Aren’t those the happiest faces you have ever seen?  Yeah  uh huh…  There’s no faces hidden in the leaves of these mint plants.

I’m thinking that mint plants are very happy plants. Plants with great attitude about life.  These guys struggle, they do not have the best light source and it’s winter when they should be sleeping.  But look at those little faces. Each leaf cluster just looks like its looking right up at you with pure expectation.

This is one of the mom’s to the babies below. You can see the babies roots in the vase behind mom in this picture.  I had no idea that mint could be started from cuttings.  These guys love to succeed! I have several pots of mint from cuttings from this mother plant and her sister. All started from cuttings in little vases. Mom and her sister provide me with fresh garnish for my drinks and entrees and maintain the greatest attitude ever.  Just a very nice sustainable surprise from a cheerful little plant.

(Don’t forget me! I want attention too!)

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Well after appreciating all the White Medicine around me, thought I show how I balance my life out in terms of color and texture to stimulate the senses.
Witness Connor…

hmmm…  thinking he’s pretty fat and sassy!  He is getting a 10 gallon planted aquarium soon.  No more bowls for Connor!

In the future I am thinking seriously about getting one of these…

…in fact I have already promised that in the next year I will order a baby male to raise up from Little Tweet.  The photos are from Little Tweet of their birds. I like the blue, yellow (dilute), and white (blue dilute) versions shown above. But I’m ordering the blue for its vibrancy against my Serengeti tan walls. These are Pacific Parrotlets – the smallest true parrot  in the world. They have big bird character in a little bird (about 4 inches long) body.  They are quiet enough for Apartment living too.

Color and living-ness from plant life to fish, dragon, and birds – living color. I understand why folks paint their homes rich vibrant colors inside and out. Mine is desert Serengeti  (earth tone tans and greens and Zebra print, bathroom is ocean blue and beach linens) but with a living tropical feel.  Just love it!

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Oh this is a goodie today. Not sure if it will be a long one or a short one. But I am excited about todays Thankful Thursday.

First off let me introduce to you, Zebrafinch, our latest guest blogger who will be featured here often on Thankful Thursday.  Be sure to read below this post to have the process of becoming Grateful eloquently penned.   I am looking forward to each and every one of Zebrafinch’s posts. Not only does it help Zebrafinch find her own sense of gratitude, it also touches me and helps me deepen my own sense of gratefulness.

Thank you Zebrafinch for sharing your thoughts on THE PONY EXPRESSION and for being part of the healing process.

Next Chris a friend from England, commented on one of my posts today.  He was saying how I had shared with all of you that I really had an issue with snow and was struggling moving to Colorado much less Silverton, Colorado.  He was dead right – I struggled for several years with the idea.  However, I have found the snow to be healing.  Someone else came to my home one day and said you surround yourself with nurturing things, everything you do seems to be aimed at nurturing yourself.  That is exactly what I have set out to do ever since 1997 and having spent that year reading the book I mention on an early Thankful Thursday, Sarah Breathnaucht’s “Simple Abundance”.  I suggest you check it out again, and come to think of it I will join you. Refreshing that process can only be…

…well…

 …nurturing. 

It has shocked me just how nurturing the cold, icy, wet, sticky, colorless stuff they call snow can be.  Having been an advocate of color and having the eye of an artist, color has always effected me in curious ways.  Thus, I have avoided the color white most of my life. It was cold, barren, lifeless to me. Instead I surrounded myself with deep earth tones and rich spiritual colors. Now finding myself surrounded by white I am feeling regenerated, cleansed and reborn into a new way of life.  Its exhilarating.  White, icy, cold= exhilarating… yes I get it!  Hello!!  I have found a new appreciation for SNOW.  Will I remain in it for the rest of my life? Probably not, or… maybe I will.  That will depend on the next chapters of my life.  But for now I am embracing it with a sense of adventure and appreciation for the healing effects it has had on my soul.

I was talking with one of my clients yesterday when he suggested that my move to Silverton maybe was a product of intervention guiding me to a place where I would naturally regain my fitness.  Well Creator if that is so. THANK YOU, THANK YOU and THANK YOU!!  I will never be able to show my gratitude strongly or purely enough. I believe it to be true, and I WILL be mindful of the gift. AHO    …I was given a vision years ago of what I might be called to do. Help others find their own brand of nurturing to empower themselves. I saw myself in a high desert  boulder ridden remote location. People coming to sit with me. Just a sharing experience.  Heck I don’t know if it was my imagination running away with me or truly a calling.  I don’t really care. I know that some times people do come for help. Other times I feel the urge to offer an open ended something to someone.  Some jump to fill the void and others walk away.  I am thankful that whatever I have to share is useful to some, and still feel that someday I’ll be sitting on a porch of some simple abode in the high desert. In the meantime I am still walking down a path of preparation in mind, spirit and body.  For this path I am thankful.

Today I am thankful for:

1) the sweet hiss of steam coming from the boiler in my room.

2) the claw foot tub where I take my nightly soaks in a mixture of lavender, frankincense, tea tree, and lemon oils to candlelight dancing upon the walls around me.

3) my chest freezer full of good foods for the winter

4) all the green plants…

and Dragon…

and Connor the betta fish who surround me with livingness.

5) the wonderful people who have surrounded me with friendship since moving to Silverton. They include but are not limited to. Pam, Maryanne, Patty, Karen, Cindy, Matt, Alan, Tim, the Gillan boys, and of course my daughter and son-in-law, Heather and Malcolm and their entire family. For all of you mentioned and not, I am so very thankful.  Love you!

6) the glorious sun reflecting itself off the snow-bright mountains  into my room from outside my window. The glow as it travels through the leaves of my plants is heavenly.

Happy Thankful Thursday everyone. Don’t forget to keep reading below for more thankfulness from guest blogger, ZEBRAFINCH.

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Been thinking…
There are so many topics that I would love to explore on this blog.  So I made a list.

• Unique Restaurantettes – little hole in the walls that incorporate their local farmers markets and cook their foods from scratch.  Such as The Deli.  I drop in at The Deli often for lunch when I’m over on that side of town.  Their food is absolutely to die for! It’s always ample in portion. For example, I bought a salad yesterday it came in a bowl as large as a dinner plate. I ate almost half and was stuffed to the gills.  The owner/chef came over to the table, always friendly, sat himself down to visit telling me the yellow pear tomatoes in my salad he and his son picked fresh that morning.  I brought the rest of the salad home which had ample portions of turkey in it and made a turkey salad sandwich on sprouted flaxseed bread for dinner. There is enough left over for two more sandwiches.  The Deli has been getting quite a bit of attention lately with business growing at a constant pace as folks learn about its existence.  Check them out at the Arizona Republic for a grand slam review.
• I’m considering beginning a category for Cowboy and Cowgirl Life.  Write about real people past and present.  Mostly though I want to explore things like  cowboy code and cowboy character.  I’m going to add a picture of my Great Uncle Fred to my banner.  He was an ultimate cowboy who made a living wherever he laid his hat.  He worked as a fire watchman up on the Mogollon Rim on mule back for years.  My aunt told stories of waiting for him to return knowing his mule would get him home if he could mount up.  If the mule came back alone she would set out to retireve my uncle. He use to walk down wild horses in the desert, riding them back to the ranch fully broke and ready to be used for ranch stock.   He was my favorite person in the whole wide world, and was my original mentor  in training horses.  To this day I still use some of what he taught me about wild horses.  My first experience in Arizona was at age twelve when my parents brought me to visit my great aunt and uncle. Uncle Fred took me out calling in coyotes using a rabbit in distress whistle.  It was a major day in my life.  When I returned to Arizona some 27 years later I wanted to go back to the old Preston Ranch where my Uncle had worked, but of course it was already under a subdivision.
• Outdoorsmen and Women .  Recently I have ran across some Outdoorsmen who write and are quite good at it. I’m thinking of guest writers who would like to spread the love so to speak and have more folks have access to their work.  It will be on a submission basis and I’ll have to read the piece and post it for them.  I want to be sure anything I post is appropriate for all my readers.  My love of outdoorsmen and women comes from being raised by them. My father and mother were bigger than life types who are hard to find these days.  They are out there, I have ran across a few, and I am drawn to them like bees to honey as it reminds me that really solid, quality, tough and capable people are still sharing this world with us. People I would feel safe with in any situation, like when my dad saved a river boat full of people from capsizing by jumping into a raging river grabbing a nearby limb and pulling the boat to safety with his brute strength.  I was in the boat and wasn’t a bit afraid for my dads safety or mine. It wasn’t just his fearless act that saved us, it was his knowledge of the boat and in particular the water and how to read it and how to maneuver the boat correctly.  As the women wearing their fear tears  and the men with their red faces crawled from the boat to the bank, my dad stood in chest high raging water holding onto a limb with one hand and the boat with another with a big smile on his face. He was liviing life to its fullest right at that very moment.  Or when he helped his best friend stay alive when they both were stranded in the Alaskan wilderness, eventually making it to a remote lodge.  Or when he faced down a cow moose charging him. All he had with him was his shot gun, he was rabbit hunting with a cane having had a double total hip surgery. When he shot the cow square between the eyes the shotgun spread was less than 2 inches in size.  She bowled him over but landed dead about 10 paces behind him. These are the kind of people I want to feature here.

I’m thinking adding these categories will open this blog up to a broader audience and keep it fresh and interesting.  Well it will be interesting for me at least, and since it’s my blog… well hey anyone for catfish tarragon soup?

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As promised  THE PONY EXPRESSION is changing its content and its look.  I’ll continue to write about horses wherever they come into my life and of course Sunday we’ll  all explore another Sunday Historathon.

The look of the blog is morphing and I have ideas about where I want to go with it, but for now the current look is beginning to speak more clearly about who I am and how I see life.

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Well it’s official I am remodeling my blog from a horse based one to a sustainable living one.  It will still have my horse musings on it but the majority of topics you will see from here on out will be about life in Colorado and the exploration of  sustainability, homesteading, locavore, hyperlocavore, organic and natural methods of production, renewable resources, heritage seeds and species, etc.  I’ll keep my 1800′s Historathon, and Thankful Thursday topics going as well as my saddle making project.  I am thinking of featuring an art piece of the month topic as well.  So many ideas are raising their sweet little hands to be counted.

To jump start SUSTAINABLE creative thinking  enjoy this.

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Well maybe not the wave of the future, but certainly a new and delightful addition for those who are interested in a higher sustainable production animal, or a yard pet, or a hiking/packing buddy, or a wool producer and the list goes on.  The meat tests out healthier than chicken, is a dark red meat  that is delicate, lighter and more tender than beef, and grass fed produces higher yields by comparison to other meat producing species.

Yes I’m thinking about this… a lot!  I was originally considering the San Clemente goat for meat, milk  and other goat products to be part of my sustainability goals, yet having found DelYaksTM who operate their Yak breeding and meat production business in Montrose, Colorado my interest has been peaked in a new direction.  Yes I said Montrose!  This ranch produces product that has been handled and raised with great love and care on diverse local species highland grass with a goal for riparian conservation.

Sounds like my kind of place. Go read for yourself to see what you think. I’ll be visiting them for certain shortly after moving to Silverton.

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