Till We Meet Again

 I have been waking up with/because of the birds, but it is all OK.

It is hard to start a post when one has be absent for so long.  As I wrote in a comment on my last blog, life has taken me on a detour and I am going down a road that is not totally unfamiliar to me but has become a little more winding.  At times, I just want to jump out and go home but that can't be.  

I do not know if I will write again on Blogger but maybe I will be able to pop in every now and then.  My computer  problems continue and besides not being able to comment most of the time, there are some blogs that I cannot read because of the font.  Oh how I wish Old Blogger had never changed, but all things do, don't they? 

I want to thank so many of the kind and wonderful people I have met in my ten years on this site.  I don't have the words to tell  you how much you have meant to me and how your comments have truly lifted me up and made me feel like I mattered.  We come from different places with different lives but yet, we all share being human, with feelings of joy, sorrow, pain, and gladness, and oh, how we all love to laugh.  I have been enriched because of all you shared with me.

Some years ago, the lovely Susan of  “The Contemplative Cat”, started a photo prompt meme and asked people to send in pictures for them and others to write a story.   It was a fun exercise and I did enjoy participating in it.  I wrote the following and it is somewhat autobiographical. It is the one I want to leave with you.  Like all that is grown and all that is born, every life force that enters  into this world has a chance to show their magnificence.  We have our time in the sun and time to spread our seeds and gifts and if we tend it well, our legacy will be here forever. 

The Gardener

She lived at the end of our road in a small, neat, white clapboard house.  I used to pass her by as I went for my walk in the morning and I would see her again at night when I took Kerry, our dog, for his evening constitutional.  She was always working in her garden.  She was a lady up in her years and dressed in a big brimmed purple hat, a blue dress with a green apron and big yellow rubber shoes.  She was a staple in the neighborhood, but I never knew her name.  We always just called her "The Gardener".  Once or twice  a year I did stop to talk and tell her how I admired her plantings.  She would always say, "Thank you, but I can't seem to get it just right this year."  She seldom looked up and I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or herself.   Her yard was lovely and and there was always something new to see.  I wish, I had taken the time to speak with her longer, but we all live busy lives and other than say hello, I went about my business and she with hers.

The lady has been gone for a few years now and the new owners have done away with most of her gardens.  As I passed her home the other day, there, in a crack in the pavement, lay the daintiest of plants clinging to life among the weeds that were also choking to get out.  I thought of leaning down and trying to pull it out, but then I thought of her, and it occurred to me that this might have been a seed from one of her flowers that had fallen between the sidewalk and laid dormant until now.  I smiled, said hello, and walked on thinking that "The Gardener", in a way, was still there.

I wish you all beautiful days and please take time to smell the roses.