Eleanor Roosevelt’s warming when life is dreary or depressing: “It is not more vacation we need – it is more vocation.”

Until I raised my flowers, I had no idea how resilient or determined they were to live. Today, I wanted to pay homage to renegade souls and flowers, those who find a way to live in places without being planted or thoroughly cared for. Two such flowers are growing between the slate plates on the back porch. Two are mysteriously popping up in Maria’s garden without having been planted.

The hole below is from our apple tree; I think of it as the tree’s soul; it is mysterious, old, and hypnotic.

The corporate world has quashed the idea of a “vocation” and turned everything into a “job” so we can enrich someone else and be a slave to money. So many lives are spiritually reduced to do only what they are paid to do. The hardy flowers inspire me to do now what I really wanted to do, not what we are told and pressured to do.

Soul of the Apple Tree

The second popped up in Maria’s garden; nobody planted it, but it found a way to plant itself and grow.

This grew right out of our granite back porch. Maria refuses to kill it or transplant it. Instead, she gives it water every day and watches it grow. We have no idea what it is.

This beautiful flower grew up alongside Maria’s other flowers, just flowering now.