Friday Five #7 – Late Bloomers

Friday Five is a random assortment of tips, thoughts or ideas. They may be connected, they may not. But they will be brief and leave you either informed, entertained, or with a smile on your face. On a good day we’ll hit all three!

I completely enjoy the first blooms in my garden but I will confess it’s pretty sweet finding a late-blooming tulip that just makes it out before it gets too warm, an exquisite bloom on a rose bush that I thought was done for the season, or another green pepper that was hiding under a leaf that I missed. There’s just something magical about the late bloomers.

Check out this list of 5 late bloomers. I dare you to tell me you are not impressed and even motivated to ‘keep on keeping on’.

1)      Sister Marian Irvine – 47 overweight and a smoker. She took up (or should I say took off) running and was the oldest person in her time (1983) to qualify for the US Olympic trials when she was 54. Her nickname was the Flying Nun.

2)      Julia Child – 49 when her first cookbook was published. Of course we all know she had a successful career as a spy (back when she looked like the picture on the right) before this. Yes, the records show that she was not ‘technically’ a spy but she did work for the OSS, traveling internationally – just saying. Her cooking career, for which she is most well known was just kicking off at the cusp of her entering her 50s.

3)      Dr. Ruth – At 53 she started her much loved advice column on enjoying one’s sex life. Who doesn’t love Dr. Ruth and wish she had been the one to explain the birds and bees and all that other stuff when we were angst-ing about it back in our teens.

4)      Laura Ingalls Wilder – 65 when she began writing her ‘Little House on the Prairie’ series. Seriously! How did she capture the mind of that young girl when she was chronologically so far removed?

5)      Grandma Moses – 75 and just starting to paint. What an inspiration!

Celebrate this news ladies (and gents?). We may be in our forties, fifties, sixties or even a bit later but that is no reason – or excuse – to think our best years are behind us. I take great strength from knowing that anyone of us – maybe each of us, will bloom (or re-bloom) a bit later in life.