My Word of the Week is Growth

This week I actually shocked myself. Read on to see why. When I stop to think of how my week has gone, the one word I can think of to sum it up is growth. Both my own personal growth as well as growth in nature and things all around me. Mine first.

Personal growth- mental

Do you sometimes feel timid to make decisions? Especially when I think I might end up hurting other people’s feelings, I tend to hold back and consequently hurt myself. These days though, I’ve been thinking that whatever decision you make, you are not going to please everyone. Some people are going to love it, and some are going to hate it. Some couldn’t care less. I want to be in the latter category.

Not that I want to hurt or upset people but I am thinking of ways to please myself more. It hasn’t been easy to say no to stuff and to people. I sometimes have to psych myself up in my head first, but I do it. I see it as growth. Even simple things like cutting off a call when I realise that the person on the other end of the line is only carrying out their cold call agenda used to make me uncomfortable. This week, no more of that. It’s my phone and my time.

And this week I was adamant that part of my growth was to stand up and say no to bullies! More about that maybe another time!

Wonder if this type of growth will get me in trouble though. Recently I’ve been thinking of things like booking a holiday away, covid rules or not! Scary! I’ve even been entertaining the thought of cutting my hair so low you can see my scalp! It would make life a little easier as all I would have to do as part of my haircare routine is just to wash it whenever I have a shower. OMG, the thoughts that fly through my head in the name of growth! Maybe this is midlife crisis setting in!

This pic gives me an idea of what I might look like with the hair gone. What do you think guys? Don’t know if I can brave it.

This week too, we realise that our mom would be turning 75 towards the end of this month so we wanted to send her something special since we wouldn’t be able to go to see her in Florida. We looked around on Amazon for something suitable and bought and booked it for it to get to her 2 days before her birthday just to be sure. Well, the next day after the purchase, mommy called and told us she’d received our parcel! Anyway, she has promised not to use them until it’s actually her birthday.

Turning 75 though, wow.

Personal growth- physical

Well, in my last Word of the Week post I think I mentioned that I was a bit worried about my upcoming diabetic review at the doctors. I was even thinking of not attending, it was that bad, I thought. Well, it turns out that all my readings were perfect! Blood sugars, perfect, blood pressure, perfect, cholesterol level, perfect, kidney function, perfect, foot condition and nerve reading, perfect.

I had suspected that I had again put on even more weight. A total of about 5 pounds more! Well, it was confirmed so there is more growth here too, hehe.

I’m not happy with it but it is such a battle. I’ve been fighting for years! And do you know what? When I look back at my photos over the years, I look so lovely but in my head back then, I thought I was so fat and tall, like a giant! At 18 years old I was off to teacher training college and I so wished I was slimmer. I imagined myself to be quite big and now I wish I was that size again.

This old photo of me I recently rediscovered and I so love how I looked then. And also how I felt. It was a time of finding my feet and growing as a young student, setting myself up for whatever I was to become.

Growth in the Garden

This week the garden has looked beautiful! The petunias are doing well and give the garden a really good feeling. It’s a mostly pink and purple affair but there are bits of yellow, red, and orange. Even the strawberries are bearing but I must admit they look like those wonky things they sell in supermarkets, almost like they are seconds. I think even though there is growth, it could be better. Maybe we need to replenish the soil in that area. That’s a job for another time.

But we enjoy seeing the growth of cucumbers, courgettes and even the tomato plant that we have ket in the conservatory is blooming. I know that everything needs a tidy up but with time, that will happen too. Being able to cut flowers from the garden to put in the vase in the kitchen is beautiful. And with the cutting comes new growth. Nature is beautiful.

We even have sunflowers! Red ones and yellow ones. The flowers are just forming so hopefully soon I’ll be able to update with some pics. But last year during the lockdown when people were sharing their Amazon wishlists, I selected and shared a little pack of red sunflower seeds and someone bought it and had it sent to me! I didn’t know at the time that they were coming from China. So by the time they came, it was too late and they didn’t do well. This year though, I am more hopeful.

We had a picnic at the park last week and I tell you, we could easily have chosen the back garden as the venue. We’d only be missing the lake! See bits of our games and picnic below.

Speaking about the Amazon wish list, I’d love it if you send me yours and I’ll try to send a little surprise over for a few of our readers. Send it to joleisacreed@yahoo.com.

And did we tell you about the hedgehogs? Well, we got the fright of our lives recently (as we were seeing them in real life for the first time). We are sure they live somewhere in the garden and we’ve seen two of them, so it might be a male and female setting up their matrimonial home! They may or may not have young ones but we haven’t seen them.

So there’s growth everywhere for us this week and we are loving it, well, most of it.

Over to you. How would you sum up your week so far? Thanks to Anne and her friends for allowing us to share in this weekly linky and I can’t wait to read what they’ve been up to this week.