Delphinium and Hope

I want to share these words of inspiration that a very wise person who is in my life shared with me to help me get through this ordeal. I feel quite blessed and wanted the power of his words to be put out into the universe. 

 "Ever since I was a little kid I have imagined gardens, places I could plant some tiny seed or bulb or root that would at some future date bring me great happiness in what ever spectacle they would become.  This started when I was 8 and my mother brought me across country on a bus and we moved for a while to what I thought was the most terrible looking of houses, it was a tiny house that had been converted from a chicken house.  A woman told me, as we moved into it one night that I was lucky because on Monday the school bus would stop right at the front door to pick me up....horrible thought of waiting for a bus and having a load of kids from a new school who all knew each other looking at me and then at this terrible shack that I lived in with no plants around it and junk all about.   

On Saturday I walked to a farm store and I saw a seed display and on one packet were tall stalks of blue delphinums.  I bought the pack of seeds and once home immediately planted them all around the front porch: the ground was hard, covered with fir needles, and shaded by evergreens.  Monday came, and the flowers of course did not, but I looked every day for weeks, looking hard and close for the seedlings which I was to learn had decided to grow elsewhere in a more needy spot.. Didn't know that at the time and never gave up on those seedlings and years after, when I had a car of my own I would drive past that shack and expect to see tall stalks of blue delphiniums.

  Moved away to other states, moved back, became older and over the years have driven back past the house (which was turned back into a livestock feeding shelter).  The delphinium garden over the years has become magnificent in my mind, I see them when I shut my eyes in tough times, at moments when I am afraid of being judged by others or when I have to face the unknown.  I see them when I am afraid and anxious and they remind me of the potential of the power I have over almost anything that scares me, the power of a garden I once planted in my mind.

When I came home from the hospital I was terribly afraid, couldn't imagine what my life would be like not seeing very well and pushing a walker around and being dependent upon other people. First thing I did when I was able to work outside again was to buy a pack of delphiniums.  Never planted them, but keep them on a shelf as a reminder.  Held them in my hand in those early days when I didn't see so well, feeling the rough little hulls in my fingers and visualized the best delphinium garden that had ever been planted and relished the fact that it had been planted by efforts, my hopes, my dreams."

How synchronistic that I should happen to find a 109th chair, even though I thought I had only made 108 for the installation. I suppose this one was meant to be mine!