My Garden

    My grandmother had Hydrangea plants and I think of her every year when mine are blooming.  She was a hard working woman who loved to garden and produced flowers, figs, tomatoes and berries in her little backyard.  I remember she would pay my brother and me twenty-five cents to find and pick out tomato worms from her plants.   Those horns on the worms grossed me out, so my brother earned more cash than I did with that proposition.

Now I find peace and contentment in my own little backyard.  It’s small and simple and I creatively change it a little each year, adding birdhouses, new plants, or some treasured found object.  The lawn is a little worse for wear due to our sweet little terrier but it’s worth the price having her around.    Is my yard just an extension or representation of my life?  I do creatively change my own life a little each year, adding new things, thinning out the old, and enjoying each season and the change it brings.  Sometimes there is more mud and weeds than I’d like, but as I keep working on it, my life and my yard continue to bloom and grow.  Here’s to many more seasons of growth.

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.  –Alfred Austin

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.  — Helen Hayes

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.  –May Sarton

Gail Brokaw, MA, CC 
Certified Life Coach
http://www.embracethepossibility.org