Never Giving Up

It's been awhile since I've written a blog entry, but I just couldn't come up with anything that I wanted to write about. While pulling into the garage today after work, I thought it was a great opportunity to chat about one of my summer activities and how it parallels to what I saw in my own garden today.

Over the summer, I joined a Learn to Run program. Running is not something I enjoy (and still don't), but I know it's a necessary evil. The program started off with a 35 minute walk, with the next session having us run for 30 seconds at a time, six times (with walking in-between), in those 35 minutes. We gradually kept increasing our running, while decreasing our walking. By the end of the 12 week program, we were running for 3 miles. It was a great program and taught me a valuable lesson - never give up. I will admit, I didn't run every minute I was supposed to on the group runs, but I didn't skip any of my homework days either. It was so easy to stop running, and occasionally I did, but in the end, I finished the program. At the end of the 12 weeks, I ran a 5K and beat my time from my 5K run last year.

I decided to join the fall running program, to continue my progress. I even signed up for another 5K and beat my time from 3 weeks earlier by almost 2 minutes. I'm happy to say, I ran the entire 5K, which was a first for me. My new favorite saying is "I don't stop when I'm tired, I stop when I'm done."

Now I need to explain how this parallels with my garden. In the spring, we moved a few plants from the back of the house to the front, by the driveway. One of them was my iris. I knew there was a chance that it wasn't going to take the transplant well this year and probably wouldn't flower. Well, just like I thought (and everyone else told me), it didn't flower in spring or summer. However, when I drove up today, on October 4, it had blossomed! My iris didn't give up either!

Happiness Is...Never Giving Up