Soft touches and other changes

If you can learn from hard knocks, you can also learn from soft touches. Carolyn Kenmore 

I wrote a few weeks ago about my plants. How I've become 'the plant lady', that soft touch you send your lost and lonely, no longer part of your life greenery to in the hopes she'll give them a home.

And I do. Give plants a home, though C.C. tells me I'm at my limit. We've got enough greenery and not enough windows to give them light, he says. But I think I may have remedied that situation as my youngest daughter's boyfriend likes plants... so maybe I can share my greenery with him. Yeah Ryan!

Recently, while helping a friend who is moving to another city, he asked if I'd be willing to take on his plants. Give them a nice home, he asked.

Of course, I replied. And we packed them into three boxes, put them in the back of my car and I brought them home.

Which meant, I had to find more space, reorganize and shuffle the plants who'd already made their home in our home theirs.

In the process, I moved a begonia that I'd rescued from the home of a woman who had committed suicide two years ago (see The Plant Lady). Speaking gently to it as I carried it  from the kitchen window onto the desk in our bedroom I carefully placed it between two flowering African Violets and a lipstick plant that is just beginning to blossom. She looked happy and her lack of flowers was unnoticeable amidst the pink and purple and red around her. 

It only took a day for her to show her appreciation. For two years I have bemoaned the fact that she would not bloom. And there, the very next day, sitting in her new window, a tiny yellow blush of a flower began to appear. And it's still blossoming.

Sometimes, all it takes for change to happen is a change of scenery. 

Though, as my friend Dave said who gave me the new plants. Maybe she was just lonely. Maybe she's just happy to have friends.

I know I am. Happy to have friends. Friends don't deliver hard knocks. They always provide soft touches. Friends are the real plants of my world and I thank my friends for being here, for turning up, for being part of my journey.

You have all made a difference in my world -- which leads me to my conundrum. Writing two blogs a day is a lot (I think-- though it hasn't been that challenging yet). So, I'm thinking of changes. Of how I can still keep this blog pertinent and fresh while focusing on A Year of Making a Difference.

There are changes afoot. I just don't know what they are. And if you have ideas, suggestions, comments, I'm open to hearing them. I am looking for creative solutions on how to keep Recover Your Joy alive -- while giving energy to A Year of Making a Difference. 

Thanks everyone!