Opuntia pinta rita (Lavender cactus) 💜💜💜

Via https://www.facebook.com/groups/GardeningTribe/

Text and image source: Ravenous Butterflies . https://www.facebook.com/186012608273340/posts/1527864520754802/

I feel so terribly uninspired today. My mind wants to sleep, but the body refuses to cooperate — or maybe it’s the mind that won’t cooperate with the body.  Whatever has no respect for the psyche needs to understand who is in charge here.

If I find out which part of me that is, I’ll let you know.

Instead of having an original thought, I’ve taken the liberty of abusing a few words that loosely pertain to writing:

1.  Just do it.
2. Let your fingers do thewalking stalking talking.
3. Put your complaint in writing.
4. …because you’re worth it.
5. There is no such thing as writer’s block, if you’re not a writer.
6. If you need an excuse for writer’s block, get a cat.

Sofina had all the advantages that accrue to an only child, but with the advantage of having an older sibling who could be relied upon to spoil her. Her mother had been widowed young and had married again some years later. Thus her son, Thaddan, was (as Sofina so wisely put it) blessed with the most charming and adorable younger sister.

Let us be fair here, Thaddan was suitably grateful for his advantages and could be relied upon to spoil his sister shamelessly. Given he was almost sixteen years older than her, this was entirely right and proper. If there was a fly in Sofina’s ointment, it was that Thaddan was a man-at-arms with Lord Cartin’s company. Now Lord Cartin was a true gentleman and a good employer. He had been known to grant his men leave so they could see their wife and babe in arms. But even Sofina…

Cathy at Words and Herbs has presented a challenge to cheer us all up:

“FromSunday the 22nd through to Saturday the 28thlet’s share a photo a day (or more than one if you like) of our flowers and gardens and brighten up this dreary time.”

Click the link above to see more cheerful floral photos and join us if you wish by publishing your own post!

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
for new beginnings.

~ Maya Angelou ~
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I scrape the ice from the windscreen, looking with little enthusiasm at the heavy pall of fog that blankets the world. November… we’ve done well to make it this far without ice on the windows. Even so, my fingers are already that peculiar shade of blue that I forget about through the summer, only to be painfully reminded by the first frost. I must dig the gloves out, I suppose.

The oversized fleece is warm, the sweater beneath making me feel heavier than I should. I slide into a car that feels damp and chill. I have things to do outside today at my son’s home, but first I have to get there, and, of course, it is rush hour, such as it is in lockdown. The roads are choked with slow-moving traffic, the morning rat-run exacerbated by roadworks. I wait, feigning patience, for a gap through which I can…

Learning a new skill can be an exciting and terrifying experience. There are new skills to learn, a new lingo to speak, and enormous expectations to succeed. We can feel like a kid learning to ride a two-wheeler, fearing falls, scraped knees, and broken bones. Half the battle with learning to ride a bike is gaining the confidence you can defy gravity.

There are tricks to help us succeed. The first trick is to set ourselves up for success. Setting small attainable goals and building on a track record of success puts us in the right mindset to attempt more difficult challenges. Give yourself a set of training wheels, and then get on your bike and practice every day.

Have you set yourself up to succeed?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer