It’s the last day of 2018. And it is the first time that I have ever thought about writing my thoughts on an year that has passed.
I suppose… I should thank this year for the first five months in which I had to battle an ear infection and a cruel, very cruel flu. This has thought me about my strength, my physical possibilities and how doing what I really like can fill me up with energy and make me forget that I could hardly get out of bed in the morning.
I found my courage, my voice in front of groups of people, my wide potential of understanding, and most of all, I found the Universe.
It’s like I was guided throughout the year by invisible strings, always taking me in the right place, on the right time. I lost (actually I gave up) ten kilograms, while discovering myself and my true joy. It was with a lot of ups and downs, a lot of confusing moments, when I had only my faith left that all the things will turn out OK in the end.
I was driven by the Universe in a lot of new places, met new people, some of them on the other side of the world, but with similar stories. Making me, thus, understand that we are all part of the same human kind, although we live on different parts of this Globe, we go through similar experiences and feelings. I felt more connected to the people around me than ever! I felt the warmth of the Sun, that is the same wherever you are on Earth, it shines in the same way over all of us.
And in the end, as a gift for my birthday, I found my inner strength, my place, my joy, my beauty! I never thought that life could be lived this way!
So in the end, thank you Universe for a 2018 full of all the meaningful messages that were so kindly sent my way!
I couldn’t have patience for the spring to come, so I started planting my tomatoes indoors. I thought that by the time they get bigger I will move them anyways in the garden, but I really needed to see green plants around me sooner, while there was still snow outside.
And now, my biggest tomato, my Black Lady, is more than one meter high. It doesn’t fit on the window sill anymore. It’s March already, I think I can move it outside.
So….I moved it outside, didn’t plant it, moved it with the pot. I didn’t pay enough attention, and while handling it, I broke it 😦 I feel so sorry for it… I tied it up with a piece of cloth. I just hope it will survive. My Black Lady is now hanging literally on a thread. It’s already outside, in full sun. I am checking it every morning and evening.
Last night it snowed 😦. And my tomatoes were all outside… I pray they didn’t freeze. I will plant them tomorrow in the garden, if the snow melts and if they still survive. 😀 three months ago I thought my Black Lady was gone – broken and frozen. Not it’s the biggets tomato in the garden, with almost two meters in height and it already has 50 fruits on it 😀
I don’t think I mentioned until now it’s a black cherry tomato plant 😀 That is why I call it my Black Lady. Today, I harvested and ate directly on the spot the first ever tomato grown in my garden: a black cherry tomato. It tastes wonderful, very sweet, like a combination between an apple, a tomato and a strawberry, with the texture of a plum. Sure, it’s not the regular and traditional tomato, but I never expected that! I planted only “weird” tomatoes, that I can’t find next door.
And by Black Lady has been a warrior all along! I am so proud of it that I won’t cut it and I tend to let it grow as big as it wants before next winter comes.
So the facts are like this, after a hot and long summer: my lady grew up to three meters and a half, gave me more than 90 small cherries, and was the center piece of my garden 🙂 So…who said tomatoes were fragile? All they need is love is carrying 😀 And sun, of course 😀
It was in February that I chose my tomatoes seedlings and disposed of the rest properly, meaning in my front flower garden 🙂
It was good flower soil in the pots so it seemed more that appropriate to dump it there. Plus I threw all the small and insignificant seedlings that were not big enough to be replanted for the spring.
A very cold end of February came along, making me sure that none of the seeds or seedlings would survive, so the garden was clear for only flowers.
Two weeks ago I started looking at my flowers as they were starting to bloom and grow. Such a nice view and…such a surprise! There were tens of small tomatoes seedlings!!! I first thought they were weeds 😀 and wanted to take them out, but I felt my hands were smelling like tomatoes😀 so… I left them there. If they wanted to grow even under those conditions, even after I threw them away, who am I to take their right to live? For sure I didn’t help them, just caused more trouble, and yet they found a way.
I thought that after the first wave of cold at the beginning of April I lost all my orange tomatoes. I had a few seedlings still left in the house, but no orange ones. Those seeds were pretty hard to find and I could buy just a limited amount, around 25 seeds. I was really sad that I lost them and I wouldn’t have this year the same colorful basket of vegetables, but started to settle with the idea.
Until I looked again in my flower garden! There are all the orange seedlings that I threw away in the winter and that are now just around the right size to transplant in the vegetable garden! They are already used to the sun, so I won’t get them burnt by long exposure (like I did with my second round of seedlings when I took them out from the house directly to the garden 😀 ) and they will catch up with the ones that are already blooming in no time.
I threw them away but I was inspired enough to keep them the second time they wanted to live. I was sad about losing my orange tomatoes but now I have them again, big and ready to bare some fruits 🙂 I wonder what other things I threw away but I was lucky enough to get them back?
I literally can’t stand their sight! They take all the light and nutrients from my so-cherished plants. Sometimes I think that if we could eat weeds, they wouldn’t grow so fast anymore 😀 just to make us go crazy!
I dug all spring just to see…more weeds! And the past few days have been rainy as hell! Guess who grew up wonderfully? The weeds, of course! Not the tomatoes, not the corn, onions or the green bells! No, the weeds! And the earth is still too moist to start taking them out manually. I am literally furious. They irritate my eyes and I can’t even see my seedling anymore in the forest of weeds!
It has been sunny the last two days, the soil has dried a little so I can enter the garden. The weeds!!! They are gigantic. It will be a painstakingly job, but I have to do it, today they die!
I start pulling them out, one by one, by hand. I don’t hear or see anything around me anymore. I feel awkwardly at peace, like in a meditation state. It takes me a few minutes to realize that they come out very easily, because the soil is still moist enough no to break them. So they come out with the entire roots. And if catch them in the right way I can take more out with one move. Because they are bigger I can deal with them easier… I never thought about that!
So sometimes…you have to let the weeds grow big enough on order to weed them 😀
I am staring into my garden… trying to find any bloody weed to pull it out. I can’t stand them at all, but I think that is already obvious 😀 As I roll my eyes around, I find an onion. In the wrong place!!! How in the world did that get there? I dug that area over and over again, all spring long before planting anything there. And I planted spinach and corn, no onions, so how in the world did that red onion get there? I didn’t even plant red onions, only yellow and white ones. I think I should mention that all winter long I threw in that corner the leftovers from all the vegetables I used. Red onions too… Amazing or not, from the leftovers of red onions, one caught roots and started to grow. This little one must have been a fighter! I am definitely leaving it there! It fought so long to grow and root that I am not going to spoil it. Until later in the summer, that is 😛
And I was mentioning my corn earlier. It seems it has also a surprise for me. Weird to say I know how many seeds I planted 😀, exactly 6. But only 5 plants came out. That is for two months, because today I see the sixth one! It needed two more months to grow, but in the end this one too saw the light!
Should I mention that the tomato from my previous post made the most fruits out of all the tomato plants?
These vegetables are Never-Give-Up-ers 😀 And I couldn’t be prouder 😀
So…I got on the first plane. Nothing new until now, not the first flight between these two airports, nothing out of the ordinary.
Reaching my first stop, I had almost six hours to browse through this foreign airport that became so familiar to me, until my longest flight ever until now: a eleven-and-a-half hours flight over the ocean!
Finally, I got on this second plane, a huge Boeing 767 (I know, it might not be huge for other people, but for me it was the first time that I saw this kind of aircraft for real and not in the movies!) I was both excited and a little anxious, as I don’t like flying that much and my longest flight until then was about three to four hours.
I got comfortable (although I don’t know how sitting on a chair for almost twelve hours could be called comfortable) and fell asleep. And…woke up! And scared! The passenger behind me hit her seat belt against my chair and suddenly woke me up, not knowing who I was, where I was, what I was doing there, you know, the kind of wake up that leaves you highly disoriented! A panic attack started, feeling trapped inside a “can”, 13000 meters above the sea level, actually seeing the ocean below! I saw that we were only at the first have of the journey, and I realized that the plane can’t pull over for me to catch my breathe, nor I can call home…so I was on my own! In the air! Literally!
I started with my breathing exercises (thank you Universe for finding them out!) and applied all the relaxing techniques from different forms of meditation. And it got better…not the most relaxed person in the world, but definitely better and cooperating.
As I reached the second airport (still had one more flight to go), I found out that my baggage got lost. I felt sad and afraid at the same time, not knowing if I could find everything that I needed at my destination so that I could have a functional week. But there it was…lost. I was tired, angry, sad, frustrated as I went to the gates of my last flight. I felt betrayed by the world, the Universe, I needed sleep so badly that I actually fell asleep on the chair in the waiting area.
It took me a huge effort to get on the last plane, where I fell asleep again instantly before the take-off. I was in a “give-up” mood, not caring about anything anymore, too tired to be afraid of one more flight, I just let go. We stayed on the runway for almost two hours because we couldn’t take off due to a nasty storm. I was sleeping in a plane that would go through storm! 😀 Now this was something new for a control freak like me.
We finally took off and I was sleeping soundly. But at one point, I hit my head against the wall, hardly, waking me up for a few seconds. Just enough to take a look outside and see that the storm and Mother Nature were playing yo-yo with the plane! In other conditions I would have been scared, I would have had a high heart beat, but this time, I just surrendered. I even had like a dream in which the Universe would have to literally hit my head in a wake-up call that I should just go with the flow, give up, trust, relax. I started smiling as I finally understood the message.
A while ago I found out what would make me happy, where my place would be, what I should do to feel fulfilled… but, I also had a lot of fears: how was I going to make it? Who would I be? Would I still have friends? What would the other people say? What if I fail?
So the Universe had to send me on the other side of the world, take me out of my warm comfort zone, actually hit my head to shake me and wake me up, and above it all, make me loose the old baggage I had carried with me for so many years. All the unnecessary things that I thought I couldn’t do without, all the things I thought were a “must-have” for me, everything…lost. And all these to make me understand that now that I know, I can’t go back anymore, I have to move on, surrender to faith and the Universe, accept things I can’t change, take chances and understand that there are other ways to “survive” a situation, even if not comfortable for the moment!
I hope I have learnt my lesson and the Universe won’t be forced to send me to the South Pole or Mars to make me understand and finally take some actions!
Because, when the Universe says you have a purpose, you have a purpose! And it has all the possible ways to make you see and understand that, and most of all, stop running away from your true meaning and give up the fears! There is no need for fear when everything is perfect as is!
The Chronicles of a Human Being 