On the way out the door, I noticed a sparrow. The azalea bush, that has overgrown the close to thirty- inch pine stump by the porch, gave a little shimmy with its leaves as the little creature was looking, and hopping from limb to limb. A little scurry around bird. In the late spring, it isn’t unusual to see a thousand azaleas grace the corner of the house. I watched it, fascinated, as the dead magnolia leaves, pine straw, and azalea leaves made a dance floor under the azalea echoing the sounds of thin scratching claws. Crunching and hopping over the under brush made a soft tune that attracted a pair of cardinals. They weren’t impressed with the search and flew away. So did my unaware bird.
Since I stayed a few minutes, I began to think about how the hurricane, a little more than a couple of years ago, beat the living daylights out of the trees. And how that pine stump used to be a massive pine literally a foot from the porch directly in line with the wind…if forethought had not cut it down. That storm circled around the house, and I stood on that porch and watched it bend an incredible cedar as far as it could bend it without the cedar giving up. And I watched my roses, of no pedigree except that Dad put them there, hug the posts from that terrible wind. Why was I standing on the porch? Because the person that I take care of would not leave, and I could not leave that someone. So, I was there just knowing that the last few roses of the season would be gone, that bud and rose in full bloom.
But that is not what happened at all. After all the hurricane gave, the roses hung on. It was too hot to stay inside because the electricity had been knocked out. So I welcomed the wicked cooling wind that accelerated the aging of my roses. After hours, at the close of the storm, the bud had blossomed into a full beauty, and the full bloom had aged into weathered edges wilting face downward. Impressive that just around the corner of the house it took out another huge cedar that demolished the garage, but the two roses under the eaves made it.
Image via Wikipedia
The analogies for this small story could be endless I suppose. But if you have weathered a storm or two then you need no analogy, and if you haven’t been in a “storm” yet….. well I hope that when you do the lessons learned are easy. It reminds me of the doctor that sliced open my finger to remove a growth. The anesthetic hadn’t kicked in all the way yet, but I was too shy at 16 to say a word. Owie!! As he razored my skin, he said that he hoped this was the worst thing that I would ever know in life. I remember thinking ….me too and if you only knew. I was just a small bud with a little scurry here and there trying to find my way around. Storms are wonderful in that they show up, uninvited, and then they go.
Since I stayed a few minutes, I began to think about how the hurricane, a little more than a couple of years ago, beat the living daylights out of the trees. And how that pine stump used to be a massive pine literally a foot from the porch directly in line with the wind…if forethought had not cut it down. That storm circled around the house, and I stood on that porch and watched it bend an incredible cedar as far as it could bend it without the cedar giving up. And I watched my roses, of no pedigree except that Dad put them there, hug the posts from that terrible wind. Why was I standing on the porch? Because the person that I take care of would not leave, and I could not leave that someone. So, I was there just knowing that the last few roses of the season would be gone, that bud and rose in full bloom.
But that is not what happened at all. After all the hurricane gave, the roses hung on. It was too hot to stay inside because the electricity had been knocked out. So I welcomed the wicked cooling wind that accelerated the aging of my roses. After hours, at the close of the storm, the bud had blossomed into a full beauty, and the full bloom had aged into weathered edges wilting face downward. Impressive that just around the corner of the house it took out another huge cedar that demolished the garage, but the two roses under the eaves made it.
