Why I Oughta...

Martha Stewart hit me right between the eyes this morning with this quote about happiness.  She says that you can be happy for a year - if you get married.  And you can be happy for a decade - if you get a dog.  But...if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life - plant a garden.  See below. I'm adding this to the handful of pieces of garden advice/garden musings/garden quotes that I've collected here on my blog - including: It is better to plant a fifty-cent tree in a five dollar hole than a five dollar tree in a fifty-cent hole , Conifers should come first , never buy just one of anything , Audrey Hepburn's line/quote - "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" and... the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best? Today .  Martha's take on happiness fits right in there with these. I first came across this on TikTok in a promo for her Netflix documentary, but....on  Instagram  is where I found this (nicely laid-out four-panel) Marth

On Monday, I shared a Washington Irving quote about planting Oak Trees .  From the preamble of that same book about Wisconsin trees comes this John Muir quote.  Both of them moved me a bit and reinforced why I've been so fascinated with trees and getting a variety of them added to our landscape over the past two seasons. I haven't posted about John Muir here on the blog (a search that returns no results says that's a true statement), but anybody who watch like maybe more than four minutes of Ken Burns "The National Parks: America's Best Idea " series knows who John Muir was and what his impact on our country really is today.  He's someone who's been called a "Secular Saint" for the work he did to not just preserve vast expanses of wilderness but also advocate for our communal understanding of the value that nature brings to all of us as a source of renewal, understanding and connection. There's a lot here that resonates with me -

Right at the end of August, I posted a few photos showing some tree damage that occurred up in Twin Lakes Wisconsin including a felled giant, massive, hundreds of years old Oak tree.  In poking around trying to find information about Oaks in Wisconsin, I found this DNR publication called "Every Root An Anchor: Wisconsin's Famous and Historic Trees" .  I haven't gotten through much of the book just yet, but I was struck by a few quotes that they included in the preamble.  The first of which is this quote from Washington Irving in Forest Trees .  The idea of someone planting oak trees as a person who is looking out into the future - not for themselves - but for others.  Their children.  Future generations.  That's kinda interesting. I've planted plenty of trees on our property in Downers Grove these past few years, but NONE of them have been Oak trees. But you know what?  We're the benefactors of someone who lived into this Washington Irving quote.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of a Walt Disney quote from a construction sign .  Today is another.  This one rings true, doesn't it?  Or maybe is just a massive an understatement from Walt himself.   This is from the same wall that the "everybody needs deadlines" quote sign that adorned the Disney Skyliner Station construction site outside the backdoor of Epcot at the International Gateway.  You can peek at this post and see that the signs are the same theme. "I believe in being an innovator." -Walt Disney Full archive of the Walt Disney World construction signs (cleverly sponsored by Stanley Black and Decker) featuring quotes from Walt Disney can be found here.   This is the seventh in the collection. One other thing that they've added to the construction wall since we were last there is this Disney Skyliner sign that shows some of the art on the gondolas and the map of the Skyliner. Nat and I were talking and she pointed out something: 

This is one of the Walt Disney quotes that seems to resonate really strongly with me.  These are, of course, posted on construction walls around WDW.  And I've documented them over the past few years.   The first one that I can find in the archives is this one that reads "Everyone needs deadlines" and was placed on the construction walls outside of the International Gateway .  I posted it in July of last year.   These are nice ways to dress up construction walls and in a cute way keep Walt's legacy alive.   But this one about standing still... Between my wandering mind and my intense focus on different subjects at specific intervals in time, I really feel that this is something that hits home.  Now....I'm not talking about standing still in the sense of being 'out there'.  Nat will tell you...I'm a homebody.  But, in terms of not repeating the things we do everyday and learning more about different things.  Birding is a prime example.  A y