On any given day, no matter how lively the tasks ebb and flow, there comes a moment where I step back and I smell the roses, as the quote reads, figuratively, and literally, because of what I do for my job craft, and because-of what blooms from early spring until the first hard frost-in our garden.  I am one who has always lived by or amongst, a forest canopy, a meadow of grass and flowers, a beach next to a body of salt water, under a sky of clean air. For this, I am grateful, and that’s putting it mildly. Keeping me company have been dozens of bird species, tiny and large, butterflies, dragonflies, and at times, fireflies. Crickets, frogs, animals of the wild. This week, a pair of great horned owls keeping tabs on one another in the early evening hours, have provided night music outside our home, from the tops of our hood’s tallest trees.

This weekend, we have a two part wedding floral design and delivery project, on the shores of Stinson Beach. Yesterday, the “house” designs were white wedding elegant, but with a spin of California Ocean-Marin Headlands style. Great design fun with studio favorite botanicals. Best of all, the delivery was well received by the bride. Tomorrow, wedding day, only fully bloomed, pure white peonies for the ceremony, each flower’s curly petals nestled by its neighbor in the designs.

I assured my schedule after yesterday’s works allowed me the afternoon: a lunch bowl of clam chowder at the Sand Dollar in Stinson Beach: to see who had been writing and publishing on the shelves of Stinson Beach Books; to stop and visit with those about the College of Marin research boats in Bolinas; to pick a few veggies from the Star Route Farm’s farm-stand baskets: for the weekend Bar-B-Q, Marin Sun Farms chicken apple sausages, made that day, packed by the Sun guys on an ice bag for my trip home.

On this day yesterday, I rode solo in my van. Much wide and expansive time to think, stop, photograph wild roses, sketch the shapes of grasses, and visit with people along the way. As Irv Spivak would call them, “New, Old Friends.” I also recalled the quoted text on the handmade, college graduation card from my family, many years ago, typed onto a piece of notebook paper. The quote was from a speech which Maya Angelou had given years earlier to the graduates of Spelman College. She observed that pretty much every place these students had been up to this point, they had shared a “stage” with those around them. Always, a team effort. Upon their graduation, they were headed to places where they would now stand, often alone, on this stage. They were to keep in mind, no matter where they went, what they did, they were to take every person making a difference in their lives, onto to this stage with them —

— Here is to, remembering these people in our lives. I do in mine. With gratitude and respect, on Memorial Day and every day, I remember those who served, and do serve our country, with courage, loyalty, and dedication, and their families on their “stage” with them.

-Kathleen