Patience is a Virtue.....

"I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."
Thomas Edison, responding to a reporter who asked how it felt to fail 2000
times before successfully inventing the light bulb

Spring is almost here -- at least, it has felt like it these past few days. I have been thinking a lot about my garden. Every year I think, damn if I only had a couple thousand dollars I could do this and this and this to my garden. I look at pictures of gardens and garden design websites with almost the same devoutness that I reserve for health and fitness sites and blogs. Gardening just sort of sucks me in. I think perhaps it has something to do with the potential of it all. When I look out on my barren lawn, or at the flowers dormant in their beds, I think only of potential and hope. Of course, I want it now -- my perfect little piece of Eden replete with roses and peonies and lots of other little posies. Now, now, now! I want it to be spring! I want to plant some corn and veggies and harvest them tomorrow. I want to build those raised beds I've always dreamt about. I want the stone walkways in and the hot tub and deck shortly after.

I want I want I want.

And guess what kids, this is where the patience piece comes in. These things take time. Beauty takes time, gardens take time, changing your life takes time. Oh, and patience. Patience is about letting things develop as they will, not in the time frame you think they should happen. This is so true when you speak of gardens -- and even more true when you apply the idea to weight loss, fitness and health. I watched that stupid scale for weeks while my body stubbornly refused to cooperate with me and my efforts to de-flab. It didn't move until it was good and ready. Just like gardens don't become gardens until they are good and ready.

My garden fantasies reminded me that it is nice to have an image of perfection in your head, it is good to dream, it is good to plan. But you also have to have the patience to let things take their own course -- to bloom and grow and come into their own. Only with patience do amazing things happen. And before you know it, flowers are growing where there were none, plants are spilling out of their containers and your garden is that little piece of Eden you've always imagined.

And that's my two cents for the day.

FGS

ps. If you've noticed, I've been doing some changes to my blog -- things are still under construction so please pardon the dust! Heaps of thanks to PHIL for the cool new buttons and his advice on the artistic direction of this blog!