I can’t even tell you how it started. I’ve been in this house a little more than a year. I’ve done anything with the backyard – a slab of concrete that goes by the name of patio, and two metal raised beds on a gentle slope.

Someone apparently had an herb garden in the raised beds. Someone had planted asparagus. I know that because of the thin barely developed volunteer plants that came up in the spring.

As someone diagnosed with ADHD late in life (it wasn’t a surprise but living while treating it certainly has been.) I awakened with the great idea of planting stuff.

Like real, living, vulnerable little plants. What was I thinking? (That’s mostly what I have been thinking since it all started.)

Yes! I would plant flowers and grow glads. I would have a patio overflowing with filled planters and blossoming flowers!

By May I roamed around garden centers and hardware stores, researched how to grow gladiolus and what makes a good soil. So many YouTube videos.

Thrillers, fillers and spillers is the way to go.

Organic compost doesn’t have to be expensive.

Some flowers love the sun as much as a teen girl in 1981.

Others would rather huddle in the shade and peek out every now and them. (This explains the gigantic umbrella sitting on my patio right now.)

Well, this is different

Dang if that ADHD treatment didn’t come along just at the right time. About the time – usually about 2 and a half weeks after beginning a project I’d abandon all plans. But I did not leave the poor purchased plants to languish – I kept going! I couldn’t believe it either!

I ran into all kinds of obstacles. My new hips and knee do NOT like working the soil in a raised bed on a slope. (Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. That was my mantra that I might have said out loud.)

Ever try to pull out asparagus roots?

Don’t.

I almost lost my mind, my faith and my will to live. But I carried on. And cussed a lot.

Those little buggers don’t grow so deep as they do wide. And they will not be moved.

I borrowed a Sawzall from my nephew, shoveled and pulled and tugged. Finally. Finally the last crown of roots came free. Except for the sweat, you would think I’d conquered Mount Everest.

Anyway, by the time summer began, I had a good plan, excellent soil, about a dozen potted flowers and 72 gladiolus corms.

And one sad little plant

And among them all, a neglected geranium I found in a garden center, pushed back on its rack, out of the sun and showing it.

The geraniums leaves were brown or turning. A couple of its tiny shoots that tried to grow off the stem had been broken. In its condition, what was broken off didn’t heal well, but was left hanging.

I saw the geranium out of the corner of my eye and in a second it was on my cart. I didn’t even think the obvious: Cindy, you don’t know what you are doing with healthy plants. What do you think you’re doing?

I didn’t have to wonder. I knew what my mom would do. In fact, the only reason I recognized that it was a geranium only by its leaves is because they were one of Edna’s favorite flowers.

Edna would take the little plant home and nurture it to good health. It would become her priority. She would encourage it while placing it in good soil, snipping its brown leaves and offer it water and sun as needed.

Once at home I placed it on the patio and began to research geranium care.

I cleaned a pair of manicure scissors with rubbing alcohol. Gently I cut the broken shoot not too close to the stem, but fully. I left the plant where it would get good sun. I watered it more carefully than the others.

It began to grow. The stem healed from its broken edges. Its leaves grew green and healthy.

Sweet blooming success!

On Thursday, one of the tiny buds blossomed. Bright magenta geranium blooms on a healthy plant that not that long ago was given up for dead.

My patio is covered with pots of coleus, begonias, celosia, petunias, vinca, dracaena, silver falls and creeping jenny. There are a few pots of sedum still to plants.

I’ve planted 30 gladiolus corms, but late in the season. I’ve covered them with hardware cloth because chipmunks loved the raised beds. They would love the tender little corms even more, I’ve learned.

The front bed has zinnias and lavender.

My favorite, though? That thriving geranium that refused to give up.

I think I’ll call her Edna.

It happened again. A Saturday morning, an hour after taking the medication I take on an empty stomach. Coffee is fine, but I want a real breakfast. I have what I need, I think. So out of the recliner, into the kitchen, my mind whizzing with what will be the perfect, simple morning plate ….

Into the sputtering buttery skillet the the whisked egg went. Sizzle.

Pop. Sizzle again. This will be great. And it was until it wasn’t. Busy with other little things the perfectly whisked egg mixture had fried into a flapjack of egg. I flipped the damn thing over, put it on the plate and felt disappointment enter the chat. Good old disappointment.

It was supposed to look like a magazine cover — shiny scrambled eggs in a gentle pile — maybe even a bit of steam rising. But no. Just an empty, unfolded omelette wannabe.

Not to be dismayed though, I added fresh-sliced strawberries. And mostly for spite, I added a spoonful of Cool Whip to the mess.

But you know what? It was delicious. Funny looking as hell, but yummy.

So what’s the deal with perfectionism? I mean, my life is great. Perfect, it’s not. And I’m not sure why I chase after it.

Experts on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder say that pursuing a perfect outcome is a common trait of people with ADHD. I was diagnosed in September. At 63. So for the past eight months I’ve studied the implications of the diagnosis. Much of what I’ve read and heard makes sense. The gift is that when I run into frustrations like almost letting a little disappointment ruin a tasty meal I pause.

It’s not about me!

In keeping with the theme of this newsletter — Beyond the Broken — I have a new mantra.

There has to be some joy in there somewhere!

And I found it. Living well with ADHD (perhaps in spite of?) is taking that break, pausing for a moment and understand what is really going on.

Knowing that perfectionism is a pursuit and not a series of everyday failed attempts is liberating. For this morning, fueled by delicious egg (it doesn’t need a classification to be yummy!) and the added joy of a bit of Cool Whip — I’m off to conquer the day!

Ummm. No, off to enjoy the day. I have a whole list of what needs to be done.

Perfectly imperfectly done.

This is a day set aside for remembering those who didn’t make it home. For remembering the mothers still wringing their hands around on aprons, keeping themselves busy, praying without ceasing that the one they bore returns.

This is a day for remembering the bright-eyed young men and women who left these shores with hopes of securing freedom.

This is a day for remembering the young wives throughout the decades, some of them carrying babes, with nothing left to hold but a folded American flag.

And then, these words that a parent, spouse or child might not even hear:

“On behalf of the President of the United

States, [the United States Army, the United

States Marine Corps, the United States Navy or the United States Air Force] and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”

May we one day learn that war is never worth a casket, a folded flag and scripted words.

To all who are mourning your children, spouses or parents, please know we remember. And we know that is far from enough.

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At The News Leader in Staunton, Va., where I worked as reporter and editor I wrote a column each Sunday. Connections was where I shared stories I’d stumbled onto, tiny moments and reflections. All these years later, living back in Staunton, I often meet people who remember those columns.

I am grateful for that. And a number of friends and family have asked when I will write again.

So anyway, I’m back. Here is my attempt at getting back to regular storytelling. I hope you will grab a cup of coffee and come along.

My hope is that this will be a place of refuge — a few minutes of observing the world with me. And I also hope you will share. Imagine a coffee shop where sipping while in pajamas is perfectly acceptable. Enough of what we absorb from the world feels broken. Let’s examine what’s beyond.

A lesson inside a tiny story

Early one morning as I prepared to head out for errands, my phone rang. When I lived in Port-au-Prince I didn’t drive — a fact that made all living creatures rejoice. I depended on friends with cars or taxi drivers when I needed to go out.

It was Dieudonne. I’d met him, but he’d never been to my house at Delmas 65. He was coming to pick me up so I could run errands.

“Is your house the one beside the broken bougainvillea?” he asked.

I stopped to think. I even carried the phone out to the street to examine the row of gorgeous magenta flowers looking down on the street from a high wall.

Broken? Was it? Well, maybe.

I had never noticed that.

That was the moment I realized one of the best lessons Haiti had taught me.

Look beyond what’s broken.

Let the tender beauty surprise you.

Moments that matter

I hope that readers will find that same sentiment — the tiny moments that show so much. A space where the ordinary shows up in extraordinary ways.

Learn more on my About page. About what I hope to contribute here.

And following the theme of bougainvillea, here are a few observations from my social media through the years. I hope that you enjoy. And I hope that you will be back.

April 3, 2017 (from my FB)

He already was carrying her book bag. He’d tossed it over his shoulder when he picked her up after school. He stopped to pick pink and orange bougainvillea bracts. He wrapped them into a small bouquet and handed it to her.

When she grinned, I could tell she’d just lost her two front teeth.

“Now that’s a good Dad,” I said to Fabienne as we watched the two cross the street holding hands.

Fabienne was grinning, too.

“Yes,” she said. “A good, nice Papa.”

February 12, 2019 (from my FB)

In good news today, I noticed that the bougainvillea across the street is blooming! Fun fact: the tiny white flower is the bougainvillea flower. The magenta, sometimes orange, is like a leaf, called a bract.

So even in the land of eternal summer, Mother Nature brings us beautiful, growing change.

If you are wondering, well, yes, Haiti is still locked up in boisterous, often violent demonstrations.

And yes, it’s scary and dangerous to go out (a teenager in the house, when he heard I wanted to cross the narrow street to take this photo, cheerfully slipped on his sandals and walked all eight steps so I could take the photo. He even held down the thorny branch for the picture, and walked back across the street. There was no traffic on the street.

And this is my point. I am weary of writing stories of the violence and danger. I will tell you all day long about the oppression causing the economic stranglehold on ordinary people here. I will tell you about root causes of the poverty and the ways everyone works given the chance.

But that’s for another day.

Today I’ll tell you about bougainvillea flowers and polite young men and other goodness.

Because you should never doubt the beauty of this island and her people.