I love life. I don’t mean the “Rah! Rah! Let’s have a party” kind of loving life. I love to encourage things to grow and protect the weak. When I’m peeling carrots or scrubbing sweet potatoes, if there’s a sprout on top of the carrot or an eye growing from a sweet potato, I have to cut it off with a wide margin and give it a chance to become a new vegetable.

Some make it, and the ones that don’t live go to compost, at least giving life to another plant down the way.

I can’t cut open an avocado without inserting three toothpicks in the seed and finding the right-sized jar so only half of the seed will sit in the water.

This tree grew from one of my seeds. (We just had our first crop of avocados, but the squirrels are loving life too, and not sharing much with us.)

When I scrape seeds from a butternut squash, I have to dig a hole and bury the whole mess. Sometimes they grow, and I’m delighted.

The black, sticky seeds of papayas are too much to ignore. In the ground they go. I have little papaya trees all around, this year producing the first blossoms.

After buying a Kiett Mango at a local farmers market, assured it will grow in Central Florida, I nestled the seed in the ground with my compost, and now have a thriving mango tree.

Of course, I love babies. Baby animals,

and even more, baby people (my grandchildren on the top of the list).

Several days ago, while out walking my Golden, Lily, I moved some Spanish moss that had fallen on a vine I’ve been admiring, and accidentally broke off about a foot of the plant. Since it contained a few buds, I brought it home and put in water.

It has continued to develop and the buds have opened, but instead of the brilliant red in my neighbor’s yard, this one is pale and pathetic. No longer attached to the vine and feed by the sun, the flower doesn’t have the life force it needs to really bloom, much less go to seed.

So like me.

I don’t think we were meant to go it on our own, any more than that flower I picked off the vine.

On my own, I am not the energizer battery. Unless I’m connected to my life-source, I soon run out of steam. Everything begins to look too hard, too big, too much, too little time, too little energy.

As an English major in college, one of my favorite poets was Dylan Thomas. Several of his poems have stuck in my mind, and this line in particular.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower: Dylan Thomas

I thought he was really profound, but I realize now there was something missing in his poetry, and that was the source of his angst.

The Source.

After the pain, after the loss, even after the daily-ness of life, like the psalmist so long ago, there is only one I go to, one place I can go to recharge.

Fill us each morning with your constant love,
so that we may sing and be glad all our life.
Ps 90: 14 MSG

But once I’m plugged in, the music plays in my soul again, and I love life!

“I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me. John 15:5 MSG

It is the power of his love.

(Most of these photos were taken with cell phones, so the quality is not up to the usual.)

How do you recharge?