"I put the zinnia seed into the soil of several large clay pots last night, tired of waiting for even another day to pass before so doing. At lunch time yesterday, I called Mike and told him of my intentions and hoped that he wouldn't say "Too early Peggy". He didn't. So when I got home from school, I nestled those five packages of different varieties safely into the soil, gave them a drink of water, and covered them up with plastic to keep out the cold Colorado night. And now I wait, and wait, and wait. Around here, folks tend to rely on Horsefly Mountain to tell them when it's the right time to start planting things. They gaze up at it and when it is completely pretty much barren of snow, well then it's safe to put things out and into the ground. Just for the record, by the way, it's still snow covered in many spots."
You know friends, I've never been too good at this thing called "waiting" and pretty sure that when I die, my tombstone's epitaph will never read, "Here lies Peggy~She was patient." I'm much better at being impatient with life, preferring most often than not that I don't care to sit back and allow it to play out on its own. I guess I like to "meddle" with it too much or something. But geesch, those seeds had just been sitting in the box, taunting me to plant them for three days now. Last night the first round of gardening was about to happen. Time will tell whether or not I was too hasty in my planting and whether or not $12.97 worth of zinnia seed will either sprout or have gone to waste. I've thrown away that much money on things that were not nearly as fun as planting seeds so I think it will be ok, either way it works out.
It surely seems like winter went on forever in our part of the world and luckily we haven't experienced the kind of winter that many of our family and friends had in other parts of the country. But with the arrival of spring, now nearly a month ago, our mindset here is on moving forward into the warmth of the coming days and part of our enjoyment will be the chance to be outdoors gardening. While we were gone last week on vacation, our landlord plowed up our garden area for us. What a welcome sight that was to see as we pulled into the driveway at mid-day on Sunday. Last night while I was planting the zinnias, Mike cut up all the seed potatoes that I brought back from Smith's Market in Hutchinson when I made a trip to Kansas 3 weeks ago. Hopefully tomorrow evening we might be able to get out and put them into the rows, anticipating all the while the great taste that home grown vegetables provide us throughout the growing season. It just takes a little time, a little patience but once the job is complete it's worth the hard work that goes into it.
I learned a valuable lesson about being patient while we were staying with Mike's step-mom Maggie last week in California. Maggie is an accomplished artist and a creator of many wonderful works of art. One of the many beautiful things I noticed was a bowl filled with colorful origami balls. I admired the patterns and lovely colors of each of them and I became determined that I'd like to try and make one too. I asked Maggie if she thought that even I could make one of them and her reply was "of course!" So on the day before we left, both of us sat down at her kitchen table, origami sheets of paper in front of us with me being the "student" and Maggie the teacher.
You know, at first it really does look pretty dang simple. What's so hard about folding paper? You match up the corners here, you tuck in the corners there. Flip it over and do the same thing on the other side. Just follow the directions. The first five minutes looked like it would be a cinch to make one of those balls, a slice of that proverbial "piece of cake". It didn't take long to figure out that would not be the case. When it came time to join all six of our folded pieces together, with the hopes of it turning out in the spherical shape of a ball, both of us realized that something was dreadfully wrong. We backtracked, unfolding and refolding trying to find out where we had made our mistake. After 20 minutes of trying, we realized that it just wasn't going to happen. Somewhere after gluing step #3, we had messed up "big time". There was no hope to have a redo and we would end up with a set of 6 joined pieces that looked something like the letter "Z" gone bad.
Both of us were a little frustrated but Maggie assured me that sometimes things like that happen. You win some, you lose some as you do origami. Mike happened to walk into the kitchen about that time and he could tell by the look on my face that my career as a Japanese origami paper folding artist was not looking very successful and I told him that it was a good thing I didn't make my living doing this. He smiled and understood. Mike Renfro is very good at that understanding thing.
Just prior to having to discard the work that we had done, I noticed something. There seemed to be something hidden in the attempt that we had made and I asked Maggie if I could borrow something to cut it apart with. With scissors in hand, I carefully salvaged two pieces of it and after Maggie reglued them together for me, I had a nice souvenir to take back with me to remind that even if something appears totally hopeless, there will always be something good to take a way from even a bad experience. The result of what I found is shown below.
I hope to learn something new each day until the moment that I take my last breath. How about you?
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