Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned that I’m a bit of a gardener. Yep. A hobby I fell into many years ago and purely by accident.
And I would love to tell a tale of how the wonders of nature coloured me dumbstruck with awe one dewy morning. Or, how seeing my sister turn her once ordinary London backyard into something worthy of Chelsea Flower Show saw me, once a City girl, running back to the bucolic life inspired and motivated.
Except I can’t.
Enter Exhibit A:
This was a plant on its way to its maker, except I never quite got around to moving it from on top of the radiator (I know, I know) to the compost bin. And when I say compost bin, I of course mean the ordinary rubbish bin. But then in a mad half-hour one Saturday morning, I had tidied the life out of every room in the house and was lastly sweeping up the residue of ‘jobs not yet done’. My dead plant fell firmly into that category.
Except I couldn’t find it.
In it’s place some git had replaced my dead plant with this:
Some super efficient Stepford Wife type had unceremoniously turfed out my dead plant, concurrently showing me up royally for the tardy housewife they no doubt thought me.
Except they hadn’t.
Ugly Duckling-like this was my Dead Plant. And, as I didn’t know then, it is called an Amaryllis. One of those plants that die down to nothing every year. A plant which is neglected, not watered, not loved. And every year it repays that unkindness with surviving to come back another year to motivate and inspire me.
Except, this time, I knew it couldn’t.
Not after everything that has happened.
Except I woke up this morning to this, the beginning of a shoot on my dead plant:
And the next words I thought I would write here would be that I didn’t feel moved. Didn’t feel inspired. Didn’t feel motivated.
Except I can’t.
Melinda
A post dedicated to all those feeling lost or loss and which has its root’s in Mocha Beanie Mummy’s Silent Sunday Series.
I can also be found writing on The Gift of Words Blog, here.
