What if you could find a sanctuary in the midst of urban chaos? Today, I share the soothing experience of nurturing my backyard garden, a personal oasis where produce and fruit trees grow and tranquility reigns. I'll walk you through the simple joys of gardening, from the satisfaction of tending to plants to the delight of sharing homegrown herbs with friends. Listen as I reflect on how these small, mindful acts can help carve out peaceful moments in our hectic lives. You too can create your own sanctuary, whether through a hobby, quiet reflection, or daily rituals.
As we reconnect with our physical awareness, I share a hopeful message for a refreshing and fulfilling summer, urging you to find and cherish your personal oases in life.
What if you could find a sanctuary in the midst of urban chaos? Today, I share the soothing experience of nurturing my backyard garden, a personal oasis where produce and fruit trees grow and tranquility reigns. I'll walk you through the simple joys of gardening, from the satisfaction of tending to plants to the delight of sharing homegrown herbs with friends. Listen as I reflect on how these small, mindful acts can help carve out peaceful moments in our hectic lives. You too can create your own sanctuary, whether through a hobby, quiet reflection, or daily rituals.
As we reconnect with our physical awareness, I share a hopeful message for a refreshing and fulfilling summer, urging you to find and cherish your personal oases in life.
To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. This is a podcast where you can find ideas about refreshing your life and savoring your blessings. We believe in setting an intentional rhythm, and together we learn how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. If you are looking for a place to raise your well-being, you can find it right here and in this place. We'll take a few minutes to celebrate everyday joys and remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. So I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 80. So I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 80.
Speaker 1:
Here at Create Harmony, we look to nature to inspire a lot of our content, and we follow along with the changes in the seasons and try to take cues from what's happening outside. So right now we're in the summer season and things here in North Carolina, where I live, are really starting to heat up. We're getting those long days of sunshine and things are growing. But before we get to that, I want to revisit a concept that we talked about way back in the past, at the very beginning of this podcast. So in a past episode, one of the very early episodes, we talked about finding an oasis, and I told you that I have a jigsaw puzzle and it has this peaceful image. It sort of looks like Hawaii. On the front. That's what the puzzle is, but on the front of the box, underneath the image, it says oasis. So in general, the term oasis is used to describe somewhere you find refuge, you find restoration. It's a place of relief and while I was doing that puzzle, I was pondering about that concept, about where we find oasis in our world. Where are the oases of calm in our everyday lives? So this is like a happiness hack for us. This is like a happiness hack for us Finding a place that gives you relief and peace of mind. Now, for me, one of my OACs of calm is my own home and, in particular, my backyard. So I've been telling you all along this spring that we are growing a raised bed garden in our backyard and I've given a few updates about garden progress along the way, and I find myself so much more excited this year about planting the garden than I have in past years. I love to go out there and look at it and trim it and mess with it and check to see if I have any new produce growing, what the new growth is on each plant, I prune things so that they look just the way that I want them to look, and I'm so excited about the slightest little evidence of new growth. Another exciting thing about it is that I have, since our garden bed is a little bigger in this house than it was in our previous house, I've got more herbs and things to share, and I've been taking a little collection of herbs, a little bouquet of herbs, everywhere I go when I go to share, and I've been taking a little collection of herbs, a little bouquet of herbs, everywhere I go. When I go to friends and neighbors, go to dinner at someone's house, you're going to get some fresh herbs, which is it's exciting to me. I'm not sure if the recipients are as excited as I am to give these herbs. The other day we made our own fresh pesto and we had dinner and it was just wonderful to see that come together like that.
Speaker 1:
Another thing about our yard that I don't think I've shared before is that we live in a city. First of all, we live in a pretty urban area and there's not very far from us. There's, you know, a belt line and a highway and lots of hustle and bustle, but we have a little bit bigger yard than we had in our other house, and this yard has a lot of fruit trees and it's not something that I would have expected, living in this urban of an area. We have a cherry tree, we have two apple trees, we have a peach tree, we have a fig tree that is covered in figs. We even have a pomegranate bush that has pomegranates growing on it and I mean most of the trees have had fruit at some point in time and it is the neatest thing. It's like a treasure right in your own backyard. I would have never thought to create this kind of oasis for myself, but we just sort of stumbled into it. It attracts lots of birds and these trees. Another thing about these fruit trees that is neat is that, versus like a big tall oak or pine, they're smaller trees, so the birds and the wildlife is a little nearer. You can see them. You can look right out and see birds all in the trees. It's just a place where I feel joyful, I feel whole. It just gives me peace and refuge from the craziness of life.
Speaker 1:
And so now that I've described my sweet little backyard for you, I will pose this question when are your OACs of calm in your life. Do you find them while quietly reflecting in your journal or taking a run. Maybe you have a creative hobby like cooking or painting, or do you find them when you're spending time with your best friend. So maybe you can even take this concept and focus on little micro OACs in your day Driving yourself to work and listening to your favorite playlist, or using your special body wash in the shower these little micro things that bring you joy. Now, several weeks ago, we talked about glimmers, and those are micro moments of joy. We talked about that for a couple weeks in a row.
Speaker 1:
This is pretty similar, but I'm urging you to make a slight mindset shift here. You're not only on the lookout for joy. You're also looking for things that make you feel calm, make you feel peaceful, restore you and pull you away from noise, from stress, from political unrest, from war around the world. You're looking for those things that give you peace, and maybe you want to create a practice of writing two or three of them down each day so that you can keep your focus on them. This really only takes a few seconds. It takes a few seconds out of your day for you to notice these things, and they're really powerful images for your mind. When I go out in my garden and I check on things, I mean I'm only out there a few minutes, maybe less than 10 minutes each time, but those minutes are so peaceful, they're so restorative. It's like a refuge from the worries of my day and you can find yours too.
Speaker 1:
Now for our closing today, we're going to do a rainbow meditation, so we're going to shift into our more meditative posture. Get yourself settled, let all your tension out. If you can feel any tension in your body, shake that out. Release that as best you can and take a deep breath. Breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude. If it makes sense for you to close your eyes, you can do that now and settle yourself into stillness.
Speaker 1:
Today, we are going to pretend that you are a rainbow. You arch over the sky and you are filled with beautiful colors. You are special when people see you. When they spot you, they smile and they take a picture. Now think about the red in your rainbow. Feel the warm heat of the red, that rich red that makes people think about their heart, or watermelon, or roses. Sit with that color for a moment.
Speaker 1:
Now move on to the orange in your rainbow. It's lively and fun. It reminds people of the sunset. Orange makes people think of energy, pumpkins, flowers and pumpkins and flowers. Next you move to the yellow just like the sun vivid and light, like bananas and bumblebees shining like gold. And now we move to the green just like green grass and fresh new leaves, leaves and shamrocks. It reminds people of new growth and of nature. Now we've moved to the blue, color in your rainbow, just like the sky and bluebirds, like water and rain. Blue is peaceful.
Speaker 1:
Now we're coming to the indigo Like denim, jeans and blackberries.
Speaker 1:
Indigo is like the deep part of the ocean. It's dark and cool and vast. And lastly, we move to the purple, like violets and gemstones. All of these colors are shining that are part of you. A lovely array of splendor. You bring out the magic in people's day, feel many parts of yourself coming together to create beauty. To create beauty.
Speaker 1:
Now, once you've soaked in the beauty of the moment, you can begin to bring your awareness back into your body, back to the podcast where we started. You can wiggle your fingers and toes a bit, take a deep breath, breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude. If you closed your eyes at the beginning, you can open them now and we're all back together. May it be so. Thank you so much for joining us today as we talked about finding OACs in our life, and I hope that you have great luck being on the hunt for those and maybe jotting them down and really dwelling on how they bring you peace in your day, and we'll be back next week with some more refreshing ideas for your summer. And until next time, peace.