As I sit out on our porch soaking up the coolness of the grapevine and other greenery while I eat my toast and bacon breakfast a memory comes to mind from my trip to Ireland way back when. A local there commented about how hot it was, all the way up to 21°C. I just nodded in agreement resisting the urge to comment that 21° was the temperature I had the automatic climate control set to in my car all year round back in Australia.
Continue reading “A Little Perspective”
The biggest lessons sometimes come from the smallest things. This was the case for me this morning in meditation. It started with a small sandfly of some sort that flew in and landed on the windowsill right beside the Buddha statue I was focussing on in meditation. It landed, wandered around a little, then just stayed in the one place. I shifted my focus to it and watched it waiting for it to move again but it didn’t, it just sat there.
Continue reading “Sandfly life”
We planted a number of chamomile plants in our front garden which I wrote about in earlier posts Got Qi and Got Qi Update. As these little plants are now rewarding us with a supply of chamomile flowers we have started making cups of chamomile tea directly from the flower heads. I thought it might round out the discussion by sharing how we do this. Continue reading “How to make fresh chamomile tea”
This noisy miner is no longer noisy, its chirping call forever stilled by the action of one of my neighbours. A neighbour who apparently cares little for us or our environment. This lack of care is demonstrated by this sad sight, a dismal scene of scattered feathers seen in our park recently which once constituted a breathing, living, chirping noisy miner bird. Continue reading “Noisy No More”
I was out on my daily walk recently when I noticed that one of my shoe laces had come undone. As I leant down to re-tie my shoe lace, a kookaburra started to “laugh” from somewhere a distance behind me. The kookaburra’s call sounds like laughing. Why is he laughing at me I thought, it was just my shoe lace? Shoe lace secure again, I looked around for where the kookaburra might be. Continue reading “Kookaburra”
Here are the elderberries in full bloom as mentioned in “Just A Leaf”.
“Love is the sap of the tree of Life.”
As I was writing my recent post “Just A Leaf” I came up with the simile “tree of life” which I had obviously heard or seen elsewhere. I was struck by the way the leaf was part of this tree which gave it life and in which it played its own role in sustaining the life of the tree. This thought then expanded out into how we humans could be seen as part of a tree of life as well. What about our dogs, the wuppies, are they part of a tree of life as well? The same tree or a different tree? Is there only one tree of life or are there multiple trees of life, perhaps one tree per species? Continue reading “Trees Of Life”
We have two elderberry trees in the garden outside my study, framing the window on each side with a swathe of green leaves and in their season, magnificent white blooms setting their berry fruit as they in turn expire. These leaves have lately given me a pleasant point of focus during my meditations and I have shared this view with you in the image above. As I sat meditating on the elderberry leaves one day last week a movement to my right caught my attention. Continue reading “Just A Leaf”
Here are our chamomile plants now that were the subject of my “Got Qi?” post back in November last year.
Kangaroos are probably one of the worlds most adored animals, they even feature on Australia’s coat of arms. To us Australians though, they are just locals. Let me share with you a couple of meetings with these locals. Continue reading “Meeting The Locals”
Weekly episodes on whatever catches my eye but with a keen interest in hearing the story behind blues musicians and craftsmen
Mike Stacey 2016
