A Cheery Perspective

I spent most of my day cleaning at the old place. After I have washed walls and cleared the house of everything it never fails to make me wish that I could just move back in and start new in the old place. Never mind that all my stuff is at the new place - strewn hither and yon. Order will come together there but not yet. As I washed walls today I thanked God for the years of healing that had happened in that house. We moved there five years ago in the midst of my recovery from a nervous breakdown. There is a beautiful view from the livingroom and kitchen - a healing view of a valley and on some sunset evenings, on the distant horizon, I could make out the outline of a mountain. I now live down the hill from that view and look up to small hills covered with trees or tilled fields - a different view but a beautiful one too. Seems like that is what life is like - we all need to take a different view now and then. To see the same scenery from a different perspective. I am coming to appreciate it.

I came home muscle sore and weary to walk in the garden. Several hundred, if not five hundred(I kid you not) violets with their cheery faces greeted me like long lost friends. Just before this move fell into place I bought myself a tea set that had violets on it. The violets in the garden always have their faces towards the south. I stand there and just grin back at their cheery faces. Some days I stand behind them and see what they see. Differing perspectives are healing too.

Yesterday I spent most of the day pulling weeds in the flower garden. Ten wheelbarrow loads later it looked much better.(The boys hauled the weeds away - no way I could pull weeds AND push wheelbarrows!) The soil was so damp from an inch of rain earlier in the week that the grass and dandelions pulled up with little effort. I sat on a stool in the garden knowing I would pay big time physically for working so hard but at the same time I was doing something I love in a healing surrounding. Later it took pain killers to move me from supper table to couch but it was so worth it. Flowers have always been a healing thing for me. Nourishing to my soul. My grandparents had flowers galore and their home was a haven for me as a child. A safe place in my otherwise unstable life. Tea at 10 and 3 - flowers and birds and tidbits of their day often the topic of conversation. My grandma had evening scented stocks in her flower garden one year and every year for more than I can remember I have planted a package of these flowers in memory of her.

These past two years I haven't been able to do much with flowers. I told my husband earlier this spring that if all I could manage this summer was to putter in my flowers - if it took up all my spoons every day - that it would be worth it because I need to be doing something that nourishes my soul.

The summer I had my nervous breakdown I let every last one of my flowers die. I have come to know since then that when I let the plants die around me that something is dying inside me too. After my breakdown one of my close friends told me she knew something was seriously wrong when I let my flowers die. Despite my physical limitations I am thrilled this year the urge to putter in my flowers is so strong. It is a good, good thing.