Saturday, June 22, 2013

Turning Pages in the Garden

Each point in life is a page turning.  

I'm sure its visible in every neighborhood, but in our neighborhood here in the bosom of suburbia, its visible to me like a bright glaring beam of the moon on clear night.  Late May and June is the season of lots of pages turning.  

Graduations are the most visible things we see at this time of year.  We had two - a college and a high school.  Each of our sons have different journeys as do may in your own life.  Turn the page.

Caps and gowns and tassels turned to the other side.  And now what?  Each of those wonderful sons and daughters are heading toward roads of joy and sorry, love and disappointment, success and failure.  A whole lot more pages turning.  

June brides and smiling grooms by their sides.  Summer solstice and last days of school for the kids who aren't graduating.  People planning summer days at the beach or mountains, all writing new pages in the books of their lives.  

How does one interpret this in a wider lens?  We can't stop the pages from turning. They will turn, even if we aren't reading them.  So, maybe we have to learn to follow them.  

I am a gardener.  I plant both perennials and annuals.  Veggies and herbs.  The perennials come forth every spring.  The annuals need time and attention, and love as well, to get them going, to prepare the earth for them, and planting them.  And some times the page that turns is the gift of a friends caring support for you.  Like the loving friends who came and planted my veggies and flowers when I was busy turning the continuing pages on a story of an extended illness in our home, a page in a story not fully written but with numerous plot twists and turns, and, in a few more pages, a good chance at a happy ending.

So, some page turning is perennial, and others are gifts and surprises, sometimes bad, but often good.  And even the bad ones some times lead to many unexpected good ones.  Plot twists that we think are total disasters, are all that, but sometimes that disaster takes us to another page, another good, but different happy ending.   

Here is suburbia, we don't always care, or even know one another.  When the pages turn and things get rough, you realize you aren't turning pages alone.  You aren't alone in turning the pages and that makes the book of life so much more interesting.    Share your book with others and keep turning the pages.  It will be worth your time.