Hello. Welcome to my monthly blog post and a brand new peony.
This is the first bloom of a new self-starting peony which appeared in my yard a couple of years ago, slowly growing every spring, disappearing in the heat of late summer, and slowly growing. I have a couple of peonies in places where I never intended them, but they seem so happy in their chosen abodes that I have been loathe to move them.
I think there is a lesson in that.
Just as I think there is a lesson in the way this spring has worked out for me, my general sense of overwhelm, my ongoing tiredness, and ongoing struggles in terms of decisions about who it is I want to be in this moment of my life. I know that sounds strange for a woman who is 65 going on 66, but it seems to me that life is not so much a smooth line but a series of chasms and summits, opportunities for growth or for stasis. I've always been a person who embraces change and yet who also struggles with that very change. The struggle part is not unusual. I, like most of the people I know, embrace comfort, embrace familiarity. And yet I think that change is equally a part of what it means to be human. I am changing. And as I change I become more the person I have always been.
I can't write about what that means yet. I'm too much in the middle of the process.
I can only leave you with another flower. The first of the irises. More will follow.
I too will return.