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| Dr Maya Angelou's Tribute |
I've never seen so many blooms from my rhododendrons! I've waited three long years for this display.All of them bloomed. I cannot be happier. I can only imagine how everything will look in the next few years when they've filled in completely. Knowing rhododendrons, there is more to come in the next few years.
I also took some time to make a tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou who passed away this week. Death is a fact of life and it will happen to us all. It is tragic when one passes having not lived! I can say, judging by Dr. Maya Angelou's life story, that she lived and she achieved her mission in life and she can and will rest in peace. What a legacy she has left us! Her life's story, apart from the books she's written, is a great lesson to many of us.
It is interesting to me as a gardener that on the week she passes away, I look at my garden and see all these rhododendron blooms wide open. If anyone knows rhododendron buds, they know that they look so unassuming, closed and not as attractive. By looking at the buds, and if you did not know about rhododendrons, you could never assume that they will blossom to such beautiful flowers. But when they open up, they transform into these beautiful, large flowers that are attractive to bees, hummingbirds, humans like me and other beautiful garden creatures. Dr. Maya Angelou's works and life story (the first lesson) were/are attractive to so many of us. We were attracted to her wisdom about the meaning of life and how to walk tactfully in life to not only achieve your dreams but to leave a legacy.
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| Rhododendron Bud |
Her story is attractive because it is about the beauty and wisdom we all possess and is innate to us and ,with time, we could all blossom into beautiful creatures.
Like a garden, Dr. Maya Angelou's life's story is a reminder to us all that we must be patient with ourselves and the world around us. That some of us are, no matter how we begin, or what we endure that we still rise; that we are resilient like those plants in my garden that have endured my amateurish and indecisive ways.
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| Beautiful Maya |
Like many plants that bear beautiful flowers, those flowers may never come to blossom if conditions don't allow them to. That as humans, like all living creatures, we are vulnerable to our environment therefore it is crucial to always assess our environment to decide whether it is an environment that allows us to thrive or is damaging to us.
The picture on the left shows that Dr. Maya did not consider herself pretty because of the environment in which she grew up in where girls like her were not seen as pretty. As flowers bloom in best conditions, we must try and create a world where every human blooms into their true self. Dr. Maya was obviously a resilient flower managed to withstand harsh conditions that most flowers could not endure! She managed to not only thrive but to bloom under such conditions, this is a lesson for us all. She was her own master and remained unscathed by her own harsh experience.
The picture on the left shows that Dr. Maya did not consider herself pretty because of the environment in which she grew up in where girls like her were not seen as pretty. As flowers bloom in best conditions, we must try and create a world where every human blooms into their true self. Dr. Maya was obviously a resilient flower managed to withstand harsh conditions that most flowers could not endure! She managed to not only thrive but to bloom under such conditions, this is a lesson for us all. She was her own master and remained unscathed by her own harsh experience.
Her life's story taught us never to judge a plant by its buds and that with patients, we can all bear witness to something magical like a flower of a rhododendron, like Dr. Maya's life. That our story is not written at the beginning of our lives but often in the end when we finally bloom for the world to ENJOY our flowers!
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| My wild side garden |
