Thankfulness

Starting yesterday my grandson's girlfriend, Kcenia, has been posting on Facebook things she is thankful for.  What a grand idea!

So, today, and off and on over the month I hope I can stay on track and post here some things I am thankful for.

Today, I am thankful for tiny things.

I used to dread November, it always meant the growing season was at the end, things died, the trees became naked, the days became mostly grey, and daylight grew shorter day by day.  I hated it, I became melancholy, wept easily, and wanted to mostly stay a hermit.

Then, yesterday while picking leaves, I was reminded of something that I believe Thoreau wrote about during his Autumn ambling over field and dale.  He wrote if you look, 'v-e-r-y' closely, you will find at the very tip of barren branch, an almost invisible bud waiting for its time to grow, yes....Spring is already there.  No matter what tree or shrub you look at...SPRING IS ALREADY THERE.

Of course, I was at first, a Doubting Thomas and had to inspect this for myself.   Surely the harsh winter would kill these tiny objects under freezing temperatures, ice storms, and feet upon feet of snow?  Thoreau had to be wrong.  So it has become a yearly ritual for me, every year as Mother Nature disrobes herself, I have to inspect and make sure she is indeed already preparing her garments for next year.  And, yes, there they are every November, brave, almost invisible buds.

How wonderful!  How beautiful!  But, most of all, HOW HOPEFUL.

Oh, I'm still not a fond friend of November, and there are days I allow melancholy to overtake me.  But I no longer mourn the death it brings.  Birth is sleeping in its winter blanket.

So, I am indeed thankful for the tiny things.  I have to look for them to savor them...but they are worth my time to seek them out.  Go, see for yourselves, all that magical new growth, slumbering till March, when Mother Nature dons her new robe.