Dear Reader:

I have had people ask me what I have learned from having a garden these past two years (for the first time in my life) and I can sum it up in two words: patience and surprise!

* Another interruption from the Dingle Broadcasting Company (from your regularly scheduled blog reading program)…our baby’s first full day on earth…being welcomed by one and all…He “makes my heart flutter.”

(He is a mixture of patience and surprise too…and chose to grow in our family’s garden…for which we will always be grateful!)

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Last week when Anne stopped by I was showing her the garden and two plants appeared particularly pitiful…as in “dead.” We were trying to figure out (or remember) what was located there originally…these whitish, hollow-looking branches, devoid of any signs of life, just stuck out of the ground. One of the last hard freezes must have gotten them…I assumed.

Suddenly Anne cried out: “Look!” At first I saw nothing…but then way down inside one branch…a teeny-tiny, microscopic speck of green appeared. We started laughing joyfully…as if we were heart surgeons and had just heard the first beat of life again. In the plant world…green means life.

Two days later…when I returned…several other shoots had started popping up…the two plants are hydrangeas. They both survived the cold winter we had.

Patience and surprise! Life is amazing…if it is given any micro-chance of survival, it will do just that…survive!

In the Talmud…there is a belief that “Each blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”

“If you’re green, you grow…if you’re ripe you rot.” Kermit the frog had it right all along. In order to keep growing, both physically and spiritually, we have to continue to stay green…to stay open to new experiences and challenges. We have to deliberately choose to keep growing.

Yet…don’t we fight this every day? We spend much of our lives trying to protect ourselves against life…to get past the constant “green” of change in the early stages of life and get settled into a “ripe” sense of security …good health, abundant savings, and controllers of time.

But no matter how hard we try to outsmart life…it always wins. Life doesn’t allow complacency and “security.” It is a series of challenges from the time we are born until we die. In order to live…in order to continue producing “green sprouts” year after year…we have to quit fighting the ups and downs of life…and instead accept them for what they are…life.

Most of us have to get backed in a corner to accept difficult changes in our lives…until we eventually arrive “at the day when the risk it takes to remain tight in the bud is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom.”  * (Anais Nin)

Life is constant change and  growth… We must continue to fight the odds, to find the courage to produce one more tiny speck of green, to let go of the familiar, and instead, show the world our unique bloom in it.

So far…in my garden…here are the plants who came out fighting again this year…many against the odds…and are now blooming (or on the edge of blooming) because they stayed “green” and open to new possibilities.

* Before I show you these garden pictures….(speaking of possibilites) let me digress and share with you an email I just got back from Kelly Rae Roberts…a leader in the “Possibilitarian” movement and one of my favorite artists.

I showed you several photos from her home and a variety of her artworks and designs in the blog titled: Celebrate Everything

On a whim (since I love whimsy) I wrote Ms. Roberts and told her what I a fan I was of her creative artworks…I felt a strong connection to her outlook on life as expressed through her artistic talents.

I sent in a few pictures…several containing works of hers I had purchased over the years…. in my whimsical Happy Room.

The next day, after sending the email and photos, I got this response from Kelly Rae Roberts.

Kelly Rae

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Here are some photos of the survivors so far popping up in the garden.

So until tomorrow….Thank you God for patience and surprise…they allow us to grow in Your design for us.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh