Watching “Mayo Clinic Minute: How weighted blankets “lift anxiety” on YouTube this morning, I learned all about those little sleep hormones and the feel good hug.

One week has passed since I began sleeping with my gravity blanket that we purchased a few years back. I had tried it off and on but never just in itself for a full week trial. It is pretty amazing how a full week of rested sleep changes one’s mood! It must be knocking my anxiety hormones down a bunch, because for the first time in fur-ever, Honey took a nap on my lap!

Unfortunately her “serviceability” goes way down when she senses anxiety . She feeds on it and gets more hyper! This is not very helpful to say the least. So, in spite of the fact that she is now five years old, I am going to look for a trainer that can give me the right response commands to get this crazy dog down on all fours when the her hyper kicks in.

Saturday morning my dear helper hubby found the aphids moved into the pansies that i multiplied to hundreds. We spent a few hours treating them with some nnatural remedies. They look a little tough but I will be spreading them out into some more spacious quarters today and hopefully things will go well with the proper treatments. It’s so difficult to keep on top of it all once the nasty bugs begin their residency.

This is Holy week for the Christian and Jewish populous. It is always such a special holiday for me. Both of my daughters were baptized on Easter morning during their teen years. Easter has so much triumph and hope. How can the rest of the world live without that joyous celebration? I am so glad that we are back to church gatherings and that the “pandemic” shifted to endemic and everyone is just kind of “over” all of the talk. Yes, there are some rough memories, but not gathering has to be the worst. People are meant to live in community. And not being together makes everyone so depressed and cranky.

The wind blew something fierce the end of last week, and I though all of the old anxieties would come back also. Then I found Amy Carmichael’s book “The Edges of His Ways.” Though it is a daily devotional, I listened to nearly a full month. One of her notes was about the wind. And she encouraged me to look for inspiration from the wind that the Lord blows my way. So rather than fighting the blustery forecast for another day, I took up the “inspired by” list that i could find. The first one was comforting classical compositions that were inspired by … you guessed it-The Wind! Some of the pieces I have heard before but many were new to me. So the next time that I feel overwhelmed by my circumstances, I am just going to begin with looking for inspired by… a list that helps me turn the thing around and lifts up the mood.

This morning, I uncovered the rose bush that I planted in the tire flower bed next to the greenhouse. Today is going to be another beautiful day here. Without that nasty gale to knock me over. I also went out and zip tied the wind wheel at the Hydrant flower bed to the water meter pole there. The poor wind wheel has been knocked over so many times from the westerly hurricane breezes. (And we do not have hurricanes here… just the wind.). That made me FEEL like I had really accomplished something.

Then, I spray painted the basket that I had crocheted. The dye in the wood glue had not worked entirely to color the basket green. So I emptied the black spray paint on it. The rest of the paint was used on the wire baskets in the greenhouse. I had not done anything to them since purchase. That too FELT like I was really doing something. Then I repotted the little holiday cactus starts into two beautiful red pots that I found while shopping the other night at our local wally world. They look so happy. And now they will thrive. The other containers had proved to be too small over the long haul. The little plants had been in their since Thanksgiving and I would constantly forget about them. So they were either too hot, too wet, or too dry. There you go little holiday cactus starts. And I even decided who I am giving them to as gifts. But I am not telling you.

It’s not Monday. Thank goodness. You would not have wanted to talk to me this Monday. My visit to the greenhouse found the pansy stats much worse than before. I tossed quite a number of them due to some nasty little fly of some sort. We treated them again last night at sundown so I hope there is not burn from the spray. It is just not fun growing plants to just toss them out. Part of my eyesight problem, part of the learning curve.

So here goes to a lengthy post again. Today, I hope to get a new mosaic crochet project going. My last two project attempts were a bit lacking. I did not like the outcome. Yep, I feel like I spent the whole time mumbling. But I got it all out right? And the gravity blanket is still working to help me sleep. Yay!