Today I am taking the matriarch to the dentist to get her six teeth cleaned. They called with a cancellation appt or she would have had to wait until April. Dentists are busy I guess. And as a life long smoker she does not have many teeth left. So I am grateful we could get her in.
So while you are waiting for me to get back from the dentist, pop over and read this weekends TKG newsletter. Have a look at this weekends photos and go on a farm walk-about with me. I love writing the newsletter! It narrows my focus somehow.
Cecilia at the The Kitchen’s Garden at Substack
What is Winterizing Anyway. Let’s find Out.
November 28 th is Thanksgiving which all the stores wish us to skip straight over because it is not a gift giving day. It is a day for giving thanks and pigging out – my pigs do very well on that day.
So we have all month to think about what we are thankful for.
Do you practice gratitude? Giving thanks. I never really have. I have a naturally optimistic nature ( except for the days I don’t) so hopefully I am grateful on a subliminal level. This month I am going to make an effort and make a list of things I give thanks for. Maybe a new one each day!? Is that going too far?
While I am waiting in the dentists waiting room on tiny hard chairs – pushed too close together. (And my sense of smell is coming back in wide swathes now after my continued sniff therapy so I will need distracting) I am going to create a November Thanksgiving Calendar.
Today is the 4th of November so I will make a list of 24 more things to be grateful for. Things I give thanks for. Firstly I give thanks for being able to jam my tongue firmly in my cheek but I will try hard to take this seriously. Should there be rules?
I would love to give thanks for peas. But do peas count?
Today I will give thanks for still being able to bend over and touch my toes. Is that a good thing to give thanks for? I vote yes.
Am I allowed to have another moan about daylight saving? That’s not very grateful is it.
It is raining. A very nice solid spring rain in autumn. It is 63f/17c. So the fields are greening up! The weather is upside down.
Have a gorgeous day.
Do you want to join me in making a thanksgiving calendar? I am going to literally put one item a day into my Google calendar. Which, thankfully, will make my life look very active and busy.
Have a lovely day!
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
21 responses to “A Thanksgiving Calendar for November”
I think Ms Google would do better if it was useful for creating a calendar that we could put sayings and photos and reminders in. A digital beauty to rival that on our walks. A blessing a day in your calendar – sounds good to me!
I too do not formally practice gratitude- no journals or documenting my thanks- but that doesn’t mean I am not grateful, even for the smallest of things. Most especially for the people in my life, both virtual and IRL 🙂
We have a huge storm blowing through and our mountains are getting feet of snow. I am thankful not to live in the mountains right now!
Off and on I have filled in my Gratitude Journal with 3 ‘grateful fors’ each day. I think I must do it when I’m feeling a bit low, and it definitely helps out. And I think being thankful for peas (especially if grown in your garden) and being able to touch your toes definitely count! 🙂 So many of the tiniest things count if we really think about them. In fact, I think I’ll dig out my Gratitude Journal and join you in a Grateful November! Thank you for the reminder! xo
I give thanks for your daily posts …and of course the pigs!
I haven’t been able to stop by for awhile so today I’m grateful for a few extra moments to to that. I’m going to the dentist too so I won’t have to be at quilt group at 9:00 a.m. I’m getting a few fillings. I have all my teeth and want to keep it that way. I do keep a gratitude journal. Since 2012 I write one thing I’m most grateful for that day and that journal travels with me. I also try to focus on what I’m grateful for in my regular nightly journal ending it with the gratitude for the day and maybe one more. I’m grateful to be able to still breath. A small thing to many. I didn’t smoke but others around me did. I’m grateful for the first snow of the year last night breaking an unbearable summer heatwave. My son was born the day after Thanksgiving 57 years ago. I loved Thanksgiving so much, I made him wait a day. 😉 His lungs weren’t done cooking so they kept him another 2 weeks. I’m grateful to still have him. Every single day, I find something that wells up gratitude in me. Thanksgiving is about food and gathering family or friends. Best of luck with the dentist and the calendar. Hugs.
Peas are definitely worthy of gratitude. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I dislike gratitude as a practice, but I do relish many small miracles of every day life! Right at the moment, I’m enjoying being warm and dry while listening to the rain outside.
“…bend over and touch my toes.” Yes. Flexibility of body and mind are excellent things to be thankful for.
I love this idea, and like you, I tend to have an optimistic view of life, but one can never have too much gratitude. the timing of the return of your sense of smell is humorous )
I’m a natural optimist also–so much so that people think it’s fake, but it’s not. I’ve been so grateful to be home and to have a home I love to return to after a month away in September. But I haven’t written those gratitudes down. In the past, I’ve tried to keep a gratitude journal, but it ended up sounding fake and forced. But I’ll go along with you and write a gratitude down in my Google Keep each day. I love that you are grateful for peas–noticing the every day things is really what it should all be about! Today I am grateful for the gorgeous color of autumn all around me. That sounds trite, but every time I go out I marvel at the beauty of the leaves.
I think all those things you listed are good things to be thankful for. Never underestimate the importance of being able to touch your toes! A lot of people can’t.
Our Thanksgiving was in October but, as we get further into November, I’m always thankful that our holiday isn’t overshadowed by Black Friday and football.
Being mindfully thankful and grateful is a wonderful thing – thank you for the reminder – because imo it’s the opposite to the seemingly endless wanting yearning of aspirational – consumer culture. I’m thankful / grateful that I figured out with the help of of some lovely like-minded people yourself included how to be my own person. I’m thankful / grateful that I detest being told what to do – be – think – buy.
I also detest that – being told how to be! Yuk! I am not an easily married person. Bloody consumer culturing. We are in a petri dish.
I can still bend down and touch my toes for which I am very thankful:). I am grateful for a roof over my head….food in the cupboards, and a community of people who I enjoy. I am grateful that I can walk everywhere (I don’t need a car) or take public transportation…and grateful that I am content with my ‘needs’ and not forever wanting…….
Walking everywhere you need to go is the very best! In fact the best part of city living. Contentment is hard won. I am grateful you have found it!
Thank you. It took the first half of my life before I found that magic place called ‘contentment’. It’s worth waiting for:)
Alas, I can’t touch my toes, I blame it on being long legged and short waisted – that’s my excuse anyway. I try to recognize something I’m grateful for every day. Sometimes it’s as unimportant as my comfy bed or the fact that there were only 3 shovelfulls of manure in the barn this morning s opposed to a heaping wheel barrow.. Being a poor sleeper I recently had a multi day grateful fest for sleeping 6 whole hours with no interruptions – that was a biggee.
A comfy bed – just the way you like it – is truly a thing to be grateful for!
I moan a LOT (excessively) about the ridiculous one hour time changes and much prefer Standard time to DST even though I live far north. We’re on ST now, correct? The last time I tried to touch my toes, I pulled my hamstring so that won’t be happening again. LOL
I was thinking about gratitude recently when I realised I was in a bit of a grumpy mood (just with myself) thinking about the things I want but don’t have. Mainly, a big house in the country! As the Buddhists practise, attachment is the root of unhappiness… to things, ideas, desired outcomes. I’m not Buddhist but I see a great deal of truth in that. So I gave myself a little talking to, as 5 years ago I would have loved to have the things I have now and didn’t have then. How quickly our happiness returns to its baseline! So I am grateful for those things.
Oh you have touched on a very interesting note. “ How quickly our happiness returns to its baseline!” How ungrateful we are. The Buddhist ideology does bear studying. I know what i am grateful for today now!