Once upon a time, a young family went on their first proper family holiday. They travelled across the sea and they travelled by car and eventually ended up in France …

OK, enough of that. It’s still quite early and I was feeling a little poetic. However, I don’t really do stories

When we arrived home from France we were greeted by the usual disorder that seems to always await folks on return from holiday. I am certain that it doesn’t matter how neat and tidy you leave your home, when you get back it is always a mess. I have an alternative solution. Rather than running round like a fool tidying up before I go, I just make sure things are vaguely straight and worry about it all when I get back instead

Anyway, I digress. For some unknown reason, I was lying in bed in the early hours this morning thinking about the plants that greeted us on our return. Two in particular stick in my memory.

I very foolishly left a little pot of basil in my kitchen. We were on holiday for a fortnight during one of the warmest Springs the UK had had for a long time. Basil was well and truly dead. I like to try and resurrect plants but this was beyond that. There was only one place for it, the bin.

However, as I was unceremoniously removing the dead plant from it’s pot, I caught a whiff. I love the smell of basil. It amuses me that the best way to get the scent is to give the leaves a little rub. My poor little pot of basil had completely given up. It didn’t have enough water to keep going so it had no alternative. It’s leaves were crispy like burnt paper but it still had enough something left in it to give off a little of it’s beautiful smell.

Alongside where the basil had, until recently, proudly sat, was an orchid. (I say ‘was’ because 18 months on it is no more ) I’m not very green fingered but my nan told me that orchids don’t like a lot of water. This is always an advantage in our house Far from merely surviving the fortnight, my orchid was flourishing. It had several new flowers preparing to open and two pretty ones already giving off their scent.

What I was thinking about this morning was, if you were one of my plants, which would you like to be? The obvious answer of course would be the orchid. Everyone wants to be able to flourish under pressure, to cope with anything and everything that life throws. But what if by nature you’re like my pot of basil? What if things do really sometimes feel like just too much to cope with? You might want to be an orchid and try very hard to be an orchid but you’re a pot of basil and that’s OK too. Remember my basil? Even when it was seemingly completely dead, it still had enough something to give off a little of it’s beautiful scent.

You’re not dead, the fact that you’re here reading this is proof of that If you’re having a basil day, relax. Have a nice cup of tea, give yourself a break. Find someone to share a smile with. It’s amazing how powerful a smile from a stranger can be. Even while you’re feeling at your lowest ebb, give off a little bit of that something that makes you special.

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photo credit: Charles Haynes

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Tagged as: basil, how, smile