Home Sweet Home

  The wind rustles through the waves of trees. The deck is drenched in sunlight. The robins and sparrows chatter. A black butterfly with blue patches flits among the potted plants of peppers, tomatoes, eggplants and one glorious sunflower that towers nearly seven feet. I smile.

  A LOL can finally enjoy her home. Some LsOL, of course, have grand mansions out here in suburbia and well-tended gardens. My abode is more modest, and what I can now savor really has little to do with  grandeur as much as moments that got lost in the frantic insanity of before. I can sit on this deck and read my Kindle (nearly finished with The Girl Who Played With Fire) as the birds sing their tunes  and the butterflies skip from one flower to the next.
   With more control over my time, I can literally stop to smell the roses out front, or better yet, the pots of jasmine arrayed on the deck.
  I have had one plant for more than 20 years, given to me by my mother, who bought the original from a Houston nursery more than 35 years ago and painstakingly grew several more from cuttings.
It was a tangible reminder of her native India. When she passed away earlier this year, I inherited two more jasmine -- now, I like to think, my connection to her. At this time of year, the plant is loaded with small white flowers that give off an intoxicating fragrance. She would  have been very pleased.
   I lean back in my deck chair, a piece of furniture that seldom got used in the past, and I am delighted to be able to enjoy this moment, on this day, in this way.