One of the Barbados Cherry bonsai projects I have has begun flowering today. It’s a simple enough thing, something maybe we take for granted, but it offered me something that my life doesn’t always get me: tangible results.

I suspect I’m not alone in that. Writing software rarely got me tangible results. Blogging doesn’t give immediate tangible results. Writing, even less so. We take what we can get in this regard.

The week has been an interesting one altogether as the ficus retusa cuttings have taken root and I have given some away. I think they’re ficus retusa. It was labeled as ‘Asian Ficus’. That, I have found, is not that helpful and people who label plants vaguely should be drawn and quartered by an artist – since to do it as it used to be done seems to be frowned upon in modern society.

I went to see a psychiatrist who assured me I wasn’t on the autism spectrum. That put to rest many things said to me over the decades by well-intentioned non-psychiatrists. I can now say I’m not. I’m just weird in my own way. That didn’t take long, so we had time to kill and we discussed some other things.

Of course, he asked me who I was. That’s a standard question. My answer, which I won’t share with you because it’s an important question in understanding people and the answer should be authentic, seemed to surprise him a little since it wasn’t a standard response, as he said. All in all that was an interesting thing to do, and worthwhile I think. It gave me, in it’s own way, a tangible result.

The butterfly was in the reception area of the office. It seemed like a nice lighting fixture.

I think I finally found a way to tell the story I want to tell in the book. The first chapter has confounded me, so I just started writing and will chop off things as I need. I think much of this book will be looking at different parts of a tree, metaphorically, but not seeing the full tree. Like the picture of the flower above.

Hopefully we all get some tangible results this week.