Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We went to my favorite nursery this afternoon looking for an anniversary present for ourselves. Last year we did nothing, and this year we won't as well, but my husband suggested we at least give ourselves a gift. First he thought of a Native American store nearby, but we didn't see anything online that grabbed us. Then I thought of something for the yard, and we headed out looking for a birdbath. We'd had one that was my parents, but it broke years ago. We now have a lot of birds in the yard but no dogs or cats, so we could safely have one again. But when we looked, nothing really grabbed us. We found a little stone elephant we kind of liked, and a small stone stupa, then I found a plant I love, but after we'd wandered for a while we sat on a bench and admitted nothing sang to us. We had been hoping at least this place would have succulent gardens in dishes, but somehow they don't have them right now. Perhaps the woman who created them is gone, fired or the pandemic downsized the nursery. We are going to try a couple of other nurseries tomorrow, and perhaps we'll find a birdbath or something surprising that causes a zing. I'm at least touched we are celebrating the anniversary to some extent. Last year our daughter was dying, Covid was terrorizing everyone and celebrating seemed obscene. We are slowly healing.