She knows her stuff...

Our receptionist is in her 80s, and has worked here in some capacity for over 40 years. She is a constant source of entertainment and stories, and claims to have been the one most trusted to dust some of the pieces now in the museum collection. I sometimes wish I could just sit with her and capture all of her tales on a recorder.

Last Friday when we had our day's-worth of snowfall, I commented on how I was afraid that all the camellias and paper-whites that were blooming early would be nipped by the snow and ice.
After all, the paper-whites are seemingly fragile bulb-type bloomers a la daffodils that appear that they would just collapse if frozen. However, what was the response to my fears? "Oh no. They'll be just fine. They're fine in the cold."

Sure enough, all week I've been watching and walking and expecting the blooms to fold up, and they did not. Just kept on keeping on, and getting more full of blooms by the day. (Plus, we've been invaded by migrating birds attracted to the red berries in the gardens. They are making a mess!)

Is it not interesting how the things we think might be the most fragile are actually built to withstand more than one would expect - even ourselves. Situations that we believe we might never survive sometimes turn out to be the very events that we step up to handle with grace.