vitalityinfocus.com

Wildflower Wednesday | Summer

And this week — a hairstreak butterfly, a monkey flower the size of my thumbnail, and the first Wednesday of summer.

A flare-up in back pain kept me close to home last weekend. Limited hiking, limited range. So what I have to share this week is small — and I mean that literally.

A Juniper Hairstreak butterfly on wooly groundsel, wings folded, working the yellow blooms. A tiny insect on a tiny flower, going about its business completely unbothered.

Yarrow in white clusters against old weathered wood. Prickly phlox — that small shrubby plant with white to soft peach blooms — still going strong.

And a dwarf monkey flower. Magenta, with a yellow throat, growing right out of bare sandy soil. I put my thumb next to it so you could see the scale. The flower is barely larger than my thumbnail. Remarkable what can emerge from hard circumstances.

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” — The Emperor, Mulan

Summer arrived this week. Not with fanfare, just quietly — the way most meaningful transitions do.

In midlife we know something about that. The seasons shift, and sometimes we’re moving right along with them. And sometimes we’re laid up, watching from the sidelines, letting our bodies remind us who’s in charge.

Both are part of it.

Still noticing.

What does the shift into summer feel like for you this year?

THE 100 DAY PROJECT — WHERE STRENGTH CAME THROUGH

100 paintings. 114 days. And the why behind all of it.

When I started this project on February 22, I wrote down my intentions. I want to come back to them now, because looking back is how I actually see what happened.

To build trust in myself. To practice consistently. To grow my skills. To release perfection. To learn what I like. To show up — imperfectly and honestly.

My words for 2026 were Strength & Growth. This is where Strength showed up.

It showed up in the returning.

In Week 8, I went out of town and didn’t paint on schedule. I came home, picked up where I left off, and finished the week anyway. I didn’t quit. I didn’t start over.

It showed up again when I took a full week off after a backpacking trip to the Redwoods — and instead of pretending I hadn’t fallen behind, I called it what it was. A detour. Not a failure.

It showed up in releasing perfection.

In Week 9 I wrote about how all five pillars of my life rarely hum along at once — nutrition dialed in, then I miss the gym. Everything checked off, then a night of no sleep. The paintings taught me the same lesson the rest of my life was trying to teach me: it’s a practice, not a performance.

It showed up in trading “I should” for “I wonder.”

That shift, from Week 10, might be the one I carry the longest. I wonder what would happen if I… is simply a better way to move through the world than I should have done this differently.

And it showed up in simply being there.

Every week. Even when time was tight or other life obligations felt more urgent.

Building trust in myself didn’t come from finishing on schedule. It came from proving — over and over — that I would keep coming back.

That’s what Strength has looked like so far this year. Not pushing through. Returning.

This is the work I do — grounded in lived experience and guided by care.

Wildflower Wednesday | Spring Week 13

Two hikes this week. Two very different landscapes.

Saturday morning I was in Shevlin Park for an early five miles before heading to the Farmer’s Market at Northwest Crossing. Shevlin in June is lush and shaded — Tumalo Creek running alongside the trail, ponderosa canopy overhead, the light still cool and low.

I found Cusick’s Beardtongue penstemon in that soft blue-purple, just beginning to open. Ragwort in dense yellow clusters at the end of long stems. Queen’s Cup tucked into the forest floor beside a pine cone, white and starlike against the broad green leaves. Columbine — Western red columbine — lit up by a shaft of morning sun coming through the trees, red and yellow and completely still. Blue flax leaning against an old fence rail, two blooms open at once. And buckwheat — scattered through the understory.

On Sunday I was out on Cline Buttes.

Open sky. Dry volcanic soil. Juniper and sage. The Cascades laid out on the horizon from the ridge.

Wooly groundsel blooming in tight silver-leaved clumps right at the trail’s edge. A purple fleabane with a bee in the center. And buckwheat again, everywhere, spilling over rocks and down the hillside.

Same flower. Completely different ecosystem.

That’s what I keep noticing out here. The plants that know how to adapt — that find a way in the cool forest shade and in the exposed volcanic heat — those are the ones that show up everywhere.

Still noticing.

Is there a place — or a version of yourself — that shows up in more than one kind of terrain?