Creating Fleur Bundles and Weeding With Thomas Merton

Hello friends!  

I'm not a smudge stick person but I love the beauty of them- 

so instead.. I'm creating these little fleur bundles.  Visually I think

they kind of have the same look.  I want to make quite a few more to decorate with.

Especially to make some for Fall when I start getting more sunflowers 

ready to dry.  I made these using salvia stems and their flowers, and fresh rosemary, 

lemon balm, a different sage I had... and roses.  I think the salvia will be 

the staple for mine because I have a lot of it.  I first tied them up with twine,

then added seam binding too.  It was kind of a fun little project and got me 

hooked to do more.  Maybe I'll use the buckwheat I grew before the flowers all fade.  

I can see using all kinds of grasses as well and feathers...too!  

When I finished them last night I placed them on the little prayer bench and 

snapped more photos.  If loving flowers and pink roses and feathers and all that 

is wrong I don't wanna be right do you?     ;) 

This... was what I tackled today.  

I know... I know... you can say it outloud... 

you won't offend me.  It's a mess.  There I said it for you.  

That grass all growing up in this bed... there's good reason around here when 

things get like this.  No surprise it's  A FOUR letter word too...

ANTS.  The biters.  Omg.. evil ... little.... Ok I better stop myself right now.  

While I may notta said it.. I promise you I thought it... and I hate em!  

I loathe the little....!!! --I'm biting my tongue and tasting BLOOD.  

Arkansas didn't used to have these evil things.  

We had ants but not these ants.  These will get on you and bite you with their

jaws and sting you with their ... BUTT. So you'll get two sores from one bite.  The next day it turns to a blister on me and itches like ... ohmygosh bad.   They are whyyy some areas around here  get to lookin

like this.  You stand in there long at all and they go to climbing your foot and 

it's katybarthedoor RIGHT there.  So I've put it off.  But I couldn't stand it anymore.  

So this afternoon I put my big girl panties on and ... got the weedeater.  I danced around in there  a lot.

Had so many moves I probably looked like Rocky Balboa's Grammy ... and the fight was on.  

This is the other one in front of it.  

I had a mess of flower pots thrown on top of it all that I'd moved from 

a different  area... Flowerpots get full of ants too.  Usually not the same kind that is in this bed though. 

Anyways got the pots all moved and everything weed eated and guess who 

joined me?  Yep... you read the title... Thomas Merton.  We climbed (so to speak) the whole 

Seven Storey Mountain together today.  Having it read to me was ... amazing.  

Made this chore so much better.  Hearing his story- his conversion... gave me so much to think about.  

I related to some things... and now I want to read more of his books.  

Not sure which to get next.  But I'm hooked.  

As for the flower beds... tonight I'm putting heavy black plastic down on top... and 

will top that off with pine bark mulch.  Maybe this Fall I can get some more roses to fill it all in.  

Least with the mulch I won't get attacked by the biters anymore.  They'll stay under the plastic.  

I sign off with a photo of this fleur bundle and my favorite quote from the book added to it. 

Thomas Merton  said,   "The life of the soul is not knowledge, it is love,  since love is the act of the supreme faculty,  the will, by which man is formally united to the final end of all his strivings-- by which man becomes one with God. " 

Until we meet again!

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