You know you are a country bumpkin when....

When you are regularly greeting ants and spiders over your cup of morning Jo, as you do with everyone else that lives in your home. And your generally squeamish little girl has no problem picking up spiders from her floor and walls to gently dispose of... And when visitors ask what will you do with your ants and spiders, you reply "we've agreed to co-exist".

When you trade your fancy loafers for knee-high rubber boots... (which I must say, look pretty hot!)

When during a rain storm, instead of cozying up to your book and your cup of tea, you frequently roam your hillside for floods...

When you get regular visits from Roodolph, with his magnificent antlers and all... and you stop and watch in awe, even though you were SUPER LATE FOR SOMETHING a second before...

And when you wake up to one of your old redwood trees laying down across your front yard, when just yesterday it was standing up majestically.

Living closer to nature does put our every day life of hustle and bustle into perspective.

We Urbaners who are always and forever pressed for time, when even our 4 year old frequently talks of making plans to fit in various activities in her busy schedule... the nature around us seems to bring our life to complete halts, with great authority, with mere snaps of its swift fingers, and it manages to make us surrender without much effort, without facing our "whys", without listening to our complaints. We surrender. We give of our precious time. Whether spell bound by the wild animals roaming down from our hillside or staring dumbfoundedly at a tree that now needs to be mended.

We surrender. We happily surrender and give thanks.

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FORTY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS AND FORTY DAYS

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An Urban Girl

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