Good things
Just a bunch of good things. Come in if you love nature and beautiful things.
Hey, I’m happy to see you here.
I’ve created a compilation of good things from quotes, to photos, paintings, to podcast episodes, music and more. A small way to pass a bit of sunshine your way.
A Painting
Spring is on the way and that means flowers. Flowers, flowers, flowers. It’s such a beautiful time of year to stop and look around and notice.
Frederick Carl Fieseke was an American Impressionist painter who lived most of his life as an expat in France and mingled with the other Impressionist painters in Giverny. His main influence was Pierre Auguste Renoir, which is evident in his incorporation of women into his paintings.
Regarding the painting of flowers, he explained his method as~
“If you are looking at a mass of flowers in the sunlight out of doors you see a sparkle of spots of different colors- then paint them that way.”
Ah yes, easy enough. :)
This just reminded me~ Did you know a group of fireflies is called a sparkle?
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of joy and wonder. I choose joy over despair, not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
~Robin Wall Kimmerer
A Podcast
I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts and I used to listen to them more often years ago than I do now, but one of my favorite podcasts I’d listen to is On Being with Krista Tippett. (I believe she’s here on substack too).
There are many great episodes like the one with Mary Oliver and also with Robin Wall Kimmerer. Mary rarely did interviews so that one was really special.
One particular episode always stuck in my mind though and it’s this one, Silence and the Presence of Everything with Gordon Hempton. Hempton is an acoustic ecologist and has traveled all over the world to study the level of sound in nature. There are very few places left in the US, in particular, that are silent. According to Hempton, a place is added to the list of “the last great quiet places” if it can have a noise-free interval of only 15 minutes or longer during the daylight hours. When this episode was recorded in 2012, he had been collecting data for 30 years and had only 12 qualifying places in the US.
One of those places is the Hoh rainforest in Olympic National Park in Washington state. He created a recording in this forest called One Square Inch of Silence. You can listen to it here. I recommend listening with headphones/earbuds and preferably noise canceling ones. It’s so good. Imagine being in that photo above and hearing the sounds in that recording. Heaven.
A Poem
by John O’Donohue
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
A youtuber
“Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” ~ Mary Oliver
Not this lady! She’s really living it up.
Wendy Outdoors~
Wendy is who I aspire to be when I grow up. I watch every one of her solo camping videos on the west coast of Canada and they’re always full of beautiful scenery, cooking things over the fire, and some of Wendy’s musings on life. Her recent video from her Yukon adventure was super fun to watch too. I recommend subscribing if you’re a kindred spirit. :)
A snippet from a poem- To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
By Mary Oliver
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.
Wildlife Pond
I came across this video a couple weeks ago and it was so cool to see the progress of his pond as well as all of the wildlife that visits. It’s an older video but he’s still doing updates and the amount of birds and animals at his home in Canada is astonishing. Check it out~
Book recommendations
Books on nature~ the beautiful, the mysterious, the interesting, and how to live in harmony with it.
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Gathering Moss - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Little Alleluias - Mary Oliver
Never Home Alone - Rob Dunn (I read this a few years ago and still think about it often, particularly in the shower and when I look down my sink drain)
The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
World of Wonders - Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Iris - Courtney L Smith :)
I hope you’ve found some joy in this post today. I want to leave you with one final quote:
“Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.” ~ Shane Claiborne
Ok maybe two quotes because that one on a larger scale, reminds me of this one on a smaller scale~
“So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.” ~Rainbow Rowell
While the world is spiraling, what if we all just keep adding good things? Someday, it will be inevitable, that the good things outweigh the bad. And hey, maybe they already do. Maybe we just have to notice.
See you soon.
x,
Courtney
Enjoy my writing? Like, comment, share, or buy me a coffee :)
You can also purchase my poetry books <3