If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent part of the past few weekends out in the yard. Just this past weekend our family took a trip to the garden center to purchase some plants for the flower beds as well as some tomatoes and peppers that will go in our little raised bed garden. We seeded in some lettuce, carrots and peas and put in new mulch around the hostas. It’s fun to watch the kids get excited about gardening!
We talk about the New Year as a time to make resolutions but it has always seemed to me that spring is the real time for change and new beginnings. Every day we notice some new flower blooming or some new bird returning. For myself this spring has been a time of big changes in the form of culmination and transition. In early April, along with my classmates from around the state, I graduated from the MARL program with a festive banquet held at Craguns in Brainerd. Two weeks later I found myself driving to Iowa State University in Ames to defend a paper I had spent over a year working on. Now in early May graduation is over and I’ve finally completed my master’s degree in Community Development.
It wasn’t always going to be this way. After graduating from high school nearly thirty years ago I headed off to what was then called Mankato State University. As the youngest of six children I was the first of my siblings to go to a four year school. My dad drove a beer truck and my mom did daycare, nobody had ever talked to me about college. I was ill prepared emotionally to deal with being away from home and lasted a total of one semester.
But I didn’t stop. After many fits and starts, piecing my way through community college, a technical school degree, again to community college and finally back to a university (and working, always working) I finally graduated with a bachelor’s degree at the age of 34. An advanced degree was never a consideration, not even a remote possibility. But here I am another twelve years later with another degree. While I sometimes lament the fact that I missed out on the traditional college experience, this is just the way it had to be. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.”
In the excitement of spring it’s easy to notice when the first tulips push out of the ground or give a little celebratory cheer when we see the violets blooming. For sure, go out and enjoy the newness of the season. But when you are out in your yards and gardens in the coming weeks and months take the time to appreciate those plants that are a little slow in coming, give them a little cheer as well! They may be a little late but they’re persistent. Surely these late bloomers have something to offer us too.
P.S. I’m done going to college. This time I mean it!
