THANKFUL FRIDAY

My mother and I went to the annual garden sale at the Tulsa Botanical Gardens way back in the Spring. I bought some hostas and this weedy looking plant that was advertised to be a butterfly plant. The hostas got planted in the front of the house where they have done well. They had tall lovely blooms and everything. The weedy plant went into my back flower bed where it was tortured by the chickens. In fact, everything but the sage was tortured by chickens. I planted salad greens. They never sprouted. I planted whole pepper plants. They were ripped right of the ground. The back flowerbed is mostly just dirt, but the sage and this weedy plant are doing just fine.

Now when I say “doing just fine” I mean the sage looks wonderful. The weedy plant has two large stalks coming off of a main woody rooted stem. Both stalks look like they have been trampled by bears and roots are visible, but it’s green and healthy. This week it started producing small yellow daisy like flowers. The stalks are covered with buds. When I realized that this plant was about to have blooms, I was stunned because I had pretty much given up on this flower bed. I was seriously at a point where I did not know what I was going to do with this space. It isn’t pretty. The plants I have in there look good, one nicer than the other, but it is still not a pretty space. There’s lots of open dirt areas with chicken shaped indents. I have a plan for that space that will happen next year that will hopefully be prettier and chicken proof, but for now I just let the chickens roll around in the dirt. Then here I have this plant that looks like it should not be alive, but not only is alive, it is blossoming.

What?!?

This brings me to my knee (literally). So my ACL is torn as in torn torn. I have three ligaments instead four holding my leg bones together. Next week, I have an appointment to get fitted for a new fancy knee brace and I meet with a physical therapist. The thing is, I feel fine. Pressing back to child’s pose is still uncomfortable, but walking around and all the other activities have been great. This week, I put myself back on to my previous exercise schedule. Two to three days of X-tend Barre and two days of strength training. I do all of this on top of walking the dog, getting on my yoga mat and getting in around 11,000 steps a day. The more people I talk to and the more medical journal articles I read, I become more and more convinced that surgery is not going to be necessary. At least not for many many years down the road, if at all.

My knee and that weedy plant I don’t know the name of have a lot in common. Actually, I have a lot of broken parts, yet here I am, still movin’ and groovin’. Now here comes the pep talk that you didn’t realize you needed. We are all going to be just fine. We may have broken parts, but we are resilient. We are still growing. The thing to ask yourself now is what’s going to blossom from this resilience.