Friends are the flowers in the garden of life

 "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold"

I'm part of a group of retired educators who worked at the same school for many years, and now meet once a month for lunch and conversation. We usually meet at a restaurant, but this month I was delighted to have them come to our Arizona Backyard Eden for a garden tour and al fresco potluck lunch on the patio. I've known most of these ladies for more than twenty years, and they are my very dear friends in too many ways to enumerate. They're all really good cooks, too!

I've mentioned that I like to experiment and try new things in our backyard. Some plants and ideas are successful and some are not, and what works one year may not do so well another. I haven't been particularly successful with daylilies, for example, and the zipper cream peas I brought back from Alabama have apparently failed to germinate. Yet there are some I can always rely on for an exuberant show of color: nasturtiums, hollyhocks, and larkspur in the spring, and coreopsis, blanketfower, and zinnias in the summer.

Many people have come into and gone out of my life over the years. Some have disappointed me, and some have hurt me. But some have always been there for me, and those people really are flowers in the garden of my life, beautiful and sweet smelling.