More than cherries...

I'm just back in the UK after a long visit to the US. While I was away I heard this very old woman say--Life's a bowl of cherries, if you allow it to be... and that really got me thinking about my life and how often I just don't let it be a bowl of cherries even when it is. How much I have to be thankful for, always. And even if I consider myself pretty good at remembering this, there are times I forget, good times, when I need to remind myself to just allow life to be good.

This morning I woke after a very restless night and a very odd dream. Some days it feels like I'm carrying this huge corsage of sadness pinned to my chest and it's so big I don't know how to walk around with it without tripping and falling over.

But once I got up today, and realised I have the day off, I decided to do something lovely and went out into my garden to clear away the old leaves and overgrown everything. And in the garden I had an odd surprise. Right in the back, underneath so much overgrown shrubbery and vines, I found a tomato plant. Just one. It was the tomato plant I tried desperately to ignore. It was the last remaining one left (I gave all the others away) from the crop my ex planted the day before we broke up. And here was the one I forgot about. And it was LOADED with tiny, sweet tomatoes. I mean the plant was low to the ground, just hanging with tons and tons of ripe tomatoes and apart from one or two, they were untouched by slugs or insects.

It was finding a gift. I love tomatoes. Their red redness, their juicy bite, the way you can twist off the green stem, the whole lot. At first I just stared at them, almost unsure what to do. And in my mind--Life's a bowl of cherries...NO! a bowl of ripe tomatoes... and I went in the house and got my favourite bowl and filled it and filled it with the little jewels.