Five Minute Friday: Grow

Today I'm linking up to Lisa-Jo aka the gypsy mama, who chooses a topic every Friday and writes for five minutes. 
Only five minutes
And the rule is that whatever you write about in that five minutes is what you posts. No editing your thoughts. Today, her topic choice is "Grow....."
Ready. Set. Go......

This year was a very hard year on my gardens. The oppressed heat that lasted all summer long did nothing but take its toll on my vegetable and flower gardens. Early on, my vegetable garden faded away, and became nothing, choked out by the heat. My flower gardens held on for the most part, many plants did not grow at all. They stayed small, and never bloomed all summer. I counted it a complete loss, but left what plants were trying to thrive in the heat in place and just sorta chalked it up as a bad year. The extreme heat will do that....strain everything.....causing many things to go dormant.

Fast forward to the fall and we have had very pleasant cool fall days. Funny thing happened when things started cooling off. Those flowers that were all but written off during the summer did something spectacular. The not only began to bloom, but to grow into the beautiful plants I yearned for during the summer months. With a little love and attention, they have been a real show stopper for me this fall. They grew when I did not have the faith that they would. The vegetable garden however, never came back to life no matter how much time and energy I gave it. The growth ended much too early but then it is like that with other aspects of life as well.

Many times, relationships are the same way. The are formed, and started and seem to work and grow at first. But then the unexpected happens, much like with the oppressed heat, and they start to sit idle and struggle to just be alive. Many times they appear to be dead at first glance. But somewhere, deep inside there is a glimmer of what used to be and the desire to grow into maybe not the same but a new relationship forms. Many times the new relationship far exceeds any expectations one might have had in the first place. It is not easy to achieve this growth, it takes work, it takes time devoted to each other. It also takes communication and a willingness to allow one another a space in your garden of life. It takes willingness to not let that person go away and shrivel up again and out of your life.

Likewise, like the vegetable garden, there are times when nothing you do, or say, or wish is enough to revive a relationship you thought was lost. Growth happened at the beginning but for what ever reason it did not survive the times of drought and heat. It was not meant to be. And when that happens, it is time to look ahead and concentrate on the new season of growth that is in front of you. Don't grieve for the crop that was lost, but concentrate and be optimistic on the growth that will come during the next season of your life. How we grow individually is what effects how we all grow together after all.
.Stop.