Finding Smiles In The Garden...

Hi Honeys
I'm sorry I haven't been posting much lately.  Life is being, well, not that great to be honest.  So, I've done what I usually do at times like this and just taken to hiding away from the world in the hopes it will forget about me and leave me alone.  Does anyone else ever feel like that?  I do hope not, honeys, it's horrible.

You know, pretty much whatever happens I've always been able to find something to smile about, I've been that annoying person who looks for butterflies & ladybirds, for rainbows when it's raining and tries to feel better by making other people laugh or smile.  I have to admit though these past few weeks it's been much harder to find things to be happy about.

I'm stressed all the time, they've now doubled the level of my blood pressure medication and I'm so tired of taking meds all the time. Meds for pain, meds for arthritis, meds for blood pressure, meds for horrible muscle spasms.  Mostly though, much as I hate it, I manage to sort of cope.  Just lately though someone has crept in with a giant cosmic straw and just sucked all of my joy away.  It's left me feeling incredibly grim and, embarrassingly, blubbing my eyes out at times. 

My inner voice is giving me such a telling me off right now, and quite rightly too!  With all of the sadness, hurt and despair in the world right now how dare I feel sorry for myself but there it is and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.  I feel deflated and totally joyless and I feel, in turns, both angry at myself and desperate to shake it off.

I have so much to be grateful for, chief among them of course being a wonderful Hubby and an adorable wee furbaby, and I know that this will pass, it always does eventually, but that doesn't help now.  Life has torpedoed my happiness boat and I'm floating about wondering what happened.

This afternoon I went out into the garden to hang some laundry.  Laundry, as you'll know if you've read any of this blog at all, is my happy place.  I adore it.  Is there a sight more heart warming than lines of beautiful bright bedding dancing in a warm sunny breeze?  Today though it just felt like a chore.  That was when I decided enough was enough.  I'm allowing worry & stress to rob me of my smiles.  Enough now, Rosie!

So I'm pegging out one of Hubby's shirts and as I turned around a thought hit me honeys.  Just when did that blueberry bush we planted a few years ago grow so huge and take over the back of the garden?  We bought it, with our apple tree, from Woolworths.... oh my! That dates it!  I still miss Woolies! Well anyway, the blueberry bush now looks like this.....


It's huge isn't it honeys?  I simply can't remember what it looked like last Summer.  Do you think when things are always there we stop seeing them? 

So, curious about the tiny blueberry bush we planted years ago and basically forgot about, I wandered over to take a look and saw this.....

There are blueberries everywhere! I've never seen so many berries, and how wonderful that they're in our garden!  We actually bought the apple tree first, I'd had an apple tree in our home garden many years ago and I used to love making apple crumbles and pies each year for our neighbours.  Our neighbours seemed to like it too :)

So when we bought the apple tree, we bought a berry plant too  The idea was that it would be great to encourage small birds to visit our garden and would provide food for them too.  I hope that it's been doing just that these past years when we sort of forgot about it :)

I really can't get over just the sheer volume of berries though.  Maybe it might be worth planting another couple of berry bushes along the back fence?  Blueberry muffins or raspberry jam anyone? 

I do love the idea that this, now huge, blueberry bush has been feeding our visiting garden birds this whole time without our even noticing.  Now that has to be worth a smile :) Till next time dear ones, hugs always xx