It goes, and it grows....

 June 26, 2024

Mostly, I’m completely okay with the fact that I am a constantly evolving human being. No, that’s not a euphemism for getting older. I don’t need to pretty up the fact that I am indeed getting older. Generally speaking, most people believe that getting older is better than the alternative. And it is—but only in the present moment. But that is a topic for another essay.

No, I am evolving in ways that have brought me to rethink a few things that I had considered to be solid fact. And in a few cases, I am not ashamed to admit that I have had to tweak my understanding to be a bit less rigid, and a bit more accepting. We are all of us different from each other in a lot of small, and perhaps defining ways. But we are more alike and have more in common than we sometimes want to admit.

I used to say, and proudly, “it’s not that I don’t suffer fools gladly. It’s that I don’t suffer them at all.”

I understand now that that thought is too rigid for the person I am evolving into. One needs to accept that fools abound, and most of the time, not only do they not know they are fools, but they also truly can’t help the fact that they are.

The biggest step in my evolution at first made me sad, when I understood it had happened. But now, I recognize that this realization is enormously freeing.

I used to believe that if one’s reasoning was sound enough, and cogent enough, one could successfully get others to see the errors of their ways.

And now I understand that no amount of persuasion, however sound, logical, or right will ever convince some people that the thing they hold as truth really isn’t truth at all.

People will realize that someone they believe in isn’t worth their faith, or they will not. They will come to see that they’ve taken the wrong fork in the road, or they will not.  And I know now that where the change needed to happen was not in other people, no, not at all.

The change that needed to happen was in me. I needed to understand that what others eventually do or don’t do really is none of my business. And it’s not my job. I don’t have to bear any responsibility for the asinine thinking of others.

Wow, what a relief!

It means that I no longer bear the weight of a responsibility that was not mine to begin with when it comes to how those around me behave. And it also means that what other people think of me has no power over me whatsoever.

Love me or hate me, it’s all okay as far as I’m concerned. The important justification is how I feel about myself. It doesn’t matter if you live your life the way I would approve, or vice-versa. It only matters that I live my life in accordance with my own moral compass.

It probably took me longer than it should have to come to this point, this epiphanous moment, but that’s okay, too.

You’ll be pleased to know that our table gardens appear to be faring well. Do you recall that I, at the request of my husband, bought some green-bean seeds online? Well, they seem to be thriving. And I guess I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, because a few of them are vine-plants as opposed to bush plants. A quick trip to the dollar store to purchase a decorative trellis has, hopefully solved the issue. We might end up using strings to help them further. We’ll just have to wait and see.

As well, those beans are flowering like crazy, as are our tomatoes. We’re getting a good amount of rain, so that watering those table gardens isn’t an every-night necessity. The last and final part of the process that will guarantee a good yield this year is completely out of our hands—which kind of ties in nicely to my thoughts above.

But it being out of our hands doesn’t mean we are powerless. No, even as I write this, I am praying for bees.

Lots of geminating bees.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Still writing...

 June 19, 2024

I won’t begin this essay by complaining about the heat. After all, aside from a few days so far in the year of 2024, this spring has been more of a traditional one than most, lately. There were slightly warm days with much cooler nights; and there has been rain, a lot of rain. The rain was accompanied by varying degrees of chill in the air more often than not. The result is that for the moment, all of the foliage looks lush and green and very healthy.

Our table gardens have taken; some of the green bean seeds I received in the mail were, alas, climbers. My fault, entirely. We’re going to get a small plastic trellis and put it where the beans can use it, and hope that saves the rest of the neighboring plants that aren’t beans from viny entanglements. Some of our beans have blossoms, as do our tomatoes and even the two different variety of squash David has planted. In two separate gardens, of course. About a foot apart.

The gardens are his domain, and I am determined to keep my mouth shut. Not sure that I’m up to the task. But I have hope.

I’m about to begin my next installment of my Lusty, Texas collection. This will be the 48^th title in this “world”. After I had written the two historical novels that form the basis for this series back in 2010, I came up with the idea to have a short, contemporary series. I etched it out on a MS-word document, and figured I had characters and ideas for 4, maybe 5 books. Hot damn! That MS-doc was, before long, followed by an actual family tree which I had made up (as a bit of free swag for readers), and of which I still have some copies. The first family tree was followed, of course, by a second.

And when I was away on a writing retreat with my dear friend, Emma Wildes, we sat down and came up with “titles”. We aimed for one for every letter of the alphabet. I never actually thought there would be as many as 26 stories! Now that right there was a failure of imagination on my part.

And while it is true that I have far fewer readers than I once did, I still have a fair number who purchase each book. And I promised my readers that as along as they did, I would keep writing them, so here I am. About to begin the 48^th title in the series.

There have been two trilogies as well over the course of the last 14 years; one that is a part of the same Lusty, Texas world but with a bit of a harder edge, and one that is not. That other trilogy is actually of a “supernatural” world. I’m not certain if I am done with that world. Because when it comes to writing, I really do let the inspiration elves have their way with me.

A few years ago, I was able to write several novels (of about 60 thousand words each) a year. Since Covid, I’m down to one a year. Life has slowed down for me in several areas, which is what it is. I’m doing my best to focus on being grateful that I can still construct a story and write—though I do know that there are a few more errors here and there that escape my first look.

I feel grateful that my imagination is still working, that my mind is still curious, and that I can still immerse myself in this world of my own creation. There are messages in each of my stories for those who need to hear them. I am certain that those who need to, do.

And that, more than anything, is why I still write.

Aside from the pleasure I derive from the stories themselves, I give thanks that I remain a teller of tales that help to ease burdens and give rest. And sometimes, when I am exceptionally lucky, I discover that my words have given increase, as well.

Writers write so that readers may read.  Reading gives entertainment, but also refreshment and rest.

Not a bad way to spend my time, to my way of thinking.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

Grateful for the music...

 June 12, 2024

One of the things I’m most grateful for in this world is music. And yet, somehow, I’ve managed to let the music get away from me. Or rather, that connection that I had had for so many years to music and the healing and the joy that it can bring.

As a young mother, with a practicing alcoholic for a husband, music was my only escape. Our oldest son slept as soundly as you could imagine, and there were nights when I would slip into the downstairs den, and put the music on, full blast. These would be late night, when only I was awake.

Living out in the countryside with neighbors a healthy distance away, I was able to lose myself so completely in that music, that I may have, from time to time, slipped into an alternate existence, being a performer on a stage, belting out chart toppers like nobody’s business.

It was nobody’s business but mine. These days, I credit those many, many nights drowning in sound for the fact that I have tinnitus. Even as the constant hum annoys me occasionally, I consider that as having been a fair trade.

The nightly jam sessions ended about a year after David quit drinking. He’s been sober now for 41 years, so far.

Other times of stress have reminded me of my need for music. And while I no longer needed it quite so loud, or quite so desperately, but there was still something to be said for taking some time to listen, to float, to let go and just be. During the last few years of my working outside the home, there was about a thirty-minute drive from my work to my husband’s, and that was a time for the car radio to play. Not as loud as in the past, but loud enough.

Over the last few years, just when one would think I would turn to the music to help me cope with the stresses of living through a global pandemic and globally uncertain political times, I have not. Not sure why that is, exactly. I have felt no need to just sit and listen. No real need to escape. Though maybe that’s not quite true. I have, over the course of these recent difficult years actually binged watched something for the first time. Never binged watched anything before, but there was that space of a couple of months when my brother had had his first stroke, and our youngest son was having a big toe amputated…

In the last few days, I realized just how much I do miss the music. Oh, I’ve been watching the Voice, and even American Idol, but not therapeutically. I haven’t felt that same driving need to lose myself in music, but I do love it. I love to sing, although these days that is a challenge. I no longer have the voice I used to have but have dropped at least an octave. I was getting frustrated, trying to sing along to beloved songs and my voice kind of breaking up. But it was just a matter of learning where my register is these days—and either adapting the song of the moment in my heart to it or finding another one to sing.

I have never been able to name a favorite song, because there are just so darn many of them. Different songs with different words and different tunes for different times and different moods. But when I realized how much I missed just listening to whatever song struck me, I began a new routine of listening to a couple as the first of two steps before closing my computer, and myself, down for the night. It’s been like discovering music all over again.

It occurs to me that I am somehow progressing on my life’s path as I should be. I had abused music back in the day, and the why and the wherefore of that meant I really had to give it a break and redefine what it means to me.

The best surprise, so far, is that at a time when I can’t remember a name or a place or a word, the songs are coming back to me. I know the words of songs I haven’t heard in years! I understand why music is used so often and so well for the treatment of some neurological and speech disorders.

I don’t even mind the return of those earworms. Today upon awakening it was “Africa” by Toto. It was a nice way to begin my morning.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

An enduring lesson from childhood...

 June 5, 2024

When I was a little girl, growing up with a mother who worked full time and was a single parent, there was one lesson above all lessons that was impressed upon me. Breaking the rules was bad, yes. But nothing was worse than lying about it, after.

One might commit one sin or another and could expect a punishment that fit that crime; add lying to the mix, and God help you!

One might take something that was not one’s own to have, and that would be bad enough. That would most definitely earn a punishment. But lying about it when asked?

As a preteen child and then a teen, that was a fate I did not even want to contemplate.

And as far as I knew, the rest of the world felt the very same way. There was no epithet one could earn, in the world I knew growing up, that could possibly be worse than liar.

The way that the lesson on the horror of lying was imparted verbally to me was this: once you told one lie, you would inevitably have to tell another to cover up the first. And then another, and another…..pretty soon you wouldn’t be able to remember anything you had said because while it’s difficult to forget the truth, lies, on the other hand, are an entirely different sort of entity altogether.

Different metaphors were employed over the course of my pre-teen and teen years: a lie was a snowball racing down the hill with the power and danger of an avalanche; a lie was a fiery pit of hellfire opening and widening until all would be consumed. I truly dreaded having to walk through life with a huge flashing sign proclaiming liar hung around my neck—or above my head—depending. And the way my mother spoke the word, liar, told me that if it lay on the sidewalk before me, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go anywhere near it, let alone step in it.

The necessity for honesty and truth was ground into me, and to this day, of the list of things that I simply cannot and will not abide is lying liars who lie. I hate lying above all else. It’s a real deal breaker test for me.

The astute among you will begin to understand, then, why it is that I have been struggling to make sense lately of this world in which we are living.

All sorts of snippets and maxims have floated through my mind as I began to write this essay today. Wise sayings like, “if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything” and, “if you don’t have your word, you have nothing.”

I have long adhered to the idea that the purpose of life is not to hand us a good time, but to help us grow. And then, as we are learning and growing, every once in a while, we’re presented with a test. A great, important test that holds more significance than we could possibly even imagine.

Never have I felt more strongly that this is the case for us all, here and now. We are all being tested, I swear it, and I have a feeling that fewer of us are going to ace this latest exam than we would, all of us, like.

Another concept comes to mind, as well, and it’s one that, as parents, most of us used in the performance of our duty to raise our children. You corrected them, over and over and over, because if you didn’t, they would eventually become ungovernable. If you didn’t, they would never learn how to distinguish between right and wrong.

My friends, I tell you truly that the difference between telling the truth and telling lies is the difference between right and wrong.

Some of those folks I see on my television screen who proclaim to be Christian appear not to understand that as they portray themselves as good, stalwart believers in the Holy Bible standing before the podium as they rail on and on, that by their very actions in that moment they are showing themselves to be anything but Christ-like.

Don’t tell me the Holy Bible forms your world view and governs your actions when you cannot even follow all ten of God’s commandments.

To those who do that I say, please stop. You are mocking the very Word I do my best to live by. It’s shameful behavior.  Yes, of course, God will indeed forgive His children when they err. That was His promise to us, and He always keeps His promises.

But then, by virtue of their being His children, He knows that they would never intentionally use His promise as a free pass to, with premeditation, break any of His commandments.  Not the first. Not the second. And certainly not the ninth.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Porches and gratitude....

 May 29, 2024

Today represents a notable day in my family history, as it’s a double wedding anniversary: The eighty-first for my parents who were married May 29, 1943, and the fifty-ninth for my brother and his wife who were married on May 29, 1965.

This past weekend, despite the intermittent rain, I spent some time sitting on my front porch. That’s only notable because it’s not something I do on a regular basis anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy being outside and just taking in the fresh air and, because our porch is a covered one, indirect sunlight. In times past I would spend an enormous amount of time out there—reading, usually, and talking to our walnut tree.

From the time we moved into this house, and beginning mid-spring, on days when I didn’t have to work, the first cup of coffee of the day was enjoyed slowly, reverently, while surrounded by empty streets, fresh air, and birdsong on that porch. When that tradition began it was my much cherished “me” time, time to get my thoughts organized and to simply be until it was time to do.

Times have changed, and so did I. The times spent on the porch are rarer, which makes them even more special to me. Now, of course, I need to bring my lap blanket, and pay attention to the amount of breeze. But my porch remains a special, and especially comfortable place to be.

I spent some time over this past weekend thinking about my parents and my brother. That’s in my nature. My thoughts were more fond than they were sad. One never truly gets over the loss of loved ones. There may still be a teary moment here and there. But one can learn to be at peace with the loss and to prize the memories.

The weekend certainly had more than its share of rain. But rainy days can be conducive to thought. I found it incredibly poignant and comforting that while I was just sitting quietly this past Friday and Saturday, I was treated to the mingled scent of lilacs and lily-of-the-valley. For two days in a row, that much-loved olfactory memory transported me, taking me back to a time of peace and joy, to a time past. To a time when adulting wasn’t yet a part of my vocabulary.

I was, however, a little miffed at the timing of the rain. You see, just the day before, our walnut tree went into full leaf, dropping its debris all over the sidewalk, the walkway, the vehicles…in short, everywhere. I did ask David to take a minute and blow off the affected areas. He countered that he thought he’d get our little worker bees in it on Tuesday. He told me he wanted to teach them both how to use the leaf-blower.

Of course, it was also raining yesterday (Tuesday) which means that the great-grandchildren did not do yard work, and that detritus is still over the sidewalk and the walkway, but now is a truly soggy and surely rotting mess instead of just a fluffy, dusty one.

Monday was so wet and chilly that I made some potato and leek soup. Since the suggestion that I could do that was so well received, it didn’t surprise me that the ravening mouths slurped away in a very avid fashion. I also saw to it that our second daughter was given a good portion.

All of my work on my latest novel has now been completed. Love Under Two Dreamers, which will be my 70^th title for Siren-Bookstrand, is set for release on June 5. It’s time for me to knuckle down and try to figure out what comes next. I generally plan 3 or 4 books ahead. This used to be something I did in January, each year. Now, my planning sessions still produce a few titles, but the sessions themselves no longer happen annually, or even in January.

I’ve decided to be kinder to myself, and not angst over the fact that my pace of writing has slowed post-pandemic. Instead, I am focusing on being grateful that I am still writing, period.

I’ve decided that gratitude is the answer to ever question, and every quandary. And the more of it I have, the richer my life becomes.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Spring musings...

May 22, 2024

Well, we were having a traditional spring – until this week happened. To progress, over the course of a single day, from nicely mild temperatures to soul-sucking breath-stealing heat and humidity has been quite a shock.

There is a mystery I cannot solve with regard to the weather and my arthritis, and it is this: when faced with weather that I know will exacerbate my condition, I do all I can to avoid exposing myself to same. I stay indoors, protect my legs, and yet, the weather eats through all my protective measures anyway. I do know that the discomfort would be much, much worse if I went out into the chill, damp air—or the hot, sticky damp air. So I continue to hope that I’ll be able to avoid the weather-affect, despite all the evidence I have amassed to the contrary.

I’m coming to be of the opinion that it’s not exposure to the elements, per se, that sets off my pain alarms. Perhaps it’s those invisible-to-the-eyes factors like barometric pressure that’s the culprit.

Ah, well, just one more question to ask the Lord when I get there.

We made the decision this year, heading from spring into summer, that we needed to get some help with the yard work. After discussions and negotiations, it has been settled that two of our great-grandchildren—our daughter’s grandkids—will be earning some spending money. The soon to be 11-year-old will cut the grass; and the soon to be 10-year-old will attend the gardens. The kids are eager to earn money, and we are interested in teaching them that earning your way is the way to go in life. We’ll see how that works out. But they had their first work shift this past Saturday—and from all accounts it went well.

This past weekend was the Victoria Day weekend here in Canada. Yes, we still celebrate the birthday of that particular queen. The celebrations here in our area aren’t as prominent as they used to be. There used to be massive fireworks displays in many communities along with the usual carnival-like atmosphere one might expect with rides and games and junk food. But I’ve noticed that over the last few years, those fireworks displays have lifted their dusty, eighteen-hundreds styled skirts and trotted some forty-odd days further along the calendar year, landing on July 1, which is Canada Day.

I’m fine with that. I no longer head outside to actually witness huge displays of the shiny and the pretty and the loud. We did that very thing every year we had small children at home. They loved those occasions, and we never would have dreamed of not going. But those days are gone, and I don’t miss them all that much.

As it is now, with two days that have fireworks in the spring-summer, that’s two days we here in the Ashbury household need to coddle our two youngest dogs. Each year, in May and at the first of July, there are folks in our neighborhood who light off fireworks. We can’t see them, but we can hear them. And yes, like their father, Mr. Tuffy before them, Bear-Bear and Missy abhor the sound and the scent of fireworks. They shiver and quiver uncontrollably. It’s tragic to witness.

We have a thunder shirt for Bear-Bear, but we don’t have one yet for Missy. Primarily because this year is the first time that Missy has shown pyrotechnic anxiety. We may have to get one, though. We’ll see. And for those who wonder, a thunder shirt is a garment that can be made to fit nice and snug, to give the dog a sense of security. It does work, and when wearing it Bear-Bear is noticeably less stressed.

Ahead of the traditional planting weekend of Victoria Day, daddy and daughter headed out to get soil to top up the beds, as well as a few other necessities for planting. I can therefore announce, that our veggie gardens are planted! We have tomatoes, green beans, and a couple of squash. Jennifer bought some watermelon plants to go in the kid’s gardens which will be on the south side of our house. That is the only place we have that gets full sun for most of the day. In the past, they’ve had flowers and a couple of cherry tomatoes there. But they don’t really like cherry tomatoes. Daughter thought they might tend the plants more diligently if they produced something they really liked to eat.

I’ll take some photos of those wonderful box gardens of ours, by and by. At the moment, I am letting the ongoing drama of farmer versus critters play out. Long story short, my beloved second-guessed his decisions, worrying that he may have given those green beans too long in the cow pots indoors before planting them, and has been poking some seeds into various places in the box gardens, hedging his bet as it were against the later-than-last-year’s February start.

And those critters are so delighted the man of the house is playing hide-and-seek the seeds again. I just can’t tell you what a delight this all is.

I really can’t.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

Magical...

 May 15, 2024

Like the solar eclipse that we knew for more than a year was coming, this past weekend’s geomagnetic storm also produced something totally worth looking at, skyward: fabulous displays of the aurora borealis. Unlike the eclipse, the knowledge that such a show might be possible was more of a lastminute sort of event.

I have enjoyed, very much, seeing all the fabulous displays that folks have photographed and made available both online and to the news outlets. Our girls went not too far outside of town, to a more rural area, and were able to see the northern lights for themselves—the first time for both of them.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that they’ve had that experience.

I’ve seen the northern lights two times in my life. The second time was with David after we were not long married. They weren’t really colorful that time as I recall, but they were beautiful just the same.

But the first time is the reason why I didn’t rush out to see the displays available over the last several days. The thing is, I didn’t at first understand the inner hesitation I felt to go and see this phenomenon. Who wouldn’t want to see the northern lights? It was only after I sat quietly and thought about it that I understood. I know that my decision to not go and see is overly emotional, but I’m okay with that.

You see, the first time I ever saw the aurora borealis was when I was somewhere between the ages of six and seven. I was sound asleep in our little house out in a rural area, and then I wasn’t. My daddy had come and lifted me from my bed. He told me he had a surprise for me—something magical! As he carried me, I awakened more, and then we were outside, in our front yard.

Daddy carried me across the lawn to the driveway, and then walked toward the road. When we’d just passed the border of the tall cedar trees that formed a visual barrier between our front windows and the world at large, he stopped, then turned us to face down the road.

“Look up,” he said.

I did and…. wow! At the time, I didn’t know the science behind what I was seeing. I didn’t know that, in those days, more than 50 years ago, this was a sight that could be seen where we lived in Canada a couple of times a year. I only new that I had never seen anything like this before. I only knew that what I was seeing must have been magic! Waves of light, dancing for the stars like a curtain caught in a gentle summer breeze. The colors weren’t of a vibrant hue, but more ethereal…the sort of colors befitting whatever magical beings created them. It was special. I was special because my daddy had woken me up and carried me outside to see it. I became aware that my mom, my brother and my sister, were guests at this magical dance, too. But I had my daddy holding me, and that had to make it, and me extra special.

“Pretty,” I remember saying. “So pretty.”

“Yes,” my daddy said. “Very pretty.”

I didn’t know, either, at that time, that this would become a core memory for me. Only later, much later, as I grew up without this amazing man who had been kind enough to share with his youngest child the secrets of the universe, did such a thing occur to me.

Come forward now to this past week. I am getting closer to my seventieth birthday, and it is now more than sixty years after my father’s passing. I contemplated joining our daughter on her quest to see those same amazing lights. But she was going with our “second daughter”, who is the mother of my late son’s children, and is to her a closer sister than one born so could ever have been.

This was her time, this was their time, and they shared this first experience—the wonder and the beauty of it—together, which was as it should be. One more bond of sisterhood between them.

I’m grateful for the little bits of understanding I gain as I travel this path that I’m on. I still want to learn, and I still want to grow. I’m nowhere near done living yet.

And I still want to hang onto that long-ago child’s sense of beauty and wonder and love.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury