I should be planting things. Instead I'm dismantling and digging things up before the community garden deadline. It seems so counterproductive, but all in do time as they say and they are usually right.
It was a really bad growing year. The Memorial Day frost was a killer...literally. Then it rained the entire month of June. I remember sending my kids off with a bucket to play in while I got down on my hands and knees, and tried to dig trenches in the muck. I failed. In July, the weeds started taking over and by the middle of August I let them.
It reminds me that you can plan the heck out of something and still come away empty handed. Expect nothing, appreciate everything.
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” - Gilda Radner
In the unexpected I look for the lessons. Like uncertainty, the lessons are always there.
I started off yesterday morning on my computer looking for photo editing software and after the process of "think this, click that, etc...repeat", I found my way to the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. I looked at their events calendar and noticed they were holding a sustainable farm tour and workshop at a farm about a half an hour away from me and...
"It's today. I can't believe it. It's today!" Hello serendipity.
It was a great experience. I walked around with dirt in my shoes and the sun on my face, in full appreciation of both and all of the stuff that goes on in between. I took good notes. I left feeling empowered. I'm really finding the absolute truth in...once you declare a path for yourself the windows of opportunity start opening up...all part of the beautiful unexpected.
I went to the local thrift store the other day and found a small stack of those cardboard masterpieces. One of them, a vase full of flowers, caught my eye. "You have some paint by number looking pictures out in the garage. How much are they?"
"A dollar," the owner said. "I'm trying to clear some things out of here."
I thought my vase full of flowers worthy of a dollar, so I got it and brought it back to the register. "Where are the rest of them?" she asked. "I want you to take the whole stack."
"For a dollar?"
"Yes!"
Well, alrighty then and I did. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I know they won't go to waste.
It reminds me that you can plan the heck out of something, plan for a certain outcome and then somehow walk away with more than you bargained for.
Delicious ambiguity sure is delicious.
