Years ago, I had a friend whose “tagline” so to speak, was “I’m rootin’ for you!” He said it all of the time, and he said it to everyone. He himself had overcome huge obstacles in his own life, and he was delighted to help others overcome their own troubles and concerns. When I saw this fun picture on Twitter this morning, I immediately thought of this kind, wise man.
What a beautiful thing to be a cheerleader for people, and a cheerleader for their hopes and for their dreams. What a wonderful visual of the darling daisy happily blooming, with her strong happy roots beneath her. When we are rooting for someone, I always envision yelling and cheering and hoping and praying for their victories in life, but before seeing this picture, I never thought of rooting, in terms of physical “roots”. Physical roots gather sustenance for plants, in order for them to be nourished and to thrive, and physical roots anchor plants, to keep them firmly planted in the ground, in order to help the plants stay grounded, in times of vicious winds and storms. This is the first time which I realize that “rooting for someone” is so much more than shaking some pom-poms. Rooting for people is helping to create the ever spreading, energic foundation, for their own success and happiness in their lives. It helps ensure that they will always bloom again, even in times when they have been taken down to their very bottom levels. How blessed we are to have the ability to root for people. How blessed we are to have people out there, rooting for us. Readers, know this always: “I’m rootin’ for you!” The more we root for people, the more beautiful our collective garden grows. How blessed we are . . . .
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The first time I saw a bougainvillea flowering bush, I was visiting Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. My husband had just finished a grueling MBA program, which he worked on obtaining, at night, for three years, after working all day at his regular job. We were celebrating his graduation, and our growing family. We had our two-year-old son with us, and I was very pregnant with our second son. Our eldest son has curly, red hair and the older Mexican women were convinced that his rare hair meant good luck. They made a point of coming over to us to pat his head for the transfer of good luck, wherever we went – the beach, the stores, the restaurants, the pool, the bus. My son loved the attention, and we found it amusing and endearing. I’ll never forget it.
Back to the bougainvillea – I became as entranced with the plant, as the women were with my son’s silky red curls. The bougainvillea was everywhere I looked. It was so robust and beautiful and apologetically flowing. I had never seen such a bright, vibrant, cascading waterfall of flowers. I honestly fell in love with a plant, for the first time in my life.
Now I grew up in Pennsylvania, and that is where we were living at the time. We had a townhouse with a large window on the second floor, directly above our front door. Despite the fact, that Pennsylvania does not at all have a climate that suits a bougainvillea, I decided, against all odds, that we would have one. I found a lovely wrought iron window box and somehow, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I was able to obtain a small, hopeful twig of a bougainvillea plant. I proudly planted it, in that showy window box, as an homage to all of the gorgeous window boxes, filled with bougainvilleas, everywhere I looked in Mexico. I couldn’t wait for the window box to overflow with flowers.
My bougainvillea plant did okay. It half-heartedly made it through the summer, with a couple of sparse blooms. It tried its best. The bougainvillea inherently knew that it’s a naturally, hardy plant, so it soldiered on, but honestly, the plant just wasn’t “at home”, at all, in the northern state. It’s a tropical plant. Before the first snow, the bougainvillea was nothing more than a few leafless sticks, sitting like a plant cemetery, unwelcomingly on top of our front door. Here was another lesson in life, learned by me, the hard way.
In retrospect, this was one of the many times in my life, when I didn’t let what was coming to me, come at its own accord, and in its own divine timing. I impatiently tried to push my own agenda, before it was time. It’s a lesson in which I have had to repeat again and again and again, many, many times in my life. It sometimes seems impossible for me, to learn to surrender to the higher forces in my life. I am still trying to learn to trust that what is meant for me, will arrive for me, when the timing is right, and it will be even more wonderful than I ever imagined. (I should trust this fact. It has been proven to me, again and again and again.) If I am honest with myself, at the ripe old age of 50, I am still learning to trust the process of Life. I am still learning to trust God/Universe to provide for me in all of the ways in which I have imagined. The Higher Forces do so much better for me, than I do for myself, but alas, I’m a stubborn fool (again and again and again).
Today, we live in Florida. When we purchased our home, one of the first things we did, was to go to the local nursery, which is filled with inexpensive, overpowering, over-flowering bougainvilleas. Bougainvilleas are so common here, that I think that some people may consider them to be giant, overbearing weeds. We purchased two small potted bougainvilleas, and we planted them on either side of an arch, which leads to our front door. In less than a year, the two small potted plants, furiously grew and came together at the top of the arch, becoming one with each other. The plant has flourished ever since. Our bougainvillea is so healthy and happy, that it has survived over-zealous tree trimmers, being split in two during a hurricane, and being roughly pushed around by painters and plaster repair people. In fact, we have to give our gorgeous bougainvillea “a haircut” more often than we get our own haircuts. This plant is the bougainvillea that I always dreamed about since the minute I laid eyes on bougainvilleas in Mexico. It is perfect. I knew that I would have this beautiful bougainvillea to gaze upon whenever I need a shot of inspirational vigor and exuberance. I just had to wait for my bougainvillea to arrive in the perfect way, at the perfect time, just as my deepest self knew that it always would. When will I learn?
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning, soul mates. My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry at Adulting – Second Half. On Sundays, I either write a poem or I share a poem written by another poet. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Shakespeare’s a poet, and doesn’t know it”? To me, this phrase means that when you speak or write from the heart, in your own unique voice, you are creating poetry, often without even realizing it. You are a poet. Let the words flow on to the page, and read them to yourself. I think that you will be amazed. Please feel free and comfortable, to share the poems that you write, here in my Comments section. It is generous and brave to share what is written and transcribed from your heart. Here’s my poem for today:
Bromeliad
I purchased you for a few dollars, a little pink plant, in a little pink pot.
“Support Breast Cancer Awareness” the courageous sign read, and I thought,
“Yes, that feels right.”
I thought that they chose you, for your lovely color, to match their ribbon of pink.
But now I realize, like so many other times, I was wrong with what I think.
This is what I now know, from the deepest depths of my soul:
You were chosen for your health, vitality, fertility, resilience, strength and hope.
I can’t keep you down, my little pink plant, in a little pink pot.
You refuse to look away from the sun, you decline to rot.
Instead, you multiply.
You reach new heights.
You continue to grow, no matter where you are planted.
You are beautiful.
You are ALIVE.
You are health, vitality, fertility, resilience, strength and hope.
Thank you for being such a vital member of my garden’s colorful shower.
Your lessons are as lovely as your grand, bursting, bold, pink flower.
This must be a very musically inclined day for birthdays. Apparently Don Henley and Selena Gomez share today, as a birthday. What a wonderful day!
My husband and I both have farming in our heritage and in our roots. My husband’s farming inclination comes out, mainly in how lovingly and earnestly he cares for our plants, even all of the ones that I buy on impulse because they are just “so pretty,” or “so cool” or “so weird.” (Ask me about my love affair with my Corpse Flower plant, sometime.) The other day my husband told me that he had planted pepper seeds, and he asked me to please be careful when weeding the back bed, as the peppers were planted back there. My husband had planted the pepper seeds in the way, way back bed, at the very end of our property, in our back yard. I looked at him and I started giggling.
“Are you seriously worried about me weeding?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, every once in a while, I look outside and then I look twice and I rub my eyes, and I go, oh wow, is she actually picking weeds?!” my husband replied.
It’s true. On very, very rare occasions, I feel the inclination to find some instant gratification and while taking the dogs outside, I might pick weeds for maybe seven minutes, tops. So in theory, my husband was right, while the odds aren’t great, it could happen. The warning was well thought out. The problem is though, when I weed, it is never a well-thought out endeavor. Weeding, for me, is more of an impulsive way to deal with my jitteriness or boredom or anxiety, when taking the dogs out. Weeding is never something that I actually plan to do, or even think about doing, while I am doing it. It kind of just happens, like poking at a scab or picking at a blemish. (Despite living with the coronavirus threat for several months now, I still touch my face WAY TOO MUCH.) Even when it is a subconscious impulse, me actually doing some weeding, is such a rare occurrence that I fully expect and plan on us, having some fresh, lovely, organic peppers for our salads, very soon. I do love my husband’s faith in my better inclinations, however. In these times of so much togetherness mixed with a great deal of unknowns and stress, it really is good to focus on the bright sides of our chosen partners in life. (even focusing on the bright sides that remain relatively dim, most of the time)
We have a little narrow flower bed in our back yard that is sort of a hodge podge of plants that didn’t do well in the front of our house, or in other more notable flower beds and planters around our house. We plant these failing, limp little greenies in this back bed, by a small lake, in hopes that they get revived. We got the idea from our local Home Depot store. They have a flower bed in an otherwise hot and cracked and ugly parking lot, that is filled with plants that didn’t sell. And honestly, both of these flower beds are among the prettiest groupings of plants and flowers that I have ever seen, other than in fanciful, public, well-tended botanical gardens. The flowers in our back bed and in the Home Depot leftovers bed, thrive and bloom and burst with all different colors and shapes and sizes. They aren’t particularly planned out arrangements, but the mixture of all of them, reaching to the sky and showing off their blooms and green finery, is stunning. The plants scream “I’m Happy!” Invariably, the plants and flowers which we put into our back bed, thrive better than any other plants that we care for, inside and outside of our home.
It struck me the other day, that through this whole coronavirus situation, a lot of us have been thrown to “the back beds” of our lives. But the interesting thing is, I would be willing to bet that we all have gotten a few “happy surprises” and insights about ourselves and our lives. We might find that there are some aspects of being in the back bed that have really helped us to truly thrive, maybe even in some ways, better than ever. In my own family, my husband has worked from our home, instead of an outside office, for the first time in his thirty years of working on his career. And he likes it. My mentees have mentioned that online learning works better for them and they feel like they are learning more, without distractions. Friends and family have all noted that the less rushed pace and the no longer filled up calendar pages, have really helped with catching up on much needed rest and contemplation. We all seem to hope to keep more open space in our lives, even after this virus situation corrects itself. I have found myself rediscovering some very comforting corners of my own house, with pretty views that I never took the time to notice before. My husband and I are in the beginning stages of contemplation of what and where our empty nest should look like, once our daughter goes to college in a couple of years, and this virus situation has really helped narrow the field. Despite sometimes being intrigued to try city living (we’ve always been suburbanites), we realized, through this situation, that it is an abundance of nature which really soothes our souls. A big city is no longer a draw for us, in retirement. In fact, we’ve even been tossing around the idea of a more rural way of life.
Most of the plants which we attempt to heal and to revive, in our back flower bed, come back with a flourish. Sometimes we do end up re-planting the renewed bloomers back in other parts of our yard, but many of the once withering plants, end up staying in place, in the back bed by the lake where they were restored. They stay where they were healed. They bloom where they are planted. And their beautiful rejuvenation is a glorious sight to behold!
