Don’t Let It Stop You From Blooming

From my “What I Learned About Life and God While Playing in the Garden” series.

You’re going to get stepped on. Don’t let it stop you from blooming.

I have a butterfly garden in my backyard. I’ve been working on it for over a decade now and it’s a source of great fun and joy in my life. I have three dogs that are also a source of great fun and joy in my life, and they, like me, like to play in the butterfly garden. Their playing doesn’t always coincide with how I’d like things to go out in my garden – they like to dig, they like to play chase around the sometimes delicate plants, and my Vizsla, Jane, likes to chase lizards. She is a great lizard hunter. Here’s Jane, the great lizard hunter:

I enjoy watching the dogs play in the garden, and get a lot of laughs from watching their antics. They get to play and I get to play and I get to enjoy watching them play (I get the best deal of all.)

I learn lessons about Life in my garden, they are there if I can be open to see them. I have a nectar plant called a green-eyed daisy that grows tall and blooms beautiful, yellow, daisy-like flowers that the bees and butterflies love. When spring comes, new shoots start to shoot up, straight up. This year, one day when new shoots had started to grow, I went out to the garden and saw one of those precious shoots sticking out horizontally rather than vertically. Earlier that day there had been some particularly good lizard hunting going on, as well as a game of chase between my Vizsla and my Chihuahua (lots of lessons to be learned in that unlikely pairing.) I was sad to see this new stalk had been hurt and happy that it didn’t appear to dead, severed or permanently impaired. Just stepped on in a moment, without intent, with only play. And now headed in a new direction. So I decided to let it grow and see how it would do. I am happy to report it is doing just fine:

We all get stepped on, most often inadvertently and without any negative intent, just like happened in my garden. Something said that hurts our feelings, something not said that we wish would have been, words come by that hurt us. Like this flower, let it hurt for the brief moment that it needs to, then let it go, go about your business of growing and blooming. Don’t let it stop you from blooming. Come to think of it, don’t let anything stop you from blooming.