First Bloom

Today I had my first bloom of day lily season.  If you do not know, I am quite proud of my day lilies. Many of these flowers were originally planted in my grandmother's yard in Illinois.  Over the years, as they multiplied, my dad took the new growth to his yard in South Carolina.  After I bought my house a few years ago, Dad divided the plants in his yard and helped me plant some in mine. I'm proud to say that my flowers were planted in both Granny's and Dad's yard before finding a home in mine.

First Bloom 2011!

Each year at the end of May and beginning of June, I am eager to take Bon outside each morning so I can see which day lilies are blooming.  Each day brings new flowers and new beauty to my yard.

This past fall, there was some neighborhood drama that caused me to move my day lilies to a newly created bed near the house. I wrote the post, Roots, about that difficult task. A few months later I spent another weekend working on the bed, and wrote the Everything and Nothing post about that.

In both of those posts I was angry, tired and bitter.  Moving the day lilies were a lot of hard work and not my ideal way of spending my Saturdays.  But today, when this beauty of a bloom showed up in my yard I was perhaps even more excited and grateful to see the bloom, precisely because of the hard work I had put in this winter. Hard work always comes before results.

Of course, I can apply this to my weight loss journey. It is hard. Eating right is no fun. Sometimes the weeds take over, and I make more poor choices than I do healthy ones.  In the end, though, the blooms that I see (blooms=results in this analogy) make it all worth it.

If you're trying to lose weight and you find yourself tired or discouraged, remember that if you stick with it, summer will come.  Think of the joy and excitement of the blooming lilies and just keep trying!


  "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant." -Anne Bradstreet