Even though only temps of 33 were forecast for last night, I went out at dusk and put pillowcases over all the surviving plants, kind of as a test run to see if I have enough to cover them all if I need to.  Synchonistically, I do.  There are more of them than I thought. The pillow shams work the best. The next season we get a freeze, I’ll have a plan and be prepared. The other day when I wrote Florida Record Low Temps Changing My Perception of Cold, I mentioned the devastation to my plants.  Now I see that was an over-reaction, as well as short sighted.  Because when I look for the devastation, I see it.  When I look for what all survived, I see that it’s more than 3/4 of my yard.   All the bushes under the canopy escaped the frostbite and are still fine, and it looks lush.  When I really look at it, overall I have less than 1/4 of my plants killed by the freeze.  I just have to remember to always look for the good.  Even I temporarily forget that.

As I was covering the remaining plants and taking inventory of the survivors, I thought briefly, “if I covered them all from the first night, they would not be gone.”  Was I playing God, getting to choose who lives and who dies?  Was it neglect that laid waste to the turk’s cap and arbicola in the outside yard?  So why did I not cover them up the first night a freeze was forecast?  Because I don’t want to have the kind of yard that requires so much attention.  I’m not into high maintenance.  I’m into the natural, wildish look and native plants. I am glad now that I let them have a night or two of freeze to harden up for next season. Tough love!

I posted some pics on Facebook showing how lush the yard really still is.  I was outside to take photos of the City of Palm Bay guys laying the pipes down for the city water to come in.  I’m covering that hot breaking story as it happens for my Facebook friends.  Anyway, Mark from the City knocked on my green man knocker today and told me they’d have to remove the palm tree and silver necklace pod bush out at the street by the mailbox.  “Anything between the culvert and the street has to go.” I’ll be sorry to see them go, but I’ve seen so much change that I’m used it.

For me, that’s one of the keys to happiness, is being open to change.  To welcome change.  To learn to honor the things that have passed, and to see the gift in whatever is to come: the forced-upon-us re-creation of our very own selves in relation to our very own environment.

Marianne Williamson, says, in The Gift of Change: “We are being challenged by world events to develop a more mature consciousness.  Who we ourselves become, how we grow and change and face the challenges of our own lives, is intimately and causally connected to how the world will change over the next few years. For the world is a projection of our individual psyches, collected on a global screen; it is hurt or healed by every thought we think. To whatever extent I refuse to face the deeper issues that hold me back, to that extent the world will be held back. And to whatever extent I find the miraculous key to the transformation of my own life, to that extent I will help change the world.

“Today, we can stand in the midst of the great illusions of the world and by our very presence dispel them. As we cross the bridge to a more loving orientation – as we learn the lessons of spiritual transformation and apply them in our personal lives – we will become agents of change on a tremendous scale.  To some this might feel like the period of a Great End, perhaps even at times an Armageddon, but in fact this is the time of a Great Beginning. It is time to die to who we used to be and to become instead who we are capable of being. That is the gift that awaits us now: the chance to become who we really are.  And that is the miracle: the gift of change.”

Right now, the change in my life is coming in the form of landscape.  Six years ago, the changes came – thankfully – in the form of a health wake up call, giving me time to make changes and divert trouble.

I’ll take the landscape transformation any day 🙂   Actually, I’ll take whatever Life throws at me and make it something I can love.

That’s the easiest. And that’s how I can best be an agent of change in my life.

Right here and right now.

Andrea