{"id":1171,"date":"2011-02-20T18:55:07","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T23:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1171"},"modified":"2011-02-21T00:04:14","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T05:04:14","slug":"surprise-springs-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1171","title":{"rendered":"Surprise! (Spring’s Coming)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Purple Spring Jewels<\/p><\/div>\n

You’d think a 51 year-old gardener with lettuce and broccoli plantlings under grow lights in the front room would have an inkling that spring is on the way.\u00a0 So why did that flash of purple, four perfect crocus plants blooming in the flower bed by the front door, come as such a surprise?\u00a0 The weather had been warm this past week, true, but my heart was still in winter.\u00a0 I must have thought my optimistic seed planting last week<\/a> was a lark, an absurd and probably hopeless act of defiance.\u00a0 Not only that, I tend to doubt the efficacy of any seed I plant.\u00a0 How could that<\/span> ever grow?\u00a0 I’m sure I didn’t plant those seeds quite right.\u00a0 But what if it was exactly the right thing to do and I did it just fine?\u00a0 What if the moment to act is now, regardless of who says this thing or that can or can’t be done?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I’m reminded of long ago when I made wine.\u00a0 Even though I followed the directions (fruit + sugar + yeast + time = wine), I could never bring myself to believe it actually worked.\u00a0 It’s a chemical reality that yeast consumes sugar and produces alcohol, but I couldn’t get past what appeared to be a big jug of likely soured or else non-alcoholic liquid.\u00a0 That’s why the first glass I poured of my own wine (after sniffing and sipping to make sure it wasn’t vinegar) was in a 12 ounce tumbler.\u00a0 No kidding.\u00a0 I poured the glass full of what I couldn’t believe was really wine.\u00a0 And of course I drank it as I would any beverage from a tumbler: big, heedless gulps.\u00a0 Guess what I soon discovered?\u00a0 It was definitely wine.\u00a0 The process had worked as predictably and inexorably as the approach of spring and the sprouting of seeds.<\/p>\n

The purple crocus plants, those precious living amethysts, cry out, “Live according to what is.\u00a0 Trust yourself in the context of reality.\u00a0 Beware the should nots and the can’t dos, the be carefuls and doubts that will hijack you from doing what might be exactly the right thing to do at the moment.”<\/p>\n

Look at the signs, take stock of yourself, then go do what it is you know it’s time to do, however unlikely it might seem.<\/p>\n

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(Psst! Hey you! There's daffodils and pansies, too!)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’d think a 51 year-old gardener with lettuce and broccoli plantlings under grow lights in the front room would have an inkling that spring is on the way.\u00a0 So why did that flash of purple, four perfect crocus plants blooming … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[69],"tags":[117,70,71,1077,124,97,125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1171"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}