Focus

I have been a bit of a Scrooge the last few days: grumpy and stingy with my heart. It is not a place I like. It is absolutely not the energy I ever want in Realisa. It is not that this is a mock creation, a fabrication, an illusion or disingenuous. Quite the contrary. This space is a conscious and deliberate testament to the power of optimism. Thinking positive is potent and provocative. And it has changed me in a way that makes me happier and healthier. But some days, I stumble. So, I have made a practiced effort of being still and waiting for something positive to present itself. Often, the encouragement comes beside something equally frustrating of annoying. I am given a choice: stay annoyed by the irksome situation from work or permit myself to be open to this other less “important”, seemingly superfluous discovery. It is a choice, that wondrous free will. I can stay captive to that which chafes at my sensibilities or NOT. I chose not.

I was reading Tea & Cookies and was happy thinking about her raspberry bushes. It made me think of my blackberry bushes.

It made me forlorn, thinking about all of my lost gardens. All the years I planted and transplanted. The monkey grass I dug and moved and split and weeded. The lace cap hydrangeas cut from the neighbor’s yard in Charleston. The sweet shrub and my Granny’s heirloom climbing  rose and my walking irises. And so many more things. But then I thought about my future garden and my yard. I already bought my first tree: a Japanese purple leaf maple. The nursery is holding it for me. I cannot convince anyone how completely pre-formed my house AND yard are in my mind. They already exist. I have walked and drawn and plotted this land. I will have a bountiful yard filled with fruiting trees and blooming gardens filled with fragrance and color. I will have fresh cut flowers for my table, fruit to preserve, herbs for cooking and habitat for lots of critters. I have already seen the “fox squirrels” and made my sister quite jealous.

And life, with all its crap, can make us fixate on the thorns and the snakes and the heat and miss the blackberries. But, it we persevere, if we just be patient and have faith, we can end up with a bowl of berries and a few jars of jam.

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