Punxsutawney Phil....Who cares?

And so it goes. They shake him awake and pull his scared hibernating body from the hole to see his shadow. Six more weeks of winter for us! But I don't care. This morning I found spring alive and well on a hilltop in Greene County, Pennsylvania.

We spent part of the morning touring the greenhouses of friends and local nursery owners who have three greenhouses high on a muddy ridge past Ruff Creek. They had just released some 10,000 ladybugs who flitted and flew past us to land on geranium leaves and sprouting parsley plants. An avocado tree stands in the corner lush and green but yet to bear fruit. No guacamole yet...but maybe one day. It was so fun to be somewhere warm, lush and green, green, green with ferns and flowering plants. It really gets one excited to pull out the gardening gloves and trowel.

I wonder if I have ever been as passionate about anything as this couple seems to be about gardening. I feel as if I dabble in most things and excel in few. Wonder who I would be and what interests I would pursue if I had hours of uninterrupted time and an endless supply of cash. Or at least a small nest egg with which to begin.

I feel I am most passionate about my children, perhaps to a fault at times. I take their bad behavior personally and feel I have wronged them some way. Haven't been consistent enough in positive feedback or reasonable punishments. Haven't provided enough warm self-esteem building fuzzies. Haven't applied successfully the upteen child-rearing books I have read with soooooo many ideas on the ways to remedy negative behavior. You know how it goes.

And so I will post this, sign off and pursue my passions for the next thirty minutes until the bus returns my older boys from school. Oh that's right no supper plans as of yet. Ahem, I mean, and so I will post this, sign off, prepare supper for 25 minutes and pursue my passions for the next 5 minutes until the bus stops at the front door.

Who knows, maybe I would have written the next bestseller, painted the next 'Starry Night'. The world will never know what might have been. I'm a dabbler. That's what I do.