Is Life a Journey or a Garden?

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
How Does Your Garden Grow?

Some folks compare life to a journey, but a garden might be more appropriate. Our first garden in life starts with beautiful annuals for immediate results just like our education. Over the years we enlarge our garden and add more flowers, maybe vegetables to be practical, create a winding path for interest (jobs/friends/family). Maybe we get busy and neglect our garden, or move and have to start over again. We get older and plant perennials to make less work. Some gardens are tended well, some grow wild, maybe in wonderful ways. Some are just full of weeds. Our life’s garden reflects our lives. Have we taken care of ourselves over the years so that our gardens still create joy and beauty? Do we still tend the flowers of friendship and family.
It’s easy after retirement, certainly after life events and transitions, to become isolated and slide into inactivity and non-involvement and not tend to our garden as well. But it isn’t too late…
With plenty of choices available to everyone here at GMC, our garden of life can become active and colorful again just by stepping out the door. Check our newsletters for various activities each month and select something to get started on. If nothing sounds good to you, suggest something to our activities director and see what can be done.
A great way to get something growing again is to help someone else or volunteer. Enlarge your garden by eating with different people. Forgive someone who has become a weed in your garden and watch it sprout a new bloom. Perennial relationships are necessary in life, but annuals make good friends too. Today’s garden may not look like gardens of your past, but it can be just as beautiful and nourishing. Use this month to plant the seeds…