Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

recent posts

  • Dance retreat

    Salvia elegans — aka pineapple sage — spends all spring and summer growing and getting robust. Everything else in the garden is blooming like crazy but this sage waits until late September (in my garden, anyway) to start blooming.

    It’s looking pretty amazing just now. The hummingbirds take sips daily.

    I’m also in the autumn portion of my life and trying to be like salvia elegans. This week I’m at a dance retreat at a Pleasant Hill retreat center called Bloom. We’re dancing Nia, talking and laughing and playing with Nia concepts and in general thinking about how the practice of this form can infuse our lives with health and joy.

    A concept we covered at retreat: the bonded nature of mobility and stability, how the one relies on the other.

    You can read more about that: https://mainstaymedical.com/relationship-between-joint-mobility-and-stability/

    We start and end each day with an hour-long dance. I didn’t know when I was in my 20s that I would be doing this when I hit my seventh decade, but here we are.

  • Goes around, comes around

    A while ago, I had a lovely lunch with a friend. I brought her a very small vase with a couple of dahlia blooms from my garden.

    Last week at our Nia dance class, she returned the vase with these pretty pink blooms, geraniums, I think.

    I put the vase in the cup holder in my van but forgot to bring it in when I got home. Next day when I got in the car the blooms were so bright and welcoming I decided to just leave the vase there and see how long the flowers lasted. It’s been seven days. They still look fresh.

    Every time I get in the car they make me smile. They remind me how a small gesture can linger on and on.

  • Slow down

    It’s dark now at 6 a.m. Summer has flown by, rich in big moments for my family — love and death and tenderness. And all around us, as always, the great cacophony of the world.

    Autumn’s coming, chill mornings, heavier skies. Before letting summer go I want to savor a few moments, not the big ones but the quiet ones.

    Coming around a bend on the Stockholm Archipelago Trail last June, we noticed this bent pine close to the water. A fleeting view on a walk along a distant shore, it rings now in my mind like a deep-voiced bell.