I would not call myself a gardener.
In my mind a gardener is a walking encyclopedia of plant knowledge.
To me a gardener knows how to prune, how to thin out, and how to separate plants.
A gardener knows the names of everything in the garden.

I am not that kind of gardener.
I know what pleases my eye.
I know the colors I like to see outside my windows.
I know nothing but general knowledge about the plants that give me the most pleasure.

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My husband and I are quite a pair.
He has bursitis in his shoulder.
I have tennis elbow.
Each of our injuries happened for a reason.

My husband took a trip to Nicaragua back in February.
He went there to build homes with the Fuller Center for Housing.
He takes a trip like this every year and is usually gone for two weeks.
On this trip, he lifted many large bags of concrete.

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I gave a gift to a young man that will be entering middle school in the fall.
He is leaving the fifth grade and embarking on the next phase of his journey.
He opened the note card I gave to him before he opened the gift.
It was written in my own hand and it was written in cursive writing.

After trying to read the card, he asked me to read it to him.
Perhaps the style of my handwriting made if difficult for him to read.
Perhaps he just wanted me to read the thoughts that I wrote especially for him.
We sat and read the card together.

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My hair is gray.
If I really wanted to be snobbish, I could say it is salt and pepper.
I could simply say that it has highlights of gray.
I could say it frames my face.

I could say all I want to soften the inevitable, but my hair is gray.
I have had people ask me in a store where I get my hair highlighted.
I should say, God.
I answer, it’s my natural color.

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I remember the day I went back to my elementary school.
I had been out of eighth grade for quite a few years.
I wanted to go back and visit some of my favorite teachers.
From the outside the building looked exactly the same.

Yet on the inside, the walls seemed as if they were closing in on me.
When did the hallways get so narrow?
When did the rooms shrink?
The bathrooms that were so far were only a stone’s throw away from my old classroom.

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If we didn’t have to be so grown-up all the time, we would play more.
We would color if given crayons.
We would play hopscotch if one was drawn on the sidewalk.
We would roller skate down the street jumping over all the cracks.

If we didn’t have adult responsibilities, we would dream more.
We would lay on the grass and see faces in the clouds.
We would climb up in a tree house and stay there until someone found us.
We would pull a friend in a wagon and go around the block.

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My oldest son is a lawyer.
He finished law school last year and passed the bar exam.
He is clerking this year in federal court before taking a position in a firm.
He has learned so much and gained so much experience during this season of his life.

He lives in another state about six hours away from home.
Calls, texts, and facetime will have to suffice until he comes home for a weekend in July.
These things will have to do until he moves less than three hours away in the fall.
Until then, we handle the distance.

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My oldest daughter sent me a text on Sunday morning.
She was working in the sound booth at church and needed to be there early that morning.
It’s your little friend, Mom.
She’s playing the drums today.

My little friend, who gave me the pictures she drew of her and me.
The one who used to call me, the lady with the red lips, until I became Miss Gina.
The one who comes over to me each week and gives me a hug.
The one who loves animals and will have a stuffed animal or toy lizard on her shoulder.

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Everyone has a favorite television show.
I watch very little television, so I am unaware of the current shows.
There is one show that will always be my favorite, however.
It brings me back to the end of grade school and the beginning of high school.

It was a show that was never supposed to do well in the ratings.
No one thought that it would last beyond the first season.
It was scheduled against the Mod Squad and the Flip Wilson Show.
It literally left those shows in the dust.

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As I drive along the road this time of year, I see quite a lot of trash.
Plastic bags from the grocery store are stuck in the tree branches.
Plastic water bottles are strewn here and there along the roadway.
Sometimes I will see a random sneaker, or a lost glove left over from the winter.

Our roadways have rectangular signs that address this problem.
Rectangular signs that have the name of groups that clean up the road.
The groups take responsibility for small sections of the roadway.
Small sections that are lovingly taken care of by the people who live there.

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