Happy Mother’s Day! Whether you’re a mom, stepmom, or just a mother figure in someone’s life, I wish you a wonderful, joy-filled day!

Welcome to the 64^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a decluttering challenge for the week. This week, I reflect on the first Mother’s Day I’ve spent without my daughters. Plus: bee facts, dandelions, and decluttering bathroom counters.

On my mind this week: A different Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day. Today we celebrate our mothers and everything they have done for us.

This will be a different Mother’s Day for me. For the first time since Laura was born 24 years ago, I won’t be spending the day with either of my daughters. Laura moved to British Columbia last summer and Colleen is away working in Prince Edward Island.

It’s a strange feeling but I’ll keep reminding myself of how proud I am that they’ve grown up to be hard-working, independent young women who are making their way in the world. And I’ll look forward to spending some time with them when they’re both home in June.

On a positive note, I’m grateful to still have my mum in my life. She’s 91 and an inspiration to all. I’ll be visiting her later today.   

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• Years ago, my sister Lorraine gave me a Christmas Cactus. In all the time I’ve had it, it has only ever produced one flower. The other day when I went to water it, I noticed at least a dozen flowers.
• I had a good trip to Milwaukee this week to attend a couple of days of board meetings for my professional association. On the way home, I spent the night in Chicago on Friday night, giving me a chance to have a good catch up with my friend Cher. Saturday was a beautiful day so we visited Navy Pier, did the architectural tour, and had deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati’s.
• On Friday, I received confirmation that I have completed the Certified Professional Retirement Coach (CPRC) designation. The year of reinvention continues.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are a couple of things I learned this week:

Bee facts

As I was researching plants to attract pollinators to my garden, I learned honey bees not native to this area. They were imported from Europe 400 years ago. There are, however, 800 native species of native ground and twig nesting bees.

(Source: pollinator.org)

The misunderstood dandelion

When I was little, I picked dandelions for my mum. I thought they were so pretty!

The poor dandelion. It’s so misunderstood. People go to great lengths to obliterate them from the landscape. But we really should leave them alone. Dandelions provide a source of food for pollinators in early spring before other plants flower.

(Source: pollinator.org)

This week’s decluttering challenge – Bathroom counters

In 2024, I’ve been revisiting the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge I completed in 2021. This week’s challenge was decluttering bathroom counters. I’m happy to report I decluttered 6 items. You can find the details, along with my tips and learnings, in this week’s decluttering post.

If you’d like to join the challenge, visit this post to download your free checklists and jump right in with this week’s task.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.