Gratitude.  My medicine for those times when I don’t move with ease.  To think of a smile, or a friend, or the break of sun over the garden–to pull up gratitude as if it were a carrot releasing from the soil.  This is what I’ve learned as a farmer: We harvest more than food from the garden, as we must if we are to create a balanced life.

So today, my gratitude:

Sleeping in, waking slowly

Sun after a rainy day

The punctuated calls of the rooster

Zinnias, sunflowers, statice

Aster, rudbeckia, calendula

The slightest breeze, telling me, it’s okay, move slow today

There are the mainstays, of course–my family, the dogs–but these snippets lift me, too.  The small things find me in the in-between-moments, when no one else is around, and they smile at me, and I feel the corners of my mouth lift to smile back.

what are you grateful for today?