Late Bloomer

This is a photo of my front flower garden after the last hard frost.  I think it looks like a nuclear bomb landed nearby and destroyed all life forms!   

 

Then, lo and behold, what should appear growing out of the concrete nearby but a spunky red petunia.

 

I feel like I need to be especially protective of this plant.  I don't know why or how it got started growing out of the concrete (I didn't even plant any red petunias this year). But I do know that everytime I look at it amidst the seasonal death of my other outdoor plants and flowers it feels like a message from beyond. When the hormonal blood level tests came back last week and my practitioner told me I'm well underway into menopause, I began to feel like I'm in the fall of my life and winter isn't far behind.  This ordinary, resilient red flower growing out of the cement and bricks when my other flower gardens are full of wilted, dried up and dead plants is a symbol to me that, even in menopause when I'm no longer fertile in the traditional sense, I can still bloom in new and surprising ways.