptiness, a yearning to go somewhere and a fullness of the beauty in the world and the possibilities in life.
To be able to bring words to the wonder I experienced as a child creates the world more vividly for me. I am more alive. I am living and breathing and dancing with what I love.
Thanks for reading.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com