Hoot Owl Hill

04/15/2024

But we really do recommend yoga 😜

03/18/2024

02/27/2024

Who can relate?

01/24/2024

One day you need a parka and boots, the next day a tee shirt. Sheesh.

01/11/2024

Here’s to gratitude! For all that you ARE, all that you HAVE, and all that you WILL RECEIVE! ❤️

01/01/2024

With gratitude, with love.

12/21/2023

Christmas greetings from Florida!

12/16/2023

Wishing all of our friends a very Merry Christmas!

11/23/2023

Greetings and love to all of you.

11/04/2023

If you have ever…

06/24/2023

This is the beautiful Glamping tent that started it all for us. Seems like yesterday. We are loving retirement but what a joyful ride it was- but a bit scary and hard sometimes too. Take those risks, friends and do the hard things. It’s SO worth it!

05/23/2023

'' And one morning we get up... We're thirty, forty, and soon to be fifty...
We realize that the years have passed at full speed, that they have left us with a few wrinkles in the corners of our eyes.
And the clock continues to tick, at full speed...
So we take stock!
We think back to the people we have more or less known,
To those who counted,
Those who left too soon and whom we regret,
Those who made us laugh or cry...
We remember the moments of happiness,
To those in which we felt alone and
to the dreams we had...
We see that everyone has traced their own path,
Some better than others,
But it is at this moment that we realize that there are several stages in a life.
Each of these stages is different,
Each one has a particular taste and smell,
And to each we assimilate faces,
Names, memories.
Hatreds and loves...
This is what life really is:
A succession of memories...''

photo Jonas Peterson
Sisterhood connecting together as one.

05/20/2023

Cheers!

05/06/2023

Glampers! Check this out!

05/04/2023

We’ll this is different. 🤣

04/29/2023

So happy to welcome this little feller to our garden!

10/28/2022

Your ancestors knew that nature
is beautiful and terrifying,
that rainbows are courted by storms,
that day shares the sky with night,
that decay caresses beauty‘s cheek.
That rubble in your life? That trouble?
It is invitation. It is initiation.
Your deepest self is calling you
down down underground
so that you can grow up rooted, like trees,
your heart green even amongst the ashes.

~ Angi Sullins
www.angisullins.com

Art by Debra Bernier
www.linktr.ee/shapingspirit

10/17/2022

All you cooks out there- for your fall salads!

09/10/2022

Be confused, it’s where you begin to learn new things. Be broken, it’s where you begin to heal. Be frustrated, it’s where you begin to make more authentic decisions.

Be sad, because if we are brave enough we can hear our heart’s wisdom through it.

Be wherever you are right now.
❤

S.C. Lourie

08/04/2022

“There is a kind of secret strength.
It lives in you and no one, not even you, knows it's there.
It lives inside you, waiting for the day it's needed, waiting for the darkest hour of the darkest night. And then, when you are defeated, when your heart is so broken you don't know if it can ever be put back together again, it whispers,
"Hello. You don't know me. But I am here.”

— lain S. Thomas

[ Art • “Communion” by Lane Brown ]

07/22/2022

“Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.” - Tim Lawrence, Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason

07/17/2022

Yes, indeed.

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
George Bernard Shaw

Vittorio Zecchin - Salomé, 1913.

07/09/2022

For my daughters, especially one right now…

REMEMBER HER?

Somewhere inside of you,
there’s a little firecracker with her arms folded and a frown on her face.
She isn’t happy about all the times you said no when you wanted to say yes.
All the times you said yes when you wanted to say no.
She wanted you to buy the ticket.
She wanted you to take that trip.
She definitely wanted you to take that risk,
the one that may have just opened a whole new world.
She wants you to remember what it feels like to run to the sea without a care in the world and splash and laugh till you ache. To face the day without a fear in your heart and embrace every opportunity that comes.
She doesn’t understand why you won’t wear the bikini.
She doesn’t understand why you won’t eat the cake.
She doesn’t understand why you don’t let it go.
She definitely doesn’t understand why you accept second best.
Somewhere inside there is a little girl who wonders at the adult you’ve become..
She still has many things she wants to learn and so many people still to meet.
She still has food she’d like to taste and parties she wants to dance at.
She still has places she wants to visit and wonders she wants to stare at.
Somewhere inside you, there is a little firecracker, desperate to see more of this thing we call life.
Go get her, she’s fun.

Donna Ashworth
From ‘to the women’ :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08LRGWY74/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_QXYBP1XQNKBHB07D6QHC

Art by the amazing Lisa Aisato

06/23/2022

How are you spending your “dash”, friends?

On the day I die a lot will happen.

A lot will change.

The world will be busy.

On the day I die, all the important appointments I made will be left unattended.

The many plans I had yet to complete will remain forever undone.

The calendar that ruled so many of my days will now be irrelevant to me.

All the material things I so chased and guarded and treasured will be left in the hands of others to care for or to discard.

The words of my critics which so burdened me will cease to sting or capture anymore. They will be unable to touch me.

The arguments I believed I’d won here will not serve me or bring me any satisfaction or solace.

All my noisy incoming notifications and texts and calls will go unanswered. Their great urgency will be quieted.

My many nagging regrets will all be resigned to the past, where they should have always been anyway.

Every superficial worry about my body that I ever labored over; about my waistline or hairline or frown lines, will fade away.

My carefully crafted image, the one I worked so hard to shape for others here, will be left to them to complete anyway.

The sterling reputation I once struggled so greatly to maintain will be of little concern for me anymore.

All the small and large anxieties that stole sleep from me each night will be rendered powerless.

The deep and towering mysteries about life and death that so consumed my mind will finally be clarified in a way that they could never be before while I lived.

These things will certainly all be true on the day that I die.

Yet for as much as will happen on that day, one more thing that will happen.

On the day I die, the few people who really know and truly love me will grieve deeply.

They will feel a void.

They will feel cheated.

They will not feel ready.

They will feel as though a part of them has died as well.

And on that day, more than anything in the world they will want more time with me.

I know this from those I love and grieve over.

And so knowing this, while I am still alive I’ll try to remember that my time with them is finite and fleeting and so very precious—and I’ll do my best not to waste a second of it.

I’ll try not to squander a priceless moment worrying about all the other things that will happen on the day I die, because many of those things are either not my concern or beyond my control.

Friends, those other things have an insidious way of keeping you from living even as you live; vying for your attention, competing for your affections.

They rob you of the joy of this unrepeatable, uncontainable, ever-evaporating Now with those who love you and want only to share it with you.

Don’t miss the chance to dance with them while you can.

It’s easy to waste so much daylight in the days before you die.

Don’t let your life be stolen every day by all that you’ve been led to believe matters, because on the day you die, the fact is that much of it simply won’t.

Yes, you and I will die one day.

But before that day comes: let us live.

John Pavlovitz

06/21/2022

We can all use this advice. We are human. We need to give and receive grace.

I’ve thought a lot on this lately and felt I needed to post.
I’ve heard more times than I can count by multiple people,
“I just speak my mind, if they don’t like it, oh well.” “I’ll say what I want to say and they can just get over it.” “If you don’t like what I said, that’s your problem.”

I want to say, Be Careful with your words, once said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.

How you make others feel about themselves with your words, says a lot about you.
Don’t say something permanently hurtful just because you’re temporarily upset.

It only takes a few moments to hurt someone with our words but it can take years to repair the damage.

Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out, think how you would feel if they were said to you.

Don’t mix bad words with your bad mood. You’ll have many opportunities to change a mood, but no opportunity to replace the words you spoke. Speak only when you feel your words are better than your silence.

You never know how long your words will stay with someone, long after you’ve forgotten them.

Just because you’re free to say whatever you want doesn’t mean that you always should!

Lastly, tomorrow you’ll have to live with the things you said.
Think before you speak!

06/13/2022

Maybe now
Maybe
I am complete
I just have to uncover
All the bits and pieces of me
That I:
- hid, because I thought they were ugly
- abandoned, because they hurt so much
- dressed up, so you would like them
- camouflaged, so you would overlook them
- forgot, because they seemed insignificant
- never touched, because I was afraid
- overlooked, because they were always there
The list goes on.
Maybe, it is time...
It is
To uncover all of them
Because I am
Complete.

~ Karina J*p A Joe

art | Marissa Strickland

06/02/2022

Tee. Hee.

05/27/2022

I can’t stay, mother
I love you, but I wasn’t born to please you
I wasn’t born to make you happy
or give your life meaning
I wasn’t born to rot under your wings
like an unhatched egg
I can’t stay, teacher
I wasn’t born to be put into your boxes
to think along your lines
or to memorize your facts
I was born to think independently.
I can’t stay, my love
I wasn’t born to satisfy your needs
to take care of you
or to hide in your arms
I wasn’t born to make myself smaller
or to be taken for granted
I can’t stay, boss.
I wasn’t born to make money for others
I wasn’t born to follow orders
or to repeat the same day over and over again
I wasn’t born for boredom.
I can’t stay, master.
I wasn’t born to follow your ideas of what truth is
or to live according to your dogmas.
I was born to find my own truth
and make my own rules.
I was born to meet life full on
To get lost on Indian trains
To be seduced by dangerous men
To meet different faces, places and cultures
To run with wolves
To be swept off my feet
To be taken by storm
To be heartbroken
Devastated
Stunned
Shocked
Lost
Thrown into the deep
I was born to get my hands dirty
To get sand in my mouth
Mud on my clothes
Thorns under my feet
I was born to jump into the abyss.
I was born to meet aliens
To do rituals
To be cracked open in ceremony
To go beyond time and space
To welcome magic
To totally loose myself
I was born to feel everything
To taste everything
The bitter taste of sorrow
The foul taste of deceit
The sweet taste of love
I was born to learn how to handle change gracefully
I was born to know the truth
to learn how to fly
I was born to learn how to speak the language of love
How to unchain my heart
How to shed everything
How to let go of all expectations.
I was born to learn how it feels to lose everything
except what really matters.
I was born to live a life that would strip away everything that wasn’t real
that wasn’t true
that wasn’t me
I am a phoenix.
I am born to spread my wings and fly towards the sun
To burn up and turn to ashes
To fall down to earth and rise up again
When I am old
I will be proud of my scars
My wrinkles
My memories
My stories
My wisdom
My freedom
I was born to be FREE

By: Sanne Burger

Photo Artist : Elyse Anna Photography