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Black walnut fall color at its best!

I was in the garden over the weekend cleaning up leaves, but trying not be too fussy with the clean up. Just getting the "big chunks" as it were. There are still so many leaves to fall yet, it's not worth the effort to do too much more.

As I grabbed handfuls of leaves out of pokey juniper plants, part of me was lamenting the coming of winter, darkness, rain and all the work in the yard that still needed to be done.

So many things to do and not enough time, strength, or money to do them.

That's when I started to worry about silly things, like being alone for Christmas for the first time in nearly a decade, second guessing my recent decision to change to a new medication (the former regimen keeping me alive for the past ten years), and whether I could afford to go to my little brother's wedding in the Riviera Maya, Mexico next year AND see my ailing father in Wisconsin. I can't do both unfortunately. 

Must remember to use those long tweezers to remove these leaves and not a bare hand!

What snapped me out of my worrying blues was removing some dead leaves from the stem of a tree peony and seeing the fat, pink buds underneath. It was next spring on a stick! So much to look forward to in those chubby buds.

That's when I realized, I shouldn't be sad about winter - I should be daydreaming about spring, the special "crazy plant" person who has recently come into my life, and all the future that's out there just for me.

Life is the hope held in big, fat, flower buds and not in that pile of dead leaves on the ground.

Do I still have to clean them up...???