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Tell Me, How Does Your Garden Grow?

  

Tell me, tell me true have you ever tried to dig a perennial flower garden in soil comprised of peanut stone and blog iron formed 11 million years ago, just waiting for a senior citizen to come along and plant something in it? You know, a lot of little peanut pieces, and mixed in the red soil just to make it more fun are plenty of rocks – big ones.  
When I was a wee Ohio lass years ago it was a challenge to fight with this ornery New Jersey soil. The Midwesterner in me was not going to let any East Coast ground beat me. You guessed right, the peanut stone won. I returned to the house and raised my children. I let nature be my Gardner. The lilies reproduced, azaleas grew big and colorful, birds planted berries, the ivy climbed beneath the mountain laurel and the natural habitat of dogwoods multiplied all while I was enjoying my life and never lifted a finger.  
Well, that was the smart someone I used to know. This over-fifty woman must have lost her marbles and memory to think she can still mine peanut stone.
So today when I returned from Lowes with a trunk load of perennials I had the good intentions of planting and re-energizing my flower garden near the front gate. But it only took the first ‘clink’ as my shovel bit into the impenetrable ground to wake up my memory- sort of a version of shovel shock therapy. I remembered why I have a natural landscape. 
Faced with the dilemma of ‘what next’ and not one to waste a trip to Lowes (or my money), I started to dig half-holes, or about as much as the concrete ground would give me,  all over the garden. It looked like a drunken gopher had been at work. In went the daisies, coneflowers and tall grasses. Half in and half out in a half-planted-‘half-arshed’ way. Topped off by a bag of potting soil and a prayer of forgiveness to these poor perennials, I dragged the hose and gave them a well deserved drink. Please survive sweet things but I’ve got to run. See you tomorrow. 
Slipping off my garden gloves I headed back up the beach stone path to the house defeated by my 11 million year old peanut stone soil. The next drink will be for me. Defeated by a bunch of dirt!

Copyright Sandra Hart©. All rights reserved.

  

Not Yet

I wrapped my sweater more closely around my body as I stood and looked out at the familiar horizon before me. I thought how strange it is that the familiar can change day by day, but yet somehow those familiar changes do give a comfortable feeling of knowing. Of consistency. I really love that.

Summer. How quickly it has passed, I thought. My husband and I have been loyal to this annual ritual of saying goodbye to one familiar and journeying south to another warmer familiar. Moving from one nest to another never gets easier. At least for me. It seems that just as quickly as we get into a comfortable routine at one place, we have to shut the door and start again somewhere else. But this year, I’m not ready. It has happened too quickly.

“Oh look the leaves are beginning to curl and turn,” I said to my husband this morning, “September just arrived …. it shouldn’t be this cold yet.” The loud cicadas have been signaling the beginning of the end and now the leaves turning. Too soon. So not ready, I said to myself looking out over the ocean.

Not just yet. No hurry here. I’m not ready for summer’s last breath to blow in the winds that chill me to the core. I’m not ready to close the door on warm ocean breezes.

I hesitated. What am thinking? To be honest with myself, the truth is, it’s not this place, this nest, it’s that Life is going by too, too quickly for me. I am not ready for much more than just changing my seasonal nest. That’s just a small part of it.

I’m not ready to grow old. Period. I’m not ready for my seasons to change. I’m not ready for my white hair to give me an identity crisis. I’m not ready to have to stand on my tiptoes to kiss my grandson on the cheek. I’m not ready to have people help me with my groceries. I’m not ready to have the young ‘texters’ give up their seats for me.

I am…..just…..not……ready for that yet….but…….

I am so ready to keep dancing in front of the mirror. I am so ready to splash in the waves along the beach. I am so ready for gelled nails. I am so ready to daydream to love songs. I am so ready to eat a whole cheesecake and not feel guilty about it. I am so ready for the young girl inside of me to stay around for a long time.

Let’s face it. I am just…..well…..so not…..ready to act my age!

It’s an inspiring hang with Sandra Hart, former Romper Room teacher, touching on a number of subjects. Heart-felt and funny and often whimsical Sandra shares her personal, profound thoughts that will make you chuckle or give you thought about your own life. A thoughtful collection of essays that is a perfect read by your bedside or in daily doses. Available in Kindle or printed copy at amazon.com
http://tinyurl.com/n9u7mw
It’s an inspiring hang with Sandra Hart, former Romper Room teacher, touching on a number of subjects. Heart-felt and funny and often whimsical Sandra shares her personal, profound thoughts that will make you chuckle or give you thought about your own life. A thoughtful collection of essays that is a perfect read by your bedside or in daily doses. Available in Kindle or printed copy at amazon.com
http://tinyurl.com/n9u7mw
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BUCKET LIST CHALLENGE

A younger friend of mine, I hate to tell you how younger-younger she is, but she could be my daughter, suggested that I join her in a  5K race. I thought she had either lost her marbles or secretly had a death wish for me. I have been a vegan for over 30 years and I have always pushed myself to exercise and keep my body moving beyond the daily routine of living and working, but by gosh I am….well, well over the other side of fifty – kinda’ reluctantly doing the down hill slide. But, I admit even when I don’t feel like it, which is honestly most of the time, I drag myself outdoors and always wind up feeling better for it. And for these last 40 years I have been lucky to live in an area with scenic paths along the ocean and green hills to climb. A great thing that kept me motivated in my pre-ipod years.

My young friend finally convinced me it would be fun and maybe the primary benefit to me would be a reality check on how fit I really was (or not) at my age. She wasn’t crazy enough to consider my placing, she knew I just would be grateful to cross the finish line without the paramedics waiting for me. My husband joked that he would take no odds on me, unless it was to be the ultimate loser.

With that cheerful send-off packed full of confidence building some husbands are able to endow their wives in times of need, I walked to the sign-up area in the park near the starting line, got my blue T-shirt and nervously made small talk with the mostly younger, younger men and women there. The majority with their glistening South Beach tans and flawless laminated smiles. I pulled my geezer Cunard Cruise Line ball cap lower to disguise my white hair and even though by now I was really having second thoughts, I would drag myself forward, knowing the show must go on.

The whistle blew and away we all went up Ocean Drive in South Beach and around the course that curved back to the initial starting line at South Pointe Park. Like a seasoned thoroughbred, I surprised myself at my steady pace. Surely, I didn’t want to drop dead on Ocean Drive and have the humiliation of people stepping over me. Just keep going and you’ll finally either have a stroke and will be on the evening local news, or just maybe you will be able to at least finish this thing, I kept telling myself. My pride was driving me more than anything. I am such a sick-thinking person, I would have murmured under my breath, but by that time I could hardly catch it.

I really didn’t pay attention to any of the other runners. I just kept running and the more I ran my energy grew. Wow. Not bad. Okay. I’m still alive. Surely the finish line is up here somewhere. My heart was pounding and I felt flushed as I gave one final sprint of energy over the finish line that was just ahead, finally in sight.

I saw the paramedic truck there, probably waiting for me,I thought, but my quivering lips just managed a shaky smile as I passed by. This senior has gotcha this time, fellas!

Well, I hung around to go home with my friend and what do you know, I got a nice little trophy to take home. Third Place. OMG. I couldn’t believe it. Now I REALLY am going to have a stroke! Wow! Not bad for an old gal. I sooooo even surprised myself! Way to go girl, I told myself.

I was feeling pretty heady for a few weeks until I got an email from an old high school class mate who is biking with her husband through Europe and loving the daily challenge of miles and miles of valleys and hills and mountains! Oh well, short lived glory is better than none at all!

Copyright Sandra Hart 2014   All Rights Reserved.Photo on 3-15-15 at 12.38 PM #2

9 Tips On Staying Young

9 TIPS ON HOW NOT TO AGE 

1) Say What? 
Say yes to eight hours of sleep, antioxidants found in green tea, pomegranate and blueberries;  a Mediterranean diet of nuts, legumes, vegetables, fruit and olive oil and say no to process foods and sugared soda. The latter could have the same aging effect on your telomeres – the parts of chromosomes that affect aging as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.*
2) Inflame Me Not!
Inflammation is a big culprit in aging, weight gain, disease and even wrinkles. Normally, inflammation is a healthy response to injury, but everything from stress to sugar can push it into overdrive, provoking the immune system into attacking healthy cells – and accelerating the body’s aging process.*
 
3) No Duh? Exercise.
  
“Exercise shores up the brain and
hippocampus, keeping memory sharp and preventing Alzheimer’s, and can lengthen lifespan by 4 to 8 years on the average.” Even people who start to exercise in middle age become stronger and ‘younger.'”*
4) Mine Enemy Is Thee Stress!
Stress is when you’re standing in the middle of the train track and you see it coming toward you. Stress is there for acute survival, but it increases blood sugar, blood pressure, arterial aging and the stress hormone cortisone, which can compromise your immune system; cause depression; and memory loss; and help form free radicals which attack the collagen that keeps the skin supple. Meditation, yoga. 
5) Hello Lunch, Goodbye Big Dinner. 
Dr. David Heber, UCLA nutrition expert, is high on protein. His top tip for slowing aging is to get enough protein at meals: 25 grams. Load up early at breakfast with unsweetened Greek yogurt, or six egg whites. For lunch have beef, fish or tofu because after dinner the protein gets excreted without being used. That means your body doesn’t benefit from eating all that protein at night.* 
6) Rabbit Food?
Lutein contained in spinach, avocados, kale, and brussels sprouts promotes brain health and keeps eyesight sharp and eaten once or twice a week may reduce age related macular degeneration. 
7) Them Bones, Them Bones, Them Dry Bones!
You’re kidding me, right?  Bone broth, another hot food trend touted by LeBron James, is rich and amino acids and coats the intestinal lining to help heal the “leaky gut syndrome” which allows aging toxins and microbes to leak through the bowl lining.  Some credit also with helping grow your nails and preventing pretty much every element, from diabetes to lupus. *
8) In-Your-Face Solutions
Bee pollen is anti-aging, good for allergies and boost immunity – also acupuncture for the face. It increases collagen improve circulation, even gets rid of fine lines says dermatologist, Dr. Mao.  It is believed that topical vitamin C will also be away turn back the clock on aging skin.*
9) Young At Heart.
Really! In 1981 Harvard social psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer conducted studies that put over 70 years old in an environment straight out of 1959. They were told to imagine they were 22 years younger and were treated that way, with no mirrors to remind them otherwise. The result? Their memories, attitudes and health markedly improved. Why all the data suggest our minds are far more powerful than most of us realized. I think we will soon be able to prevent many ailments just from the mind body connection.* 
So you had better believe while society waits for stem cells to make us younger I’m going to start thinking I am a forever young Audrey Hepburn, no matter what age I am!
* Partial excerpts from The Hollywood Reporter/ How Not To Age At All in 2015 by Merle Ginsberg.

Where To Begin When Writing

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Except for my children’s books, all of my previous published works have been non-fiction. Giving myself a challenge this year, my daughter suggested that I should try my hand at fiction.

“Write a novel,” she said. “Do something different.”

That thought kind of frightens me, because it is really out of the box in which I have been living, out of my comfort zone. There are so many great novelists out there, I am somewhat intimidated to jump into their pool.

Recently, for my SAG (Screen Actors Guild) voting duties, I watched Frances McDormand in the series, Olive Kitteridge.” I enjoyed the series so much, I ordered the book the series was based upon.

Elizabeth Strout, the author, has such a way with words. From the very first paragraph I was drawn in and couldn’t put it down. It is this kind of writing that really makes it challenging for me to think I could be as talented to paint pictures with words as she does in Olive Kitteridge.

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Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All rights reserved.

Be Careful What you Wish

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Be Careful What You Wish

Harvey Weinstein, Oscar producer/distributor and the longtime defender of human rights and political freedoms, in reference to the murders in Paris of the cartoonists at France’s satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo by terrorists wrote yesterday, “This preamble hopefully illustrates the humanity and the affection that I think people have for cartoons. From the Sunday funnies like Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie that helped us through the Depression, to Peanuts and Doonesbury, they sometimes provide better wisdom than known philosophers. I’ll take Charlie Brown over Rene Descartes, and put Linus in Socrates’ class, any day of the week. Although it’s Lucy who has the voice of a cartoonist — ironic, funny and eye-opening.”

How very much I relate to his thoughts. When I was a little girl in the late 1940’s living on a farm in Ohio, one of the popular radio shows was called “Archie Andrews” from a comic strip of the day, “Archie”.

Growing up in a farmhouse surrounded by cornfields and livestock, far away from the nearest neighbors down the dusty road, the concept of living in a place like Riverdale with best friends in the same building or next door fascinated me. When my brother clicked on the radio on Saturday mornings so we could eavesdrop on what adventure Archie and his friends were having that week, for that small moment in time, my brother and I lost our isolation and became part of Archie’s family.

Archie’s parents, Mary and Fred Andrews became our parents. His high school, Riverdale High, not the one-room schoolhouse that my brother attended, became ours. Everything about this teenager and his friends Veronica and best buddy, Jughead, were interesting to two kids living a less-than-exciting life on their grandpa’s farm. We longed to live in Riverdale and go to a school just like Archie’s.

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Well, as my story unfolds, a few years later, it would be that life threw us a piece of that emancipation pie. We were headed toward Archie’s teenage dream life. I clearly remember looking back, the dust beneath the tires of Daddy’s shiny new Ford slowly obliterating the view of the house as it got smaller and smaller going away from Grandpa’s farm. We were traveling eighteen miles east to live in a real house and in a real town close to Daddy’s work.

My brother and I soon found out that life on Archie’s radio show was much more exciting than it was in our smog filled industrial town. It wasn’t the Riverdale my brother and I had dreamed about. We got our wish alright and we couldn’t wait to graduate from our high school so that we could leave. We would be free to follow our Archie dream once again.

From the time we eagerly drove away from life on Grandpa’s farm those many years ago, I have lived in exactly six places. Several were big city apartments, several suburban houses near big cities and the one that means the most to me is the house on an ocean cliff with the view that fills my heart every day I look out it’s windows. I can stretch my arms wide without touching anything, see and hear no neighbors and have the silence of only what nature brings to me. This house gifts, yes, gifts me peace from all the static in the world around me. Freedom to live where and how I want.

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Now in every writer’s toolbox is a thread that ties everything together. It contains the embryo, or idea of the story you want to tell and how it sews neatly together the message you want share with your reader. A quilt of words.

This particular quilt I’m sewing today is, ‘be careful what you wish for in this life’ and be sure to be ready to protect it.

I have been able to live in what I believe to be the greatest country in the world with the best choices in life available. For me, FREEDOM is one of the most important words in the English language. Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Speech. Freedom to be me.

So little Archie girl beware of what you wish. Your dream life in your imagination from the radio or Archie comics may never come true if you and humanity are not careful to honor, appreciate and protect the right to dream.

I don’t ever want to feel stifled. I don’t ever want to feel, as a writer, that I am in a box knocking on the lid crying, “get me out of here!”

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All rights reserved.

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I Was Somebody. Honestly.

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(Forty years ago, in 1975, is when my newest Face
of Miami decided this would be his last stop. Then a popular and inexpensive haven for retirees, Miami was sliding rapidly from it’s Magic City heyday into a senior citizen parking lot.
Then came along the popular television series Miami Vice with Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. When they started filming here in 1984 they opened the lid to expose it’s sunshine, beautiful architecture, turquoise waters and white sandy beaches. And in 1992 Versace settled on Ocean Drive when it was filled with boarded up hotels and snow-birds. Both entities gave exposure to the wide and empty tropical beaches and so began the Renaissance of our tropical paradise. A paradise that those of us who have lived here for at least 10 years or more know that with today’s real estate values, unfortunately, only the super rich can buy into our cherished lifestyle.)

Faces of Miami

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On my way home from my morning walk with Sophie along the beach yesterday I stopped to peer into the windows of an empty space that used to be a restaurant, wondering what might be coming there next. In the 10 years we have lived here I think maybe there have been at least four different businesses that have come and gone in that same space.

“There’s a new restaurant coming in there,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see a well dressed elderly gentleman leaning against the bus stop pole with a much worn Priority envelope in his hand.”

“Another one? This corner seems not to be a very good place for any kind of business,” I replied. ‘Come and Go’ should be the name of the next one.”

He chuckled. Then he just looked at me. “Don’t I know you? I’ve seen you before.”

“Well, no, I don’t think so, but maybe you have seen me. I’ve done commercials, movies, television and things like that in New York.”

“What’s your name,” he asked leaning forward so that he could catch the answer more clearly.

I gave him my name and he knit his brows, trying to fit some kind of recognition between the face and the name. “I’m from New York, too. I lived on the upper Eastside and Hal Prince was my neighbor.”

Well, I certainly knew who Hal Prince was. The famous producer of Broadway shows with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century. He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year’s Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a musical.

“Do you know the name Lindsay.” he continued.

“John Lindsay, the former mayor of New York?”

“Yes, that’s right. I used to work for him.”

And again I had to admit that I’m old enough to know the name John Lindsay. A U.S. congressman who was elected the mayor of New York City during the 1960s. He was known for his “ghetto walks” and clashes with labor groups. Not to mention he was very handsome in this young woman’s eyes. But eight years later, at the end of his term at City Hall and after a brief run as a Democrat for president in 1972, Lindsay retired. The New York Times Magazine featured his weary face on the cover, with crease lines highlighted by the crises he had. I still thought he was handsome.

“I’ve lived here 40 years now,” my new friend said. New York was a long time ago. See you again sometime. I have coffee at Joe’s every morning,” he offered as the bus arrived at the stop and he climbed aboard.

I continued walking the several blocks toward home once again wondering about chance encounters, the ‘blink-of-an-eye’ lives we all have on this planet and whether the brief connections we have with strangers even matter. I have always be an observer of people, remembering faces, not always names, but am I really so different from most? These chance encounters, conversations, always become the mosaic of who I am.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All rights reserved.

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