Discards & Renewal

1. I’m taking the Christmas tree down. This is always depressing to me. I really like Christmas and to see it all go away makes me sad. In years, like this past one and others, when Christmas doesn’t go quite right, I feel cheated and I want it to last a little longer. This year was bad because of the weather. Being snowed in from December 15 through December 27 was not good. I want a do-over!

2. I was getting rid of my Christmas flowers the other day. I had two bouquets. The first is still in fairly good condition. I’ve gone through twice and pulled out the dry or wilting flowers and re-arranged it. It’s lookin’ good. The second one was a bouquet of red and white roses. When I get rid of roses, I don’t get rid of them right away. I pull all the petals off of the stem and spread them out in a bowl so I can enjoy the scent for a little longer. When I was doing this the other day, I was struck by how much like people the flowers are (or the other way around). The flowers were drying and discolored but as I pulled off the outer layer of petals, the ones underneath were fresh and vividly colored. The further into the core I got, the fresher the petals were and the better the scent! Aren’t we like this? As we grow older, we may look tattered but we you look closer, we’re fresh and young and full of great things on the inside!