Getting on with life

Well, I think I am over it. No, not Easter - but the hard freeze we had over Easter weekend. I returned home and found my geraniums looking like cooked spinach, my canna lillies looking even worse, and unbelieveably, the crepe myrtles and other plants I thought very hardy - looking rather sickly. At first I was pretty bummed out and rather sad. Now I am getting over it and have a new outlook on things. In fact, I have decided to make this spring and summer a Resurrection time.

I will say, though, that some things I thought for sure would be dead as a doornail were doing quite nicely. My clematis were blooming beautifuly last weekend and I was sure they would be dead, but they are fine. One of them is out in the open, climbing on my fence and is still rather new and spinley - it is doing well and starting to bud. Can you believe it? I couldn't, and yet here they are. Most of my hostas are OK - a little on the droopy side, but not too bad. So, another lesson - don't be too quick to write off something (or someone) that looks to be fragile. It just might have what it takes to survive!

One thing I am going to do now is just wait for the plants to rise up and become new again. I read in the paper this morning that that is the best thing to do for most of the bushes and trees, along with many of the plants. I am going to look forward to watching new growth come to the wilted branches and color break out again. Just like Easter all over again.

I remember my first garden. A couple of members of my first church (1976 in North Dakota) helped me put it in and it was a very large one. I planted way too many tomato plants and they started growing like weeds! Afterall, in the jet-black dirt of ND, you had to work at being a failure in gardening! Just as the plants got to about 3 feet high we had a tornado come through the area and the next morning my garden looked like a weedeater had gone through it. I was so discouraged - my first attempt at gardening and now this! I didn't pull up the tomato plants but just let them run on the ground - I just sort of gave up on them. However, they didn't give up on themselves. These things started growing and by the middle of summer I had ladies from the grammer school just down the street coming by every morning to gather up tomatoes by the bushel basket to take to the school kitchen. I learned a very good lesson in my first garden - don't ever underestimate the power of living things to rise up!

So, I have learned this week that it is OK to accept the present as long as you don't give up on the future. I believe that my yard is going to look as good as it ever did - even better. And, I am going to enjoy this "new life" even more than ever before.

Just thinking.