I am grateful for wild flowers. Recently, while looking at pictures of myself as a small child, I was surprised by the number of photos of me with wild flowers in my hair. It seemed like such a natural, joyous thing to do.

How did I get away from doing small things that bring such joy?  Now my brain is wired for responsibility and obligation.  But picking  wild flowers certainly doesn’t fit into those categories.  I want to get back to that place where picking wild flowers is second nature, and I don’t have to justify a reason to do it.

Earth laughs in flowers.Ralph Waldo Emerson

Check out the Lady Bird Johnson Wildfower Center.

Aren’t mud pies so freeingly fun? I loved playing in the mud as a child, and making mud pies was a favorite past time.  In my five year old mind, it ranked right up there with tire swings and puppies.  I still remember the dirt’s earthy smell and grainy wet texture as it squished between my fingers and toes. I’d start my mud pies by taking the water hose and running it over a spot in the yard, usually taking out an ant mound here and there along the way. Then, I took a cake pan and piled mud into it. I derived such pleasure in smoothing the top layer of the mud so that it was even with the top of the pan. Then, after all that effort, I dumped out the pan and did it all over again.

As a child, I did things like this for the pure pleasure of them. Imagine if I had said to myself, “Well, no one can eat mud pies so I shouldn’t go about building them.” This sounds absurd to a child, but as an adult, I regularly deny myself enjoyable experiences because they are not considered productive or useful.

Mud pies remind me that joy and pleasure ARE useful, and anything we do that creates them is worthwhile.

I do it for the joy it brings, cause I’m a joyful girl. ‘Cause the world owes us nothing, we owe each other the world. Ani Difranco