My Wists

What are Wists? A Wist is a web wish list. Wist is short for weblists.

It's a fun way to share the interesting stuff you find on the Web.

Here is my Wist:

Wists, top web picks from WhollyPiecemeal for all. Wists, social shopping scrapbook, wishlist

Carving

As I understand it, the essence of carving an object out of wood, marble, stone, etc. is to cut away the parts you don't need to create the object you want. I'm trying to do that with my life -- removing the things that are no longer necessary or representative of who I am or want to be.

It is much easier for me to say "goodbye" to something when I realize that it no longer reflects who I am. Many of the things I've held on to were valid parts of my life at one time. Now they need to be given away.

Some things are more easily removed than others -- shoes that always pinch when I wear them -- the itchy sweater -- the shirt that doesn't go with anything. Then there are the sentimental favorites -- a lovely nightgown -- red glitter sneakers -- an embroidered shirt.

This week I began selecting one item per day to remove from my house. When I look at things and ask myself if they reflect who I am or want to be, it makes it much easier to remove what doesn't belong.

Just as there is limited space in a box, there is limited space in my house. I once read of a person who limited themselves to a certain number of posessions. When something came in, something had to go out. That would be the ultimate way to prevent clutter, and while I'm not there yet, I'm headed in that direction.

Serendipity

At the end of January I planned to go to an event with my sister. I spent the night at her house and woke to a cold, windy, rainy day. Not a bad thing, except for the fact that the event was scheduled outside, in a field, on a hill, early in the morning. The organizers canceled. My first reaction was disappointment.

Before I walked outside and appreciated the wisdom of the cancelation, I considered my options: go home early (too boring), stay all day and whine about the cancelation (too whiny), think of something else that would be fun to do (fun is good!). I decided to go with the flow and see what happened.

After a tasty breakfast, we sat and brainstormed. And the winner was . . . The Polk Museum of Art.

It had been a while since I'd visited a museum, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. They have a delightful collection of Pre-Columbian art including bowls, whistles, jars and numerous figures. This was my favorite piece:


In addition to the permanent collection, the works of "Two of Central Florida’s best painters -- James Michaels and Gary Bolding" were on display. Very inspiring stuff.

There is a virtual tour of James Michaels' work here.

Dr. Bolding is an art professor at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. His work will be on display at the UCF Art Gallery in Orlando from February 1 through March 2. If you are in the area, I highly recommend that you go.

You might enjoy reading the graduation speech he gave at Stetson in December, 1998. I found it witty and quite entertaining.

So what did I learn this time? Go with the flow and you will enjoy the journey.

Appearances can be deceiving

We have two citrus trees in our yard, neither of which we planted.


The first tree is in the woods at the edge of our yard. It is full of lovely oranges. They are about the size of a baseball, a gorgeous shade of . . . orange, and slightly sweeter than a lemon. It is a sour orange tree. The juice can be used for marinades and marmalade, but you probably wouldn't want a glass of it with your breakfast.

The second tree is a scraggly little thing snuggled next to a larger tree at the edge of our pond. We could tell it was a citrus tree because of its flowers, but never saw fruit of any consequence. It does have a healthy array of thorns which have made their presence known numerous times. Encounters with the thorns made it quite tempting to remove this "weed", but we didn't.

This year the scraggly tree was full of fruit, but they were small and pale. Hmmm . . . small, pale fruit -- could it be? I grabbed a couple of them and took them to the kitchen for an experiment.

A friend of ours has a very pampered key lime tree. He keeps it safe and warm and makes sure nothing will harm it. He had a bumper crop this year and shared his limes with us.

I took out one of his limes and placed the fruit from my tree next to it. Same size, same color . . . I got a knife and cut them open. They looked the same. I squeezed juice from each into glasses and tasted. Hooray! I have a key lime tree!


Here are the limes I harvested from my tree. (That's a quarter in front of the bowl.)


What have I learned from this? When life gives you thorns, make key lime pie!!!