Victory (small, but victory anyway)

A first, that's actually a very non-first, because it was something I used to do all the time. And enjoy doing... but that I haven't done since oh, I honestly don't remember. Gardening stopped sometime after The Diagnosis, somewhere around the point at which I needed some sort of help walking with canes. So... what did I do?

Gardening. Not much, but some, nonetheless.

We have a purple-flowering "Rose of Sharon" hibiscus right outside the front door. I spent a few minutes today, enjoying the outside air and the last dregs of afternoon sun, with a pair of hold-'em-in-one-hand clippers, trimming bits that were too tall, or crossing other bits that were doing better than the crossing pieces. A little bit of shaping, a little bit of "let's make it easier on this plant to get the sun it needs," a little bit of giving things "room to breathe" (plants need air, but they don't have lungs and things like that, but you get the metaphor).

Things came crashing (literally) to a halt when I dropped my clippers, and retrieving them was beyond what few abilities I had left, so the trimming came a little early to an end, but... the plant looks happier, it's going to look much happier when it starts growing leaves again (today it's in the "stick" stage of growth), and I did gardening. Not much, not large-scale, but still! Gardening! After years and years and years of not really caring much—not caring at all—for my garden.

I don't know if I can proclaim that the doing of gardening for the first time in dunno-how-many-years "the shape of things to come" or anything as grandiose as that, but... it was a victory. I wasn't able to do much, I had to have help retrieving a dropped tool, but I Did Something. I Accomplished Something.

And that's a victory. And on the Neurological Highway... as in Just Plain Life, victory is still victory.

And that's good enough.