Disappointment and Hawk Watching

Last weekend I was in the MN Arboretum Japanese garden watching people take selfies, this weekend I am in my garden hawk watching. Our bird feeders are full, and all winter we have had cardinals and blue jays competing with the squirrels for a meal.  The spring brought robins, gold finches, orioles and a pair of indigo bunting... and the hawks. They nested in the highest tree and made our backyard their hunting ground, swooping down on the birds at the feeder.  The wary birds started to go elsewhere.  Once bitten, twice shy.
Spring isn't all new found joy and long-expected pleasure.  There are those disappointments as well, that, like the hawks threaten to take away my new found joy. 

The grapes we planted last summer didn't look like they had survived the winter.  I was surprised to see new shoots and leaves and started to dream of lush bunches of grapes.  This morning I noticed the new shoots of one vine stripped bare.  The rabbits have attacked without mercy. 
I couldn't get my irises to bloom last year.  I weeded around them, giving them more sunlight.  After days of careful inspection I finally noticed some buds.  The next day I found one broken off, lying on the ground.  I now have it blooming in a jar on my window ledge, so all is not lost. 
My crab apple trees bloomed just in time for a spring storm to strip its blossoms. The coleus I planted too early in my pots has died.  And although I'm nursing my last year's lavender, I don't see much new growth.  There are other plants that have not come back and seeds that didn't sprout.
Disappointments, like trials, are said to make us stronger.  I disagree.  They make me sad, hopeless and less likely to try again.  With each disappointment I sink lower, become introverted, more blind to all the good out there.  I mourn one grape vine, and ignore the other six that are flourishing despite the rabbits.  I water the broken iris

stem and stop visiting the plant outdoors to find blooms there.  I give up on trying to grow morning glory from seed and miss all the sunflowers that took its place. 
Now, when out of the blue, I come across the extraordinary, which takes my breath away, I take a step back.  It is temporary, and will be taken away with the first wind of disappointment, like a house intricately woven of sticks blown down by the big bad wolf of life.  The trick is knowing how to dream up a stick structure with its inevitable collapse just around the corner. How to handle the offer of a new and golden opportunity knowing that it will likely come to nothing?  How do we live in the moment and enjoy the expectation of a gift that we know will be taken away? How do you get past a death, a loss, or an unfulfilled dream?  I don't know, I'm working on it right now.  Writing....