uplifting

Counting Blessings

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As I was driving to the other hardware store that did stock the item I was after, a small stone hit my windscreen a few weeks back. I could see the tiny mark and that it had not done too much damage thankfully. Two weeks later it was a lot warmer and I drove home tired and dehydrated after a long day of hard work in the plant nursery, grateful for the air conditioning in my car. The Sun hit the tiny chip as l drove along the freeway home, making it glisten in a concerning way. It looked as if the small chip had some tiny cracks coming off it on both sides, perhaps triggered by the temperature differences between the outside air and the air conditioned inside air, which spurred me into action to ring the trusted company that I had used before to prevent chips turning into massive cracks. The guy came out the next day. He peeled the protective sticker off that I had stuck on immediately upon returning home before calling them, to find that I must have put it in the wrong spot. His scrutinous eye could not find the small cracks that had worried me so much the day before! He put a little filler in a small spot that looked like it may have been the impact site of a couple of weeks ago as well as topping up an old, much more serious chip they had fixed about a decade ago which was crumbling a little now. “How much do I owe you for this?” I asked, expecting to at least have to pay for a call out fee. His response: “Don’t worry about it” took me by surprise and I quickly dashed to my fridge to see if I had some after work beers for him to at least show him my thanks for the trouble.

My computer was having issues with the latest update and failing to install it despite me trying several times over a couple of weeks. Besides that, I was concerned about the fact that I had not made any backups on the external hard drive since the last time a tech expert helped me speed it up more than a year ago. As it is getting on a bit and you never know when the hard drive in an older laptop will give up and die, I felt an urgency to get that done again too, but with my limited understanding I was too scared to add more to the hard drive that was the only backup of all my pictures that had been slowing my computer down. I was worried the new backup would delete the older one containing all my pictures! So I asked the trusted expert to come back for a house call to sort both issues. He spend at least 20 minutes fixing and explaining. When I asked how much he wanted to be paid for this service, the answer again was: “Don’t worry about it!” and he rushed out the door to get back to his other contract work that was waiting for him in the afternoon.

It was only a few days later that I went to the shops on a Saturday morning just before lunch. Driving along with my windows down to cool the car from standing in the hot Sun, I felt and heard that something had attached itself onto my car tire. when I parked at the shops I found a roofing screw clearly visible and I knew it would only be a matter of time, before the tire starts to deflate. I rang the mechanics that always look after my car, but they had already closed for the day. I rang a couple more places specializing in tire repairs, but being a long weekend none answered my plight. I carefully proceeded to drive to the all the different shops I had planned to visit and made it home safely. I parked it on the lawn to enable us to use the other car that was in the drive, normally parked behind mine.
After the long weekend had finished I rang my mechanic again to find they had no one available that day to fix it and that I was better off going to another place nearby. They were not busy and could help me straight away. The repairer pulled the screw out and smiled. It was a short one and had not punctured the tire fully! As he had spend time putting the car on his bridge to pull it out, I asked: “how much”?
Again the answer was: “Don’t worry about it”….

What is going on? Three times lucky? I don’t know, but I certainly am counting my blessings and they seem to keep on coming in current times!

It may be my changed attitude to trusting things will work out and knowing I am looked after by higher forces that guide me on the right path of helping people. I know for sure that the calmer I feel and the more gratitude I generate, the more evidence I see of this support. Not only that, the more evidence I see, the more grateful I feel as a result!

My mum turned 90 in March this year, after having been on the brink of death several times since she moved into the nursing home, first after a fall, and again last November when she was diagnosed with the dreaded C-word that stopped the world in 2020. She made it through with a sniffle and fatique and recovered. The nurses have started calling her the miracle lady! She has outlived all the original residents that she moved in with when she arrived there in January 2019, despite her frailty!

The nursing home is in Europe and I had been visiting twice a year from Australia since her admission. Of course travel has stopped and I am unable to visit currently, so I feel so grateful things have gone the way they have, especially in regards to timing…
Imagine I would have had to deal with her admission in the past year? She could not have coped another year at home with her dementia… How could l have helped her move and bring her those extra jamies and other things she needed and forgot? I am so grateful she was well settled in by 2020 and having seen how the nursing staff deals with their residents, I have full trust that she is in the best place she could be, close to her friends and familiar surrounds.

Have you experienced more blessings as a result of gratitude too?

Please share in the comments!

Copyright 2021, by PollyEsther

Feel free to share the link😉

Lucky Feather

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“Enjoy your walk” said my neighbor from her front yard. I had stopped for a quick chat with her on my usual before dinner dog walk. “Thank you, I always do” I replied.

She did not have time for a long one today as she was standing outside freshly showered after work, ready to leave for her weekly meditation class.

In my head the thoughts did not stop as I walked on towards the corner of our small Court. Walking is a form of meditation for me, breathing fresh air, sometimes with a hint of salt and seaweed blowing in with the cool sea breeze coming off Westernport Bay. Focusing on how it makes my body feel, the sensation of my skin curling itself into goosebumps on my bare arms, now followed by a deep relaxing breath to not resist what is. I love looking around, observing the little marvels of nature scattered through our neighborhood and allowing my body to work on making some essential vitamin D…

Lately something interesting has been occuring every single walk. To most people it may seem extremely trivial, but to me it is like a sign of approval from nature that I am on the right track, reconnecting, and if a dear friend of mine is correct, it may even bring me luck.

As those thoughts were whirling around I stopped myself for a moment and re focused back to the moment and my surrounds. I first looked around and next down… and there it was again, to the left of my foot on the pavement, a perfectly shaped fresh feather. The timing and place could not have been more serendipitous and I could not help wonder if there was something else involved and what it may symbolize. After all I feel like living at a turnaround point of change in my life again, with my first Wim Hof Method workshop last Sunday resulting in a great review on my instructor profile. I took a deep breath, straightened my posture and smiled as I crossed the street and walked on.

A feather on the footpath

Ofcourse I picked it up to take home to my now pretty fast growing collection of feathers.

My feather collection

It brings me joy and gratitude looking at all my ‘exotic’ feathers from local Lorikeets, Galahs, Cockatoos, Magpies, Owls and Kookaburras and who knows what other species I did not reconize. Who would have thought this possible when I was a little girl growing up in the Netherlands all those years ago?

I am so glad I live in a country with such wonderful and colourful birds. Do you bring home treasures you find on your walks too?

Lucky feather

With Gratitude,

PollyEsther

Copyright 2020 <PollyEsther> All rights reserved
Please feel free to share this link 😉

The Emerging Butterfly

Blue Butterfly
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l used to be a caterpillar small and insecure,
eating away at yummy green leaves so pure.

I did not feel so well and was not growing like l should…
Wondering how to make it better and if l possibly could?

Then one day a book fell in my hands,
that taught me which leaves were in bad lands.

l read and read some more,
like I’ve never read before.

Started eating the right leaves from then,
finally knowing what to eat and when.

I felt a whole lot better indeed,
and grew fatter and fatter with rapid speed.

Started having a real good time,
rolling along with a great big smile.

Then wore myself out after all,
got tired from eating, felt like curling into a ball.

I felt different and a little strange…
Were there some special leaves in the last range?

I spun a little hammock out of silk and laid myself down to rest.
It only seemed like moments when l woke back up in my little nest.

Who has washed it for me while l slept?
cos l am sure it was less tight, last time l checked…

I stretched out my stiff limbs, oh no, broke my comfy cocoon!
I don’t know if I was quite ready yet, to get up so soon?

Loving the safety of what I now knew,
but also a little curious as to how l just grew…

Into this beautiful creature l see in the reflection of the puddle below.
With an aura that just beams with this wonderful magical glow.

Topped off with some wings, how incredible!
just by eating the right foods that were eatable…

Instead of poisons like so many of my dear friends,
who perished long ago and came to sad and sorry ends.

I was the lucky one indeed,
finding the right kind of feed.

So l could be reborn into a different phase of life so free and light.
The day has never before looked so bright!

Oh the ecstasy of flying off with my special man,
and doing what only a butterfly can.

I wish to share what I learned with all the caterpillars yet to be born,
but sadly know I will not witness my offspring and if they have ever flown.

It is the task of my genes to pass that on for me,
and my task is to let them be.

Let them be free to find their own path at their own pace.
May they all grow into butterflies and live happily in their own space!

 

With Gratitude,

PollyEsther

 

PS: Something a bit different to normal, but after all the lovely comments on my last poem, I could not resist posting this one too. I wrote it to enter into an on-line ‘Burning Man’ event display, which has a theme of growth and transformation.

The recent multitude of butterflies in nature, as well as my attention being drawn to them a lot lately in different situations, inspired me to put the two together. There is a lot of symbolism woven into this piece that is very close to my heart and I am pleased with how it turned out, GLAD my muse tapped me on my shoulder again yesterday!

What do you think?

Christmas Cheer throughout the year

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Christmas done and dusted and now into the New Year.
Still beaming, feeling great, looking at my twinkling lights so clear.

Brightnening my verandah for a few weeks without fail,
sparkling all night long, sparkling like a comets tail.

“Oh, do I HAVE to take them down?”
I wondered with a questioning frown.

Why not leave them up all year?
To keep on spreading endless love, gratitude and cheer!

Why limit all the love and wishes to a few days?
Maybe I could start a fun and light-hearted craze?

I ask if this is just plain lazy, totally crazy… or if it might just work,
when people smile, while passing my house, laughing at this silly dork!

Pollyesther

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Questions answered

Seeds
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My jaw dropped this morning when I looked at the first Face Book post of a lady who befriended me only a few days back. I don’t know her at all and thankfully I do not get a lot of strangers befriending me on Face Book. It would be naïve not to be slightly wary.

In this case I reluctantly decided to acknowledge her request after seeing a lot of natural health and nutrition posts on her timeline, which is something I am always interested in. I send her a friendly ‘thank you’ PM to satisfy my curiosity as to why she befriended me, asking how she had found me and what her reasons were, seeing we had never met, had no common friends and lived worlds apart. No reply so far…

Walking the dog last week my attention was drawn to some unusual yet ancient looking fruit on the footpath in front of an elderly man’s home nearby. Some of the fruit had been squashed by passers-by or kids and looking up I saw a bush that was as laden with fruit as an over decorated Christmas tree! I had no idea what kind of fruit it was and if it was edible or not, but felt a strong urge to do some research and find out, so picked a couple off the ground underneath. I thought maybe I should try cut it in half and see if our ‘resident’ Possum chose to eat it to get a better clue whether it might be safe for human consumption or not, but haven’t as yet.

It felt a bit like deja-vu from around 8 years ago, when I first found Feijoa fruit on the footpath out the front of another house just around the corner. When I asked the owners about it, they told me I could take as much as I wanted, because they did not like eating them nor cleaning the footpath! I loved eating them so much, that I grew my own bush with lots of patience from seed and had my first fruit at the end of last Summer. (More about it: http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/feijoa.html)

First harvest from my Feijoa bush, grown from seed 8 years ago

First harvest, April 2015, from my Feijoa bush, grown from seed 8 years ago

When the dog and me walked a visiting friend back to the local bus stop, I showed the mysterious bush to my friend in the hope he might know or had seen it before, but he knew as much as me. At home things got busy with all my other internet projects and listening to time limited seminars about health and wellness and the sample fruit I brought home was just sitting on the shelf in my kitchen reminding me of my intent to do more research…

Coming back to my jaw dropping moment this morning, my new ‘friend’ posted this: http://drhealthytips.com/index.php/2016/05/07/are-you-worried-about-clogged-arteries-start-drinking-this-immediately/&#8230;

I now had a bit more than just a piece of fruit to do research and found a few more helpful links on-line: https://authoritynutrition.com/12-proven-benefits-of-pomegranate/ and: https://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article19.aspx for anyone wanting a few different perspectives. I excitedly emailed the link to my friend and as I was writing explaining what happened it dawned on me…

All my questions had been answered! What kind of fruit I had found, what the benefits are and possibly why some stranger befriended me on FaceBook out of the blue. All this without any effort on my behalf! Well, I did ask an internal question…

Pomegranate

Pomegranate

I am so Glad and exited about this, I could not resist sharing it in a blog post, not just to show how questions get answered in mysterious, ‘serendipitious’ ways, but also to share the amazing benefits of the Pomegranate!

I ate both and went back today, got a few more to eat, collect seed and the image above.

Please share your comments, experiences, more info or recipes below.

Feel better through meditation

High Country Sunset
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It took a sad post by a fellow blogger this evening  https://havewehadhelp.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/depression-my-lifelong-companion/?c=7853#comment-7853 for me to gather the courage to tell you about my latest project.

A few years back I was attending regular evening yoga classes in which there was quite a strong emphasis on meditation. This was perfect for me having done physical labor all day in the nursery. Stretching my tight limbs with gentle poses, followed by some internal work through guided meditations for at least half an hour. I loved it! I’d drive home feeling like I was buzzing with energy, but still relaxed enough to sleep easily not long after. I loved the mental journeys the teacher would take us on and remember even mentioning to her that one day I might write some like that myself.

Recently a demand for guided meditations came to my attention and I got inspired, started writing,  learned how to use Audacity and Sound Cloud and somewhat overcame my nervousness of actually speaking with my voice to an unknown number of public…Hence the hesitation of telling everyone.

What are some of the positive effects of meditation?

If you are carrying worries, unresolved issues, anger, hatred or other negative, low vibration emotions, the result will be stress.

Stress creates chemicals in your body that are useful to respond to stressful situations in a natural environment, designed to react physically. The immune system is turned off momentarily to allow more blood flow to muscles and other parts of the body needed to run or defend ourselves.

In our modern day lifestyle, this is not always a desirable response and many people do not utilize the chemicals released. The result is that the stress keeps on lingering, eventually turning into discomfort and disease.

The guided meditation is designed to release stress and create feelings of higher vibrating emotions such as appreciation, relaxation, gratitude and love.

The subconscious mind is unable to discern between reality and imagination, this is a specialty of the conscious mind. Therefore it perceives these positive feelings as real and will change your mood to a happy and relaxed mindset.

Happiness and relaxation have a positive effect on the immune system and therefore enhance our body’s healing ability.

I wish to present to you my first two recorded tracks on Sound Cloud, written and spoken by me. “The Magic Cave” was edited by a dear friend sound technician, to whom I am so grateful for his time, effort and generosity, doing this all for free and making it sound so much more professional, despite my average equipment used recording. I think he enjoys them while he checks the final result 😉

Enjoy!

Namaste

 

All I had to do was “ask”

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Driving to work this morning, while sipping my regular strong black ‘coffee with 2’ from my travel plunger mug, I was thinking I really need to get going again and write another post. About what? It seems that keeping busy with work and other projects had stolen my inspiration! I could not think of anything that had happened to me lately worthy of sharing for the purpose of making my readers happier.

Well, I did write, a course. “How to get happy and healthy”, https://www.coursecraft.net/courses/z9QvH/splash, but don’t think my blog audience would like to read about me advertising that here. I am in the process of setting up a separate page for that, but it is taking me longer than I thought to make it happen. There are still some minor details to be improved to the looks of the course, like the picture of me acting like a Galah in Spring snow and ski boots. It is taking me a bit of time to get the hang of my just acquired graphic design program being totally new to that sort of thing. The important part, the content, is all good to go, so why not tell everyone?

Just in case anyone reading this is feeling a bit down lately and would be interested in enrolling, enter the special coupon code “Esther” and you will receive a 50% discount, just for reading my blog 🙂

Ok, I’m getting sidetracked here. It was a beautiful still morning with a blue, albeit a little hazy sky just after sunrise with a forecast temperature of a pleasant 26 degrees Celcius. The drive to work was smooth with only a bit of slow traffic at a merge of freeway’s where the sun was straight in your face making it difficult to see the road. Because car sun visor’s are designed for taller people, I wear my cap to be able to have a clear enough vision of what is happening in those situations.

It was promising to be a beautiful day and I was assigned the task of moving and weeding all stock from one of the shade houses in the whole sale nursery to another area. The light changes a lot very quickly at this time of the year when the shadows are getting longer heading towards Winter in Australia. It was nice to be working outside again for a change as lately I had been doing a lot of fun jobs in the potting shed. Pushing the heavily laden trolley around and squatting to pick up the pots and weeds is great exercise for my legs to get strong for the snow season, so I don’t mind at all being paid for getting fit in a beautiful environment!

The downside of wearing a cap is that sometimes obstacles are not seen before feeling the impact with the head and after nearly loading up a full trolley I hit a hose. Thankfully this was not as painful as the metal protrusion that gave me a bruise there last week. The hose however was part of a retired overhead watering system and sagging badly off its wire, in need of a cable tie or two. It was really in my way there and I scanned the gravel to see if I could find a bit of metal wire maybe, that is often discarded by technicians around the nursery. No luck though, so I carefully hooked it as best possible a bit higher up.

Within five minutes of keeping at weeding and loading my trolley, I heard the familiar sound of my boot hitting a bit of…metal wire in the gravel! It was too thick and short to bend into a small hook to serve the purpose. I laughed at myself for “forgetting to specify” in my earlier thoughts that it had to be bendable and stuck it somewhere out of the way, just in case I found a use for it later. It had not even crossed my mind that I had actually “asked” for it to appear and the finding reminded me of the thought again.

Not long after this incident I heard another bit of metal rattling on the gravel from my boot hitting it. As I looked down I found a perfect piece of fencing wire that did the job beautifully! It reminded me of the beach walk I wrote about in the story about the wind chime in my book, where nature just kept providing me with whatever I was thinking of next I needed to make this wind chime!

Morning tea time came and one of the other ladies remarked about my vibe, asking why I seemed so chirpy. I told her I felt so good, because I just found the inspiration for another blog story!

That was of course not the only reason, for the event also reminded me of the fact that we are always supported and all we have to do is “ask”. I have seen so much proof in my life now that thoughts become reality and it still catches me by surprise all the time. I love and am so glad about those small positive surprises!

All this from a simple bit of discarded fencing wire 😉

Next time you don’t hear from me here for a while, please message and remind me to read this post again!

With gratitude,

PollyEsther

 

 

The sneaky flower

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Last Summer one of my larger cacti was about to flower just before we left on a mini trip over the holidays. I asked my watering friend to keep an eye on it and snap a picture when it opened. She forgot…

This Summer that same variety again had a flower bud just before our annual mini holiday of 5 days. I have many pots and am still unsure how often they all flower, but not every year! I had never seen the flower and owned this cactus variety for at least 3 years!

Again I asked my (other) watering friend to keep an eye out, urging to check every day because it is no more than a 24 hour event! I made sure my camera was easy to find and charged up.

Coming back I was eager to see the pictures, but my friend was convinced the flower had not happened yet and was still to come out. The bud did look a little sad to me and proved me right as days went on and it only shrivelled more…

sad flower

sad flower

Fortunately, this year seemed a good one for flowering cacti and I was treated to another bud coming out. This time I checked it two, three times a day! Surely I was not going to miss seeing this what looked like a promising magnificent event again! The previous ones from another variety were the size of an outstretched hand. The stem of the bud started stretching faster and longer on Friday, but surely the weather change was going to put a spanner in the works, I thought. Serious thunderstorms forecast for that night.

It was indeed a good, well needed downpour for the garden creating pleasant cooler temperatures in the morning along with some fascinating lightning.

I woke up early and refreshed and walked as per usual straight outside into my garden to wake up to the day and let the dog out. Of course my lemon tree check to gather the newly fallen ones for my morning juice and wander past my cacti…

Cactus flower after overnight rain

Cactus flower after overnight rain

It did not look like it had fully opened yet, so I resolved to come back with the camera after breakfast when the sun might be closer to lighting it up a little more for me.

This one does not like the sun!

This one does not like the sun!

Now it all started to make sense, how my watering friends and myself had never seen this cactus flower. It likes to do it in the dark, overnight! It has a beautiful sweet fragrance that to me comes close to jasmine or frangipani. And another bud underneath…

Budding Cactus

Budding Cactus

A week later it opened up at night after I gave it an extra drink to ensure this flower coming out. It was the first one I saw this close to opening!

Cactus flower opening just before dark

Cactus flower opening just before dark

I made sure to take plenty of photo’s and even though the night time ones are not good enough to publish, I did get some very early morning beauties!

It is so easy to feel gratitude for being witness to this special, just 12 hour flower that is not only beautiful, but smelled like heaven too!

Finally fully flowering!

Finally fully flowering!

Cactus flower in full glory

Cactus flower in full glory

With gratitude,

PollyEsther

Judgment and Revenge

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These words have been on my mind for a while now.

Judgment seems to be the main motivator behind a lot of articles in magazines and papers, on television shows and social media, where the lives of the famous and wannabe famous are in the picture to be judged good or bad, with the latter most prominent…
Revenge seems to be a common thread through most movies where the hero has to seek revenge in order to get justice…

Do you ever feel like repaying someone a negative “favor”?

A good internal question to ask is: What benefit can be gained from this?
When I truly look inside, the answer I find is “none whatsoever”!

Recently I found out that a few neighbors had some issues with a new family that moved in not long ago, a single mum with several kids and pets. I was unaware of this for some time and have so far only had good interactions with them, besides having to ask them to keep their cats indoors at night. They were posing a nuisance keeping me up all night by upsetting my dog as well as leaving some not so nice surprises in my garden, but then again, it could have been someone else’s cat too… This problem settled and all neighbors appear to oblige to my friendly request now.

The kids were curious about the plants on my veranda, that are for sale. I gave the young girls a little cactus each from my stock plants out the back (with soft furry needles, not the nasty prickly variety) to treasure at home.

Every time they saw me down the street I got a big smile and a few friendly words from them. A few days later they knocked on my door with hand drawn “postcards”, filled with lovely messages. After that I decided to give their mum a bag of lemons from my tree as I had to many to use for myself. I knew she had health problems after we talked and got to know each other a little on a walk back from the local shops some time ago. I knew it would do her good. Another few days later one of the girls knocked on my door with a cupcake that she had made herself! .

How can it be that my experiences with this family were all so sweet and lovely, while my other friendly neighbors had the total opposite happen?

I guess as a result from earlier experiences with this family, that my other normally friendly neighbors had experienced, was at least an annoyed feeling towards them. When dealing with people our emotions play an important part in nonverbal communication. Most people do not take conscious notion of this, but it is just as, if not more, important than words. It shines through in our facial expressions and body language. Along with habitual judgment about this family, while not really knowing a lot about them besides what was observed, comes a vibration of expecting the worst from them.

Especially children are very sensitive to vibration. Had they decided to take revenge for whatever they felt wronged by through vandalism? Have these young children already been corrupted by the brainwashing effects of movies and tv, that revenge is a desirable action that makes you feel better? Had they witnessed bad behavior in the family, before it broke up, and accepted this as normal? Is there something else playing out as well that goes both ways?

There is a saying going around the social media these days that loosely goes as follows:

“Whether you believe something to be true or not, either way you are right”

This hints at “Ask and it is given”, also mentioned in the bible, which is in my opinion telling us about our mental and emotional influence on our experiences. (Why and how I have become convinced of this is described in detail in my book)
The thoughts and feelings, of in this case annoyance and suspicion, which are the conductors of the “ask” , do not support good odds for “being given” a lovely experience or encounter and neither are judgment or revenge!

Maybe it is important to discern more and judge less?
Ask yourself the question regularly: “What benefit can be gained from this?”
Most of all, when did revenge ever have something good come out of it? Do not ever seek revenge!

“Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.”
― Wayne W. Dyer

I am glad about my life’s experiences, for they give me inspiration to share what I feel passionate about!

Please share your thoughts in the comments below 😉