Nature

This post is about endurance.....the endurance of nature,

the endurance of friendship

and the endurance that life brings out in us.

This flower (which I think is a poppy?) bloomed for the first time this year from a seed planted 9 or 10 years ago. It bloomed between flagstones on my patio, not in the flowerbed where I planted it.

You're probably wondering where friendship comes into this? Well, it refers to my dear friend Cie, who I've been friends with since our teens. We went to college together, then we worked together, we sometimes shared flats, went on holiday together, all of that.

Then Cie moved to Hong Kong, but our friendship endured. In the pre-email days, we wrote long letters, had an odd phone call (expensive!) and Cie came to Ireland once a year. Our letters charted the births of our children, early motherhoods days, buying new homes, the lot.

Back to the flower! On Cie's annual visits, each June, we would take off for a day trip to craft places around Kilkenny, leaving Dublin early am, and returning late that night. Calls to pottery workshops and glass blowers were interspersed with many cups of coffee. And along the road, the poppies were always blooming, so we'd stop and pick a few to plant in the garden. They never grew, probably because it would be a few days later when I'd get around to planting them, and at that stage they would be dried out!

Cie moved back to Ireland, with their two children, then gave birth to two little girls, and all the while we kept up our annual visit to the Craft Trail of Kilkenny, always gathering more poppies that never grew.

Then, 9 years ago, the family moved to Brussels..

This time, it's much easier to keep in touch, which is probably just as well, cos neither of us have the time now to sit down and write long letters. But we have email, phone (much cheaper than Hong Kong!) and text.

The endurance that life brings out in us? Cie's 14 Y/O daughter recently had surgery that left her paralysed. I wrote about it here.

Ais started Rehab 4 weeks ago, and this week she WALKED 5 STEPS.

On her own.

That's endurance! And that's what I think of each time I see this flower!

This post is my entry for The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers. The prize is a hamper of Green and Blacks organic chocolate, so I had to enter!