Keep it simple

PHOTOS: Below are actual flowers from my garden. The yellow ones I call Long Stemmed Yellow Flower. The pink ones I call Pretty Pink Flower, and the last one I think is a daisy. If it isn't, I call it White Pedals w/Yellow Nose Flower.

THE LULU CHRONICLES

LuLu-ism #31: Don’t eat one M&M when you can eat two. Never miss an opportunity to hug someone you love. And, never, ever turn down an invitation to lie on a blanket late at night and look at the stars.

Last Friday LuLu and I were pedaling around our block when I begin to notice that just about all of my neighbors had begun putting their flower gardens to bed. It’s fall in Wisconsin and that’s what a gardener in good standing does. You know what that means, right? It's cutting your flowers back, fertilizing, replanting, separating your bulbs, stuff like that. Well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, put my flowers to bed. It all depends on how lazy I get or how cold it gets before I get around to it. If I don’t get to it, I tell myself the birds who don’t fly south will have a treat eating little seeds and twigs I graciously left for them.

I'm here to admit that I’m an accidental gardener. I piddle in the garden, but nothing is on purpose. I don’t read gardening books. I can name a few varieties of flowers but I can’t tell you how best to care for them. I sort of let the flowers themselves teach me what they want. Kind of like babies do with their parents. They whine to let them know if they have poo-poo in their pants, or want to be fed, or want to be held. Same with flowers. Waaa, I need water! Waaa, I need more sun Waaa I need less sun! Waaa, pull these weeds you fool!

I’m not proud of the fact that my flowerbeds look so pitiful sometimes. However, apparently I’m not totally embarrassed by it, because here I am sixty–years-old and still can’t tell a mum from an aster, or a hydrangea from a whatever and it doesn’t seem to bother me.

I guess I’ve approached biking that way as well. I was clueless when it came to knowing what I was looking for when it came to buying a bike. I knew I wanted a pink one, a fat seat, fat tires and handlebars that didn’t make me hunch over. That’s about it. I found LuLu. I didn’t do so badly.

Sometimes we make things so complicated. I’m not suggesting we just walk around bumping into walls and ignorant about life. But I’m here to tell you that life simply doesn’t have to be that complicated most of the time whether we're talking flowers, bikes or just living life. Here’s a guide I use sometimes when I get flustered: Jesus first. Others next. Yourself last. Pretty simple, huh? Try it for a week or two and see…

JOY.

Later,

deb