102 Petals

There must be something Karmic going on with me this week. I tried to start this rant and the modem fried. I started it again a couple days later and wound up working some long hours, got too tired and gave up. So here I am, tired, battered, hoping the new modem is good and listening to the rain.

I am just like the rest of you, appreciating the bursts of yellow, pink and white that are scattered around. I am loving the green that is pushing its way out of the drab, gray background. Most of you know that I am red-green color blind, but I CAN see the riots of color...How could you NOT? The sun-bright forsythia always catches my eye as I am out and about and of course, the flowers that are popping up everywhere. Pink and white magnolia, cherry and white apple blossoms abound. Nature is almost rebelling after the long winter. The color, whether green or gold, pink or white is such a relief after enduring a good old-fashioned winter shellacking. It's so easy to forget that those kind of winters were more often the norm than the exception.

The first sun-exploded shrub that I came across held me for a long pause. Probably longer than I should have been staring at it, considering I was in my vehicle, sitting still at the end of someone's driveway. On the main road. In traffic. I often ponder at the simplest things, wondering the why's and what's of them. This particular instance found me contemplating deep, philosophical meanings of how people were like this plant. How we so much NEED to be like this plant. Yeah, I know. - "It's a plant, dummy."

We start life basically the same, being a union of two parts, fertilized with the hope of propagating the species, although the majority of humans also factor love into the equation. We grow and eventually emerge from the womb, just as the plant emerges from the ground and as long as luck is on our side and we have a little protection, food and water, we grow. Eventually, when we get big enough, we blossom. We develop complex offshoots and open ourselves to the world, showing our true colors. Some of the people and plants grow strong, robust, beautiful inside and out. Some remain stunted with only a modicum of beauty, although it is STILL beauty and a few grow out only to become blighted. Just like a plant, if we care for and nurture the blighted plants, they can become what their potential is: a healthy, beautiful plant, shining to the world, bringing beauty and function to our little corner of the world. A sad fact of life is that some blighted plants are not saveable, are not meant to be healthy, only to die. They are a stain in a sea of beauty, they infect the plants around them, often. They will do nothing more than be a host to rot and decay.

Fortunately, nature usually weeds out the bad, rewarding the healthy beauty and productive members with long life, growth and most times, healthy offspring.

So, just like the beautiful, healthy forsythia I was staring at, we emerged from the stillness of winter. We have begun to stretch our limbs and bring forth our colors. We are priming ourselves for the fullness of the warm season, drinking deep of the now-flowing earth, reaching toward the warmth of the lengthening day. We relish the sun, abhor the night and strive to fill the earth with our own brand of color.

I know, seems too deep for a Friday. Well, tough. I've been away for a long time and I need to release some verbage.

So, I pulled away, still thinking about the damned forsythia. I realized the individual little petals all seemed perfect when taken as a whole, especially now, as they were new. Somewhere on the fringes, there are always a few that are whithering, a few that are frayed and not quite as bright as the rest. It's okay, though, they make the whole. They complete the overall effect. What does this tell us? I think, in a way, whether you like it or not, we need a little detriment. We need a little underdeveloped or some half-withered souls to balance all the good and the beauty. We need a bit of ailment and death to keep us grounded and remind us of our humanity, er, growing season.

As we go about this long-awaited, hard-earned growing season, maybe we need to be reminded to occasionally help tend our garden of 7 billion petals. Prune, feed, medicate or pluck, we should tend the forsaken, the stunted, the broken. We should anticipate the harvest of life that results from the well-kept whole. Take your moment in the sun, make it worthy of the life that is given and remember the beauty that can be had from a complete, healthy plant.

Oh, and just in case you forgot: warm weather means chicks in bikinis.(not the peep-peep kind, the AAOOOGAA, OOGA kind). Have a great weekend and dont drink too much--its bad for the roots.