Till This Moment

The title of this blogs comes from a line in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennett, who thought Mr. Darcy to be insufferable, realizes after reading his letter to her that he isn't such a bad guy after all.

``How despicably have I acted!'' she cried. -- ``I, who have prided myself on my discernment! -- I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust. -- How humiliating is this discovery! -- Yet, how just a humiliation! -- Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. -- Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.

Till this moment, I never knew myself.''

Like Elizabeth, I've worn the blinders of vanity.  It has been that very vanity that led me to realize I that all that I thought I knew had fallen through my fingertips.  Nothing was really as I supposed it to be.  Until that moment, I never knew myself.  

Thoughts from the Garden

It's 83 degrees at 8 am in this morning.   It's the same temperature before I went to bed last night.  It's only going to get hotter.  Days like these make me want to get out and take care of the garden as quick as I can.  I sip my morning coffee and head out with my gallon jug of water for the front garden.  The flowers are looking weepy in the morning sun.  

I go to the back patio and water the herbs and vegetables.  The shade provides little relief as I feel the humidity all around. It's then that I realize I have forgotten about the strawberry bed in the back garden.  I walk there with water that's left. 

The strawberry plants are doing fine on their own.  I douse them with the rest of the water. I anticipate the sun's rays will wilt the leaves later in the day.  

But oh, I survey the rest of the garden. The weeds all around the rest of the garden don't seem to be bothered by the heat.  They seem to thrive on it.  I have been so busy with the children and the summer schedule that I had forgotten to weed and it shows. I start plucking a weed and then another.  I realized that this is bigger than I can handle in 5 minutes.  I call in the reinforcements. 

The girls and I spend 15 minutes weeding all kinds of unknown weeds. I hear chattering and laughing and the sound of weeds flying past my head. I see so much of these unnamed and unwanted plants that now I want to learn their names and where they come from.  Our weeding time is up but we will have more to do later. 

These unknown, these unnamed, these unwanted, they are always around me.  I don't recognize them always. I realize then that it's only when I spend time in their presence and that the veil is lifted.