Note: If you’d like to see all the lessons, click on the tab: Making Big Things Happen

I hope by the time I reach your school, you feel like you know me.  Maybe you feel like you know me a little bit already.  Okay, here’s a quiz… am I the type of person who takes things slow and easy?  Or, am I the type of person—like Tillie—who likes things fast and racy, speedy and scorchy?  If you said the second thing, you know me already!  I’m a nut when I get excited about something.  I want to do it right away—all the time, every day.  The problem with that is you can get burned out before the finish line.  You can’t run a marathon like a sprint.

We spent all day yesterday at the 2011 GR Bike Summit and I talked a lot. Jack, our new friend in Grand Haven, who owns Loose Spokes Bike Shop, loaned us a Tillie-era bicycle, and we had a ton of fun pretending I was Tillie and posing with the bike and telling people about the ride.  But I coughed a lot because I still have a cold.  I hate colds, don’t you?  They really get in the way of things.  Anyway, I was planning to take a long ride today, but I decided—because I’m so wise in my old age—to stay home and rest.

It was a good idea.  I’m feeling so much better.  Whenever you are trying to accomplish something big, you have to realize there are many parts and your goal may take longer than you originally thought.  If you don’t pace yourself, you can burn out.  So take care and be nice to yourself.  I took these pictures in my yard of all the beautiful native plants that are blooming.  I hope you enjoy them!

Spring Beauty

Fiddlehead Fern

Trillium Grandiflorum

Red Trillium

Bloodroot

prairie trillium