Deadheading

Hi my friends,

More and more I’m finding my seeing impaired friends (especially my father who has macular degeneration and glaucoma) are having more of a challenging time reading my posts so I want to try to give options when I can. I also truly enjoy when our friends like VJ from One Woman’s Quest add sound audio to their posts to give my eyes a break. I hope you enjoy my prose Deadheading.

Deadheading

Taking the garbage out while making my morning coffee, I noticed the last blooms on my roses that need deadheading. My first thought was “this isn’t my job as much as taking out the garbage isn’t but there’s no one that is coming to do it”, so I pause and get my clippers out. I’m a bit resentful because it’s cutting into my morning writing. The sun is peeking through and I want to beat the heat on my morning walk.

I notice the brown strands of bulbs spent and begin pulling those aware of just how much maintenance a garden takes to keep up. I want it to just be green and beautiful all the time with perky buds that give fragrance. I want the beauty but not the work in the same way of my graying hair on my head.

There’s nothing wrong with gray or so I say, and I hate the sitting and dye that is necessary to keep it up just as I’m not a fan deadheading my plants. And what if I did nothing then what? The brown strands in the plant would eventually push away and I would look like my grandmother with silver gray hair which was beautiful.

I get a prick from the thorn as my mind wanders off that draws blood which brings me to the moment where I’m just grateful that I can tend my garden and my inner and outer vessel and I don’t have to visit with a gardener and can just commune with nature.

I go to the mirror and look at my ever changing face and realize, I have only recently started to notice the craters that are supposed to give me character and I grimace and think “this is what it means to become middle aged” but those pricks from the thorn are nothing compared to the pricks that could prick my face and I smile relief and go back to deadheading my garden. I’m grateful for this moment as I pause and notice one last rose making its way out for the very last time this season and I pause.

I stop and smell the rose. The fragrance is the most beautiful scent along with its stunning color and I remember why I planted it in the first place, happy it needed some TLC and grateful it knew that I did too. I put on my shoes as the sun carries me over the horizon.