I was outside watering the bamboo yesterday, and taking a look at the yard.  I’ve been glued to the computer almost every waking moment the 10 days, working.  I usually wander around my property at least once a day, but this past week I didn’t get a chance to.  I went to walk down some of the trails, and they are already overgrowing with palmettos and grapevines.  This is Florida.  It is December 16th and it was 85 degrees yesterday.  I have my air conditioner on because of the humidity.   So, tropical Florida, when it’s rainy and 80+ degrees even in Christmastime, still has the greenery growing.  I decided to not prune the palmettos and grapevines, but to see how much they overgrow during the next few weeks.  I might want to forge a new path.

The rain and heat is also making the bamboo grow like crazy.  As bamboo grows, the outer sheath leaves (I call them the boots) fall to the ground.  I  hadn’t been to that part of the yard for a few days, so the path into the east garden was strewn with the fallen boots.  I kicked them back under the bamboo stand as I watered in the new shoots I could see peeking through.  I always rake the boots and leaves back underneath the bamboo stand if the wind sends them flying.  I know that what falls from a tree is Nature’s fertilizer, and it feeds the tree it fell from.

Just like us.  We’re nourished by what falls away from us.  If we’re smart, we use it as fertilizer, we use it to thrive.  A friend said once, “When we’re broken in half and stuck in sh*t, we can’t help but grow.“  Every year I live, I learn something new and a part of my old life falls away, a part that has served its purpose.

As I consider the fallen leaves and boots as fertilizer to help the healthy new bamboo shoots emerge, just so do I consider the parts of my past that had to be shed so the Me Who Is Now could emerge.  I don’t send those parts flying off willy nilly into the wind.  I keep them close and as a forever part of me, just in a different form now.  Today’s dried bamboo leaves will become a future new bamboo shoot.

So it all comes down to responsibility: learning to manage our own sh*t and grow from it.

Imagine that.

🙂

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