Grow Some Optimism

Grow Some Optimism

I went to post this picture on my Instagram account and when I tried to describe it I just couldn't. It is just hard to verbalize a feeling sometimes I guess. I've never been depressed... I don't think, but having experienced life altering gut-wrenching grief, I know what it is like to have very little of this feeling. It's not joy or happiness... or even hope really. It's not moving on or starting over, it's more just that sense of excitement you get from having a clean slate. The possibility of the future, being able to see a light that was once so dim you thought it was out.

Planting a garden, in my case this second garden for the year, is kind of like watching tv. I love sitting down to one of my favorite movies that I can recite most every line (usually an 80's movie). I know how I'm going to feel at the end of it, because I've watched it so many times before. I love being able to control that predictable safe feeling. It's also fun to try something new and get so sucked in that you know you aren't getting out from underneath that weighted blanket for the night. Then there are those shows you try to watch because everyone else is, and just can't seem to love or even like. I'm just never going to be a Keeping Up with the Kardashians kind of girl, trash tv just rarely does it for me.

That's pretty much how I will handle filling up these fresh four rows of dirt. I will extend my herb garden, because I know I'm going to love it. I haven't met an herb I don't love. Feverfew, costmary, lavender grosso, meet your new home. Charleston Gray Watermelon...let's give this a shot. Will you be my next favorite heirloom watermelon variety?! Not knowing is just part of this fun adventure on my blank slate. Peas, let's just go ahead and do this. I'll put you in the ground and then curse your wilted little vines.... but we will try again.

Just as I'm writing this I got a text from a friend who just went and cleaned up a flower bed in the memorial garden his grandfather started. He planted fresh new flowers where he will soon spread his mother's ashes. It doesn't get much harder than that. I hope for one small moment he felt that therapeutic.... oh what can this word be..... sense that you get from planting something new. Sitting back and looking at your accomplishment of starting new life. Making something beautiful out of dirt. After all, we will one day be dirt too. Making someone else see and feel that same beauty. Just a simple pleasure in life. But it's these simple small things that are the real things.

At the end of your life, the end of your spouse's life, you don't think about that big raise at work, or your GPA that one year. It's the simple small gestures and small character traits that can have such a big impact on those people in your life. We don't have a lot of time here.... find your four rows of dirt.