Chamomile Flowers and Zen

Chamomile flowers are pretty funny. In the morning when it's cold, the white petals lie straight down against  the stem and then as the day goes on and the sun comes out, the petals lift out like the ones you see here.  These particular flowers aren't ready to pick yet, because the yellow buttons still have a lot of green in them.  Once they are completely yellow, they will be ready to dry for tea.  

I'm finally nearing the end of this application process and feeling pretty good about things.  As my advisor says, my proposal has been "well-cooked."  I'm going to take that to mean it's nearly done, and hopefully well done.  At least I feel that I put my best effort into it and even if it doesn't get funded (although of course I deeply hope it will be), the entire process has been interesting and useful for me.  While the real deadline is on Monday, my institution has a deadline of this Thursday (8am to be precise); at first I was covered with dismay but now I'm really glad it'll be over with sooner.  And the timing actually works out for the best because my friend invited me to the coast Thursday-Friday so it is all quite perfect.  I can't completely relax because I have to write an abstract that's actually due Monday, but that sort of thing is much lower pressure.  And I actually relax better if I have a bit of work to do, if that makes sense.  There will still be plenty of sunning and reading for fun of course.