Living with intent

Why is your (delicious) morning coffee so important? Beyond the caffeine - it's because it's a ritual, a way in which you treat yourself, first thing (?!), every day. Self love. Deliberation. Curation/deliberation, the world is wide and there is always room for more - but I want to live a life, here where I am now, that resonates and calms. That feeds the concentric circles of La.  So I must choose, often, and make the effort to upgrade when I can; make the effort to know what I want; organize,think, have the discipline to implement this new way.
I guess I'm thinking this way b/c we are thinking of paying off some real estate to live in our current home indefinitely.  We are facing winter cold currently and snow. Is that what I want? I love this house: our kids were all born and raised here, it's got a layout that works for us -  it's a 1953 era home, well built, with details like lovely hardwood floors and a large wood deck we designed with railing walls including an old, folding brass elevator door bought in Toronto and wrought iron railings salvaged from somewhere (behind the bike shop??).  We have grapes and golden raspberries and other well established perennials in our gardens. We are 1.1 miles (1.77 km) from city center. Just a bit too much for walking (for me, at this point!) and it's just a bit more to my preferred Aldi and Target etc. The bottom line: do I want to really dig in, here, at Elmwood? Can we stay really long term? Do we want to remodel the kitchen (we must) and first floor full bath? I actually picture an older woman from a blog photo - probably from copenhagencyclechic.com - walking alongside her basket laden bike, elegantly pushing it as a very practical shopping cart. This time that woman is me.

L'ete arrive!

I feel the need to check in with my 'diary' to clarify and sort of quantify, perhaps
to reinforce a bit as well - my purpose in blogging: to add daily to my life by being more aware, more genuine, real, euro inspired in some ways. Blogging is time consuming!
I spend my days trying to 'get ahead' which right there sounds negative. The process is the real thing. Remember that Laura.
Alors, I am loving my potager so much. We have harvested exactly 27 haricot verts. The one sprouted onion I planted has rendered lots of greens for stir fry and roatsted red potatos with oregano and thyme. The tomatos are covered with blossoms and shiny, green balls - soon to be sugar sweet cherrys, and romas and early girls...and the zuchini! well, get your recipes ready. I just layed out some strips of rags lightly soaked in ammonia. Supposed to keep the critters away and a ground hog, I believe, was munching on a hungarian pepper plant. The watermelon vine is a runaway:)
A good day ends with lots of compost in the (tightly covered) pot by the kitchen sink. Starting with coffee grinds, eggshells and fruit ends and accumulating all
day long it's magical ingredients, the pot is emptyed after the evening meal into the compost pile behind the garage. This simple endeavor has been so satisfying over the years - providing wonderful soil for garden and potted plants AND providing a
place to recycle uneaten food.
Been cycling a lot. Today to the library to work, uninterrupted for 2 hours on the computer. Love it.
Soon the long awaited oil cleansing method experiment will start, I promise. I am working thru untold meager amounts of accumulated Vit E oil and Ponds Cold Cream etc
I do have a nice tan going. I am not an extremeist either way per the sun. But I need me some, especially on my legs.
La mode is doing pretty nicely this summer so far. Tomorrow my easy linen capris are
ready from the tailor. I'll drop my denim pencil skirt off. I'm going to repair my
Land's End red leather sandals with my wonderfully heavy weight sewing machine (I hope) - it's just a seam, but threatening their life. I can always hit the cobbler if I can't do it. Oh - had my eye exam and had my lenses put in some 'cheaters' that I had and loved. They are smashing - a light weight green metal conconction that always garners a 'love your glasses' - did the same with my Jackie O sunglasses, except specialized as bifocals - again terrific results.
bisous - I had a splendid birthday week, I'm a summer baby born on the longest day of the year and was wined and dined into not so sleek, but heavenly shape.
La

Carry On

I love my french market baskets, pictured above.The larger one was a gift from my sister in law at least 8 years ago. Kathy had a shop in the Chicago area and rented the back room to 'Pamela de Provence'. Knowing my love for all things French Kath got it for me for Christmas. It has been used daily and still looks great. I use it for grocery shopping, carrying my essentials to work, for the beach and pool, traveling....endless uses and constant comments from admirers. The small one I bought on sale about 5 yrs ago when shopping on the east side (of the Cuyahoga, bien sur!) and it has been just as wonderful. Snag one if you can find one. Truly these bags are terrific investments.

Two other bags that I use, if not daily, are my panniers. One is pictured above - I am not having much luck in putting the photo where I want it.They hook onto my bicycle in an instant and then travel into the store, library, park, pool etc. very easily having a shoulder strap. I think a bike basket is very cool, but these are pretty great too. Here is a picture of one of my panniers on my bike - okay this photo is not where I want it either - but you can tell which one I'm talking about. I love my bike and when I have both panniers with me I can do quite a bit of

grocery shopping....it's exhilarating flying down the street (home from the market is downhill - the universe conspiring here) with a gallon of milk and 2 bottles of wine and bread and cheese and all my other goodies packed safely in the panniers, feeling free and healthy and eco-concious and just plain good.