My mind seems to work better near water. In fact, all of me does . Just now, catching up on the washing up and I realised that, yet again, I had not prepared for the Festive Season and bought presents ahead of time as I plan to every year.  Flu has robbed me of a week of leisurely shopping and now it will all be done in a rush.  Suddenly, it clicked in my mind  that living along with the seasons as a self sufficient woman, which is my dream and why I read wonderful blogs such as www.coldantlerfarm to learn how,  is not going to happen as long as I remain the Queen of procrastination.    Procrastination versus self sufficiency with all the planning and the just doing of it all that it involves.      One cannot survive in the presence of the other.  And of course, real living cannot exist where procrastination rules.

I have found such joy

I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain’s blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might
Tell every woman who goes seeking far
For some elusive, feverish delight,
That very close to home the great joys are:
The elemental things- old as the race,
Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.

~ Grace Noll Crowell