Never A Wasted Day

As I drove home on Saturday from the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show in pouring rain and slow moving traffic, I tried to find the kernels of value in an otherwise disappointing day. A vision of mining for gold with a sieve in the cold waters of a river the location of which I no longer remember comes to mind. And then a related image, paying for the privilege of panning for gold as a child at Knotts Berry Farm. In all these instances, the prize was unequal to the cost of the experience. Yet, a gracious life requires one to look for the small scraps of joy amidst the trash.

The San Francisco Flower and Garden Show was a commercial display of things to buy and vendors to hire. Perhaps I was naive to expect that the 25 gardens the marketer promoted would actually be gardens. I spent the first few minutes being disappointed about where my hour and a half drive had taken me, then cruised around making the best of it. On my drive home, I searched for the nuggets of gold:

A few minutes chatting with a woman in her early 80's while I sat at a bench eating my barbecued beef sandwich. She was from Pennsylvania visiting her daughter for three months. She'd come out for the first time in nine years to attend her granddaughter's confirmation.She told me that her husband died a year ago and that she now felt homeless in the home that they'd occupied.

A conversation with a vendor who was selling silk backed glass items that she had created. She told me how she makes them, stopping short of revealing what she uses to adhere the silk to the glass. She said that she enjoys working with detail. I told her that I enjoy working with fragments in my glass art. Our conversation ended when customers came. Before going to them, she asked for a link to my glass site.

I came away from the show with an idea of what I'd like to do with a very small patch of land in our backyard. In that patch are the remains of a mostly unsuccessful attempt to grow vegetables. A hint: vegetables don't do particularly well in a mostly shady area, particularly if the ground is hard and the one gardener who's willing to take time with it moves on. It had been my daughter, Rachael's, project. If I follow through with the inspiration that I got from the show, it may become a meditation area of sorts with a statue or two or three and some of the glass stuff I've made and will make.



There were some vendors who sold art glass or incorporated it into their creations. The pictures of the items they were selling will inspire my own creativity.

I had the radio on as I was sorting through my day. At one point, Garth Brooks was singing "Friends in Low Places" just for me. With my car at a virtual stand-still and the rain pounding on my windshield, I turned the volume up and, for that moment, everything was in blissful harmony and I was at its center.

I grab on to these experiences and hold them tightly. And I smile.