neglect

 

Last year,

or the year before,

I really cannot remember,

I purchased some spring bulbs for inside-

tulips and paperwhites.

One was in a glass dish with water being "forced",

the others were in soil in a cheap plastic planter.

I enjoyed watching both grow and bloom.

Afterward I put all the bulbs in the pot and stored it behind the shed.

When I cleaned in the fall they got moved to in the shed. 

I didn't even cut the old growth off.

I had a fleeting thought not long ago that I should look for them

maybe even try to get them to bloom again

but it never went beyond thinking.

A friend recently gave me a basket of "green" from a funeral.

Last night I gave myself permission to spend money on flower pots.

It was sunny and mid 50's this afternoon, 

a perfect opportunity to use the table on the back porch as my base to transplant:

life from one basket to several pots to be scattered throughout my home.

the Christmas Cactus was not in the basket, it simply needed a bigger pot

While I was getting my Miracle-gro potting soil from the building I glanced to the left

and I caught a glimpse of the neglected bulbs,

my attention drawn by the green peeking up through the soil.

The conditions they were stored in-

a dark, drafty, not at all temperature controlled shed,

and the lack of attention they'd received from me, 

the human in charge,

did not cause their death.

They survived because they did what they were created to do.

I have since transplanted them and trimmed the dead off.

I think I was supposed to feed them 

or put them in the ground after they flowered initially.

I hope they bloom again, 

but even if they don't,  

finding them was still a priceless gift

because I was hit by the truth 

that if I fail to live the life I've been gifted with

it is not because of something someone else does or doesn't do to/for me,

it will be because I neglect to trust my Creator and do what He created me to do.