The Secret Garden...

In staying with the garden theme I decided when I planted a garden I would read a classic story that my parents used to read to my brothers and sister and I when we were little. I loved "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I am amazed at this work since it was done in 1911...that was almost 100 yrs ago- it's such a weird thought. I finished the book a few weeks ago but I just wanted to add a few excerpts that were beautiful and very real things for me at the moment...

"One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts-just mere thoughts-are as powerful as electric batteries-as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live. So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in
anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her
own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins, and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer crabbed old gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, there was no more room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow and
tired."

I just see so much of myself in this...mostly in my quiet moments when I have time to think and drown in self-pity. But when I see all of the miracles around me and remember that things could be much worse I am thankful to be me...thankful for every moment I have to reflect on what life is all about...the beauty of what surrounds my life...a garden that grows, friends and family who genuinely care about me, the opportunity to get an education, to be capable to hold a job and to be married to one of the most spectacular people on this earth.