Even After the Bloom . . .

Living gratefully today, I appreciate the vulnerability and trust it takes to share honestly from one's heart. I have been both the speaker and the listener from this tenuous and beautiful place.  

Blooming flowers strike me as both beautiful and tenuous as well. I have been noticing them more this week. At midsummer, various things are happening. Bursting forth with glorious color. Attracting bees, butterflies, hummingbirds. Calling our attention visually and with rich scents. Some last mere hours or days, others for weeks. Some bloom once a year, others less, and some more often. 

I have often referred to myself as a late bloomer, in loving fashion. But that wasn't always how I felt. I carried plenty of doubt, impatience, and fear about many things. I lamented what may never happen in my life. Along the way, I missed some of the blooming already happening. 

It seems I am also a slow learner. That used to be one of the ways I would judge myself. How many times do you need to feel that pain before you figure it out? How many times will you try before you give up? You know better than that you dumb***! Have some willpower would you!? 

Thank goodness flowers don't talk to themselves like that. And I do it far less often to myself too.

In my observations this week, I was really struck by what I noticed on some of our clematis vines, post bloom:

There may be less color here, but there's also a graceful beauty that the blossoms couldn't pull off. Wow! 

It inspired this little poem, with which I will close: 

Is a flower past its prime

when it looks like this 

after blooming time? 

I don't think so! 

And neither are we . . . 

Lisa Valentine