Many, many moons ago when I was a wannabe competitive runner and was racing in 10k road runs and even marathons, I had one major shortcoming:
I had no speed.
Oh, I could run and run for mile after mile, and I could do that at a fairly decent pace. But when the other runners and I neared the finish line, I knew that anyone with a good finishing kick was probably going to blow past me. I’d hold my place in the pack as long as I could, but invariably some speedster would burn me and there was nothing I could do but Accept Reality.
I walked out our door the other day and something I saw transported me back to those long-ago days when I was a 20-year-old road racer. There’s a plant growing near our front porch, a Japanese Anemone. The crazy thing is blooming like it is early spring, though the calendar clearly tells us that it’s fall. Other plants and trees that I see and photograph in our woods also seem to know that it’s time for the order of things to change, for the growing season to fade and for summer to gracefully allow red-hot autumn to pass it by.
But the Japanese Anemone is hanging on.
I honor its spunk.
