But in the the meantime I’ll continue to have new experiences right here in my own back yard. Literally. On Day 26, I was feeling a little all over the place. I knew there was angst but I just couldn’t pin it down. So I just decided that I needed to let go and be delivered to the best place for me to be at any given time. While my brain was telling me to work in the office, something else was telling me to get to the garden. On such a stunningly beautiful day, I didn’t fight the urge to be outside.

I have seven small gardens around my house but I walked right out to one in front of my house, which is overgrown and messy, and with spade in hand, I started digging. I didn’t play real long out there, maybe an hour, but by the time I was done, I had a new hosta garden planted under the pine trees in the back yard ~ something I’ve wanted for the past couple of years.

Nature brought me my new experiences on Day 27 and Day 28. I was laying in the hammock on Wednesday evening, just chillin’, watching the trees dance and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, when movement under the pine trees caught my eyes. I sat up and watched a baby squirrel chase a baby bunny back and forth between the trees until the bunny skipped through the chain link fence. The baby squirrel was intent on getting the bunny off his property but it was cute as hell to watch.

I know that it’s difficult to conjure up something really new on some days, and then there are days when the new stuff just pours out on you. That was yesterday for me. Four different new experiences.

Under gorgeous blue skies, I tucked myself into the hammock under the shade trees in the morning and started to work using my daughter’s laptop (1). The project was an inspirational short film (2) that I produced in iMovie. While I was diligently focused on the work at hand, a sparrow landed on the hammock about two feet from my feet. And it stayed for awhile! (3) It hopped from one spot to the next, pecked at the ropes, looked at me, pecked again and hopped some more. I spoke softly to it and moved my arm but it didn’t fly away. It felt like that little bird knew that it was safe to hang out with me.

In the evening, I headed across town to visit my sister who has been housebound due to her recent foot surgery. She asked me to take her for a ride in the car so I loaded her up in her van, and with no clear idea where to go, I let the car drive me. We drove south and east of town in rural farmland on rolling hills that neither of us knew was there (4). Fields of tall corn, soybeans, alfalfa and wildflowers dotted the landscape. The highway was empty except for our car so I drove at 30mph and rolled down the windows so we could take in all the sights and smells. Unfortunately, the timing was a little off with that decision because we were passing a farm that was right next to the road and the smell of fresh manure was thick. A little farther down the road, a pair of sandhill cranes flew in front of us across a corn field and under the sunset-painted clouds.

It was so much fun to come to a road and turn on it and see where it took us. It’s amazing that this beautiful landscape is so close and we didn’t even know it.

Even though there’s only three days left to this official experience, I have a feeling that I’ll be noticing all things new in every day beyond Day 31.