Lemons

My husband and I purchased our house nearly two years ago.  The "pro" side of our list of reasons why we picked this house was full of the usual things like location, number of bedrooms, kitchen size, and so on.  At the bottom of the list I remember noting that I liked that there were citrus trees in the backyard.  The first fall we lived here I was able to harvest probably at least 20 lemons off of two trees, and set off making homemade lemonade.  This past fall I was discouraged when I couldn't find one single lemon.  I was at a loss for how my trees had been so fruitful one year, and barren the next.

One of the trees has become mutated and a bit dwarfed as it struggles for sunlight.  It is shaped as though it got blown sideways during a hurricane and was never properly braced upright again.  This past weekend as I was working in the backyard, I noticed something really quite special.  Beneath the twisted and deformed branches, I spotted three nearly ripe, perfectly shaped, bright yellow lemons.  I was so ecstatic that I rushed to our other tree to see what fruit it had to bear.  To my surprise, the other tree, was covered in tiny white blossoms with a speck of pink, brilliantly flickering in the wind, waiting for it's turn to produce fruit.  Two trees in one yard - one at the end of it's production cycle and one just beginning.

The popular saying goes "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."  That little saying reminds us to find the beauty in life - the silver lining, if you will.  My life has not been filled with lemonade by any means, but it is still a great life.  Sometimes it's the little things in life, like lemon trees, that I need to remind me of the wonders of life.  So when life gives you lemons, make lemonade...or paint a wall a bright, cheery yellow.  That's what I did.

Before (notice ugly blue/gray in the stairway)

After

New Year, New You?

We are officially well into 2011, but looking at the transition into this new year got me thinking.  Why do we have to wait for a new year to start our lives anew?  Sure, New Year's Eve is a great reason to get together with family and friends and shake it, but why do people insist on throwing out the old year and all that it brought and trying to jumpstart something new?

We've all made new year's resolutions...most of which never seem to amount to anything.  Thinking about the possibility of creating a new resolution this year made me really contemplate the point of such resolutions.  I have shocking news for everybody, January 1st doesn't change our lives, all it does is make us write a new two digit year when filling out paperwork - or signing checks, but I haven't done the latter for years.  If you want to make a change in your life, do it for you, not for January 1st.

Too many of my friends and family made comments this December 31st about how awful 2010 was and how 2011 couldn't arrive faster.  These types of comments are really quite sad.  Why is it that people can't realize that another year in these earthly bodies we call home should be a blessing, rather than something to throw out and forget like trash.  I'm not saying everything in 2010 was so miraculous for me that light shone down from the heavens and angels sang, however, there are always great things in life - the silver lining if you will.

I wish more people could live in the now a little more, not dwell on the past as much, learn from mistakes, work on bettering themselves year 'round, and realize that January 1st was just another Saturday, not some magical life-changing day because it ended with -11 rather than -10.