Today, I received Laura Pashby’s book, Little Stories of Your Life.

I know me. If I wait until the instagrammable photo is set, I won’t start for a while.

So, in the spirit of jumping in and doing, here’s my start to sharing my world, telling my story.

As a first wonderment, I’m asked to consider my “cup of tea”.

My tea isn’t tea at all. It bears no nostalgic mug, no historical recollection of Renaissance, no fanciful mood enhancing color palette, no nod to the cottage core in which it is actually fueling. My cup of reflective tea is actually a modern aluminum soft can decaled in marketing that I barely notice, set squarely on my shaded field bench, drinking straw rising from it’s spout, like a beacon tower, signaling to me that it is still there when I need it.

I’m sitting, still in my garden meadow, while the highway traffic speeds by at a mesmerizing buzz. (I wonder if they see what I see.) The sounds i can hear, in the silent pauses, are the abundant honey bee songs as they dance amongst the short white clover at my feet, accompanying my little black cat’s ever crescendo purr. They both buzz as one garden motor, the motor of the moment. Each purr, each buzz, as a well practiced harmony, the parts overlapping in perfect fifths.

I’m sipping from my tall straw and catching small glints of sun rays bouncing off the shiny side round walls. Briefly I see the reflection of my pink shirt in the can, distorted like in a fun house mirror, blurring the moment, as quickly as the tembre of the bees wings change. My can reminds me of the simplicity, the quickness, the fleeting changes, the temporariness of the weather, the grass, the wind, the cloudiness, the sunshine, the moment.

Aluminum, of the earth, yet pressed into a useful vessel. All of us, the cat, the plants, the flowers, the wood, myself, all of the earth, pressed in it’s own way into each vessel. I take pleasure in my slow bubbly sips, my companion cat’s company, my surroundings serenity, my garden’s calm, my place of beauty and my self.