The Boomer Muse launched in 2008 and quickly grew 1 million visitors a year. All that changed when I migrated to WordPress and lost six years of content. I was able to retrieve some of it from the Internet, Wayback machine and have since taken screenshots.
While perusing the archive, I realize how fresh and timely some of it is and I’d like to launch a new Weekly feature beginning today. I’ve included several short posts linked together.
I’ve included several posts with original dates that fit this time of year as we are entering a new season. Some of the original images were not available, and I have swapped out other images but they are all my original photography.
I also added some new content for fun.
Hello, Summer!
Sometimes it’s not worth reinventing the wheel so I didn’t add any new rituals, but you can search for several Summer solstice posts like Guide To A Magical Summer Solstice
This is an example of a screenshot from 2012. The resolution isn’t great, so I am editing as best I can.
The Most Creative Full Moon
“The three months of summer are called the period of luxurious growth. The breaths of Heaven and Earth intermingle and are beneficial. Everything is in bloom and begins to bear fruit…The pulse is that of the Heart.”
~Nei Ching
It’s the full moon today and it has an extra fullness about it; being the last full moon before summer officially begins on the Summer Solstice – June 21. Can you feel it? It’s a specially fecund moon representing a period of intense emotion and creativity.
Bang that drum!
Write that poem!
Design something!
The Muses are dancing around you.
Go on, c re a t e.
There has never been an easier time in this peak time of light and power.
I couldn’t find the photo I was looking for to post. When that happens I never sweat it because I know something better will result.
My garden is tropical lush at the moment and my muse. The image above is a shot of lilies that just popped, pepper hot, layered on a shot of my outdoor altar drenched in raindrops with a little mirror a student of mine brought back from Morocco many moons ago.
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 6/4/2012 12:12 AM
Happy Summer Solstice!
For longest day of the year and the official first day of summer, I’d like to share the story of the lily eater. It’s a true story. It began a couple weeks ago when I blogged about the trials and tribulations of gardening under four-legged intruders. Just as the first lilies were about to bloom, I found their decapitated stems bereft of their blooms.
Deer.
There were two choices: accept or deer-proof. I chose to accept. The other day a ray of hope entered. The deer had missed a lily. held my breath. Would this soon-to-bloom lily survive a deer’s breakfast? It did and two days later, the lily popped its creamy petals and powdery gold stamens.
It might not have been the best example from the garden but it was the only one, giving it a rarefied air. Giddy with joy, I snapped a quick photo figuring, I’d get a proper shot the next day.
The next morning, my face crumpled at the sight of another headless stem thinking, he or she who hesitates is lost. I lamented not taking more shots but thought nothing more of it.
Later that day, I came face to face with the lily eater and any residual resentment or anger evaporated. A young deer, all matchstick legs, ribs and bambi eyes stared at me. We communed for a while. We both knew this was the lily eater and it didn’t matter. The cost: a few lilies. The gift of gratitude: priceless.
I turned out. There was a family of deer and honestly, they were too cute to fret over eaten flowers.
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 6/20/2012 12:12 AM
Drunk On the Roses Of Summer
Late afternoon yesterday I happened to drive past the best rose garden in Westchester County. With everything blooming early this year, I’d missed the annual rose show and wondered if I was too late. Would the roses be past peak?
I pulled into Lyndhurst, the historic estate and found it deserted. The usual parking attendant was gone, the docents had left for the day and not a visitor graced the expansive lawns stretching to the Hudson River.
A humid blanket of a rising heat wave turned my top dank with sweat as I hurried across a football field-sized lawn towards the rose garden, straining my eyes to spot limp, past prime petals. I pleaded to the rose gods not to be too late.
The circular garden with a gazebo in the center is completed surrounded by tall deer fencing.
There would be no snacking on blooms like the deer in my garden. I lifted the latch to the gate and entered. Time stopped the way it does at Midsummer, lingering across the sky. I closed my eyes and inhaled the honeyed sweetness, of roses a hair past peak and opened them to a riot of red bliss. I stumbled drunk in circles visiting the roses as a bee seeks nectar.
I finally understood what the mystic poet Rumi was talking about in this poem.
O Gardener, the musician’s thunder brought forth the cloud of the wine-bearer Garden drunk, meadow drunk, rose drunk and thorn drunk O revolving skies how many times upon this path are wayfarer Dust drunk, water drunk, wind drunk, fire drunk.
The visible is in such state, questioning the invisible yourself spare Soul drunk, and mind drunk, imagination and thoughts drunk. I cry out and sing for Beloved; for the Beloved much I care Voice drunk, and harp drunk, plectrum and strings drunk. The lone spiritual monk and the wise mendicant, Sufi dare Robes and gown tear, through the market place pass drunk. Each drunk in his own way, in the limits of his own share O awake and observe how even every cloud is drunk.
The photos capture a vague, hazy memory but it’s enough for my memory bank, plus a handful of petals fell into my hand as a souvenir.
One day made all the difference. The roses would perish in the punishing 100 degree heat of next couple days.
Every day makes a difference.
Welcome to summer!
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 6/21/2012 12:12
How Change Happens
The week before the anniversary of my father’s death (May 1) always sideswipes me with unexpected emotional baggage. He died in 1995.
You’d think it would be enough time to make peace with the fact that he died on one my favorite holidays: May Day or Beltane, the time of the year when everything is bursting with life and kicks-off summer.
I resented being reminded of his death when I wanted celebrate. My petulant inner child, wailed, “Of all the days of the year, why, why, why did he have to die on May Day?”
This year I decided to reframe the experience, to change my attitude. Like all change, it’s either a knock-down-drag-your-heels fight or a gentle letting go.
The wisest thing I know is to listen to my body. That said, I sometimes I hear the message but I don’t always act on it. It’s like hearing an alarm clock and pressing the snooze button again.
Life is simple.
Change is simple.
When we fight and resist change, it makes it more painful than it needs to be. I resisted all week and suffered. Everything and everyone annoyed me.
When another wave of self-pity and anger threatened my sanity, I headed to my favorite neck of the woods to walk off the foul mood. I surrendered to a huge clump of azaleas and…
Well that’s the Hollywood ending. It wasn’t exactly as it happened.
The Dahlia Man was there. For the past few years, a dahlia expert at the park plants a massive row of dahlias. He lovingly tends to the beauties with his old dog Emma, a sweet golden lab. Last summer, the dahlias floundered and I blogged about it here with photos of the dahlias and Emma.
While I suspected Emma had died, I didn’t know for certain. With traces of a floral scent in the air and a new determination for change, I wandered towards the greenhouse hoping to bump into one of the volunteers who might know what happened.
The Dahlia Man stood in the doorway. Shocked, I could have turned on my heel and disappeared but took it as a sign and an opportunity to make peace with death.
I marched up to him and didn’t mince words. “So what happened last year with the dahlias?”
He looked up at me nonchalant as if we had spoken yesterday. “I got so busy and there wasn’t time to give them time they needed.” His words faltered. He knew in that moment I knew and I gingerly asked about Emma.
“She died in July. I didn’t even dig up the tubers at the end of season.”
He proceeded to the immaculately hoed flower beds, ready for another season. It was my cue to leave.
A gardener knows there will always be another season. Life goes on and death is a part but I’m betting this year’s dahlias will be stellar, and I think I’ll plant something in honor of my father.
Here we are 14 years later, and I haven’t seen the Dahlia man in a very long time but I did visit the park during the cherry blossom season and it looks like the dahlias are going to be blooming again this year.
Life goes on and this year on on May day and my father’s birthday, June 15th, I felt no resentment, annoyance of any kind but love and compassion for the complicated man, my father was.
It turns out that he picked the perfect day to die as a way of giving me another life lesson. And actually, I’ve never felt closer to him. so much so that I have written a brand new post in honor of Father’s Day, which falls on the summer solstice this year. My Ancestral Secrets
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 5/1/2012 12:05 AM
2010
What Lies Beneath
What began on Monday as week of exploring creativity and expecting the unexpected, I got more than I bargained for.
Today’s post ends culminates what began on Tuesday. After meditating on yesterday’s Earthworm teacher, I got good and dirty in my garden to ruminate on what lies beneath.
The rain-drenched soil teemed with shoots of green and underneath, their roots. Metaphors sprouted; what lies beneath are things hidden, treasures or lies, the subconscious, the unspoken, the promise of new growth, of transformation where the past, present and future co-mingle.
What lies beneath are dead things composting. Death and new life wrestle in a cosmic dance. With my ill feral cat Domino possibly leaning on death’s door, I thought of my other cat Coco decomposing for the past six months in another part of the garden. And then it hit me. The sadness I felt was for another spring long ago.
For the past few years, I’ve photographed the same assortment cemetery angels during the seasonal changes. Sunny skies and pale green leaves coaxed me to a favorite place.
I looked at the calendar and the date jolted me with memories. The date my dad suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma.
He died a few days later on May 1.
Mt. Hope cemetery (perfect name) is large with winding roads I know well, but for some serendipitous reason, I took the wrong turn and ended walking up unfamiliar road.
Lying in the middle of the road lay one red rose. It might as well have been a flashing neon stop sign. It looked as if someone had placed it there for me. There were no other flowers nearby and it glowed fresh and dewy despite the dry hot asphalt. A messenger from the great beyond?
I was afraid to touch it, but I couldn’t leave it to wilt or be crushed under tires.
It felt like a message from my father. I’d always hated red roses since my dad died. Maybe not hated but lovers quickly learned to give me any color but.
For my father’s funeral I brought him a floral arrangement of red roses. I didn’t understand why until much later. Our relationship was rocky until a few years near the end. I was his beloved daughter but I never felt loved by him because of something that happened when I was five. My uncle had molested me, and in my young mind, I conflated all men as being unsafe.
What to do? When in doubt ask an angel, so I did. I picked up the rose and carried to my car and drove down to the exit. I needed to place it on someone’s grave but whose? I sensed there would be message there for me but which grave out of thousands?
In the distance, I spotted a very old worn tombstone with a carved lamp on top. That’s it. I marched over rose in hand. I placed the rose. My heart skipped a beat. In loving memory of our daughter, it said. The little girl, a Leo like me died in April when she was six. I patted the rose and and smiled. Thanks dad.
It rained the next day, and Domino, out beloved feral cat stayed scarce. I prayed for a miracle and he returned home yesterday, still ill but ate a med-laced meal and settled in a nest under the porch. I breathed easier, but knew his life or death was out of my hands. (more about his journey at Cat Saturday, tomorrow).
I strolled the garden and found one solitary red tulip in a bed of lily of the valley. My dad’s nickname for me was Lily.
Don’t be afraid to look at what lies beneath your life. Messages, teachers and life lessons are everywhere if we stay alert to them. Thank-you for joining me on this journey. I leave you with this image taken last evening after the storm cleared. Have a beautiful weekend!
I hope to share more from the archives on a weekly basis. I haven’t decided what day of the week yet and it does require quite a lot of work to clean up the actual writing do a bit of editing, sort the photos, and all of that.
With mercury retrograde around the corner, revising and editing is a positive aspect of the time a lot of people complain about.
If you are new here, Welcome and I hope you subscribe to gain a little Wisdom or simply a smile.
With love,
Layla
