I had an idea a while ago about writing a book called “Everything I Know I Learned from My Garden,’’ full of pithy if not original insights. Growth can’t be rushed, for one, or maturity counts, and it really does matter where you’re planted.

I scribbled some notes, but got predictably sidetracked. Then winter came and my garden died. (I know: It’s not really dead. Which is another life lesson: Things are not always what they seem.)

Still, I abandoned the project.

Now I’m glad I did because it struck me recently that everything I know I learned not from my garden but from songs. Old songs, new songs, Broadway songs, kids’ songs. Ballads. Rap. Rounds. They’re all packed with life lessons.

“Just what makes that little old ant think he’ll move that rubber tree plant; anyone knows an ant can’t move a rubber tree plant, but he’s got high hopes.’’

“If you’re worried and you can’t sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep.’’

“Row, row, row your boat.’’ “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.’’ “A dream is a wish your heart makes.’’ “I can fly! I can fly! I can fly!’’

All incredible motivators.

There are songs of affirmation:

“What a difference a day makes.’’

“Whatever will be, will be.’’

“Little things mean a lot.’’

“Time heals everything.’’

“There will never be another you.’’

“Give a little whistle and always let your conscience be your guide.’’

And injunctions:

“Tap your troubles away.’’

“Think happy thoughts.’’

“Make someone happy.’’

“You gotta have heart.’’

“Big girls don’t cry.’’

“Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle.’’

“Wrap your troubles in dreams and dream all your troubles away.’’

Some songs are wise:

“Love changes everything.’’

“There’s no place like home.’’

“You can’t get a man with a gun.’’

“Try a little tenderness.’’

“The best things in life are free.’’

“You’re never fully dressed without a smile.’’

And some are invitations:

“Life is a cabaret, old chum, come to the cabaret.’’

“Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, ’til you find your dream.’’

Want pure nostalgia? There’s this.

“The way you wear your hat

The way you sip your tea

The memory of all that

No, no, they can’t take that away from me.’’

Want sad?

“Pretend you’re happy when you’re blue,’’ is sad.

“It’s a hard-knock life,’’ is true, but so is its antithesis: “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.’’

Music, like a garden, is full of contrast.

“Smile though your heart is aching.’’

“The best is yet to come.’’

“The sun’ll come out tomorrow.’’

“Breaking up is hard to do.’’

“In the wee small hours of the morning, that’s the time you miss him most of all.’’

“It’s a party in the USA.’’

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.’’

“Some days are diamonds. Some days are stones.’’

Songs and life lessons, all.

My granddaughter Lucy is six years old and is part of a class of people that is quietly being eliminated in my country. She has Down syndrome, a genetic condition that frightens so many women that 92 percent of those who learn they are carrying babies with it choose to abort.

Dr. Brian Skotko, a genetics fellow at Children’s Hospital, fears this number will rise. Prenatal tests are invasive, carry a risk to the fetus, and are given in the second trimester, so many women choose not to have them. But a simple new and non-invasive blood test, to be given early in a woman’s pregnancy, is coming, perhaps as early as next year.

“As new tests become available, will babies with Down syndrome slowly disappear?’’ Skotko ponders in a soon-to-be-published article in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, (a British medical journal) available online now.

It’s easy to understand why parents fear a diagnosis of Down syndrome. You Google definitions of it, and even now archaic words and misinformation pop up. It’s the same in doctors’ offices. Pregnant women are told only the negatives. Old stereotypes linger.

My granddaughter cannot do all the things that typical kids can. She doesn’t come home from school full of stories. They may be in her head, but we can’t see in there. She speaks and sometimes we don’t understand. She can’t make a teddy bear with paper and glue, not without help. She can’t understand why her grandfather would rather watch baseball than Shirley Temple. She does not have the same skills and abilities that her 5-year-old cousin Adam has.

But Adam doesn’t have the skills and abilities she has. He doesn’t always enter a room and greet everyone with a big smile. He doesn’t always leap to his feet and race to his father when he comes home from work. He can’t sit for hours in a fancy restaurant or through a long movie. And he doesn’t know instinctively when someone is sad and needs a hug.

He can field a ball and she can work a room. He sings a whole John Denver song, and she sits and applauds.

This is what doctors don’t tell mothers having babies with Down syndrome, that you will see in your child amazing things that you won’t see in ordinary children.

Of course, parents want healthy kids. And some get them. But children get sick. They get in accidents. They lose limbs. They suddenly stop talking one day.

Children in wheelchairs, on ventilators and crutches? Children hooked up to IVs getting chemotherapy? People on waiting lists for transplants? People with chronic diseases. Soldiers changed by war. Civilians changed by an accident.

They weren’t born this way. But if there were a test that showed their future - that showed diabetes and cancer and autism and muscular dystrophy and mental illness and depression and alcoholism - would women take it? And seeing what would be, would they choose to abort?

Last week we took Lucy to Davis’ Farmland in Sterling, where we played with the animals. Then we went to a wine tasting at Nashoba Valley, where Lucy drank juice and shared our cheese and crackers and enjoyed the day.

All kids with Down syndrome are not like this. But this is Lucy. She makes me notice the ordinariness of people who don’t have it.

In the play “Cabaret,’’ set in Berlin as the Nazis rise to power, a man loves a woman he’s not supposed to because he’s Christian and she’s Jewish. He tries to explain his love to his friends. And because “Cabaret’’ is a musical, his explanation is a song.

“If you could see her through my eyes, you wouldn’t wonder at all. If you could see her through my eyes, I guarantee you would fall, like I did. . .’’

Like I did. Like Lucy’s mother and father did. Like all the people who know Lucy and people like her did. Like the world would, too, if only given the chance.

Six years ago, I didn’t feel blessed. Lucy, my first grandchild, my daughter’s child, was 12 hours old when we learned she had Down syndrome. We wept. Three days later, we were told she had holes in her heart and would need surgery. We took her home and fed her and held her and rocked her and sang to her. And we prayed.

Fear consumed us then. We worried about her health. Were her lips blue? Was she sweating from exertion or was the room too warm? We worried about her future. Would she walk? Would she talk? We worried about our future. Would the stress of all this worry pull our family apart?

Heart surgery. And we almost lost her. Then more heart surgery and, again, a crisis. Blessed? The word never crossed my mind.

Then slowly things got better.

If only life were like a book and you could peek ahead. Lucy will be 6 on Saturday. If only, when she was new and we were scared, we could have had a glimpse of Lucy now.

When she was little, 2, 3, maybe even 4, she used to practice talking in her crib. Away from everyone, she would chatter, naming things, her stuffed animals, the toys in her room, the people in her books and in her life. Over and over, she’d say Mommy, Daddy, Adam, Mimi, cow, duck, cat, and every other word she knew.

She was quieter in front of people, shy until she got a word right.

It took time, but she got them right. This is Lucy. Give her time and she’ll amaze you.

These are things about her now that I never could have imagined then: that her favorite movie would be “Gone With the Wind.” That she would know all the characters, except for Sue Ellen. (”Who’s that?” she asks every time Scarlet’s sister comes on the screen. Poor Sue Ellen - forgettable even to a child.)

That she would always race to the door to greet her mom and dad, dropping whatever it is she is doing to hug them, to tell them with her smile and her open arms - even if they’ve been gone just 10 minutes - how glad she is to see them.

That she would love the “peace be with you” moment in church. That she would say “peace,” reach for hand after hand, look into a stranger’s eyes and smile. And that even the most reluctant hand-shaker would smile back.

And that she would love our neighbor Al, and seek him out in his yard, in his house, in my house. “Al! Al!” Katherine, his wife, the one who makes her favorite cookies, but Al the one who has her heart.

It’s not all roses of course, with Lucy. She doesn’t understand that the street is dangerous and that you can’t sit down when you’re an outfielder and that the DVD player sometimes sticks and whining doesn’t unstick it.

In these ways she is a lot like a typical 6-year-old.

But she is not typical.

It takes her longer to learn and longer to understand. But when she does? It’s like the circus has come to town. She says a whole sentence “I want to have a banana, please.” She puts together a puzzle. She matches colors and shapes. She climbs to the top of the slide, sits, and glides down. She stands at the window and reenacts a scene from “The Little Princess.” The Wallendas doing headstands on a tightrope couldn’t thrill us more.

Sometimes when I watch children her age do things effortlessly, my heart aches a little. But then Lucy will saunter by, climb on my lap, or say hi and keep on walking, and I will be bowled over by her presence, by the amazing gift of her.

How blessed I am. How lucky to be loving her. And how easy she is to love.

People sell things every day, and some even like what they sell. But Bleakney is passionate, and not just about the quality of the merchandise she takes with her everywhere she goes, but about the people who make the products and the facility that supports their unique endeavor.

Bleakney sells jewelry, but not the kind you see at every shopping mall. What she carries in her car, and takes to schools and conferences and fund-raisers and walks and churches and anywhere people gather is “exceptional jewelry” made by “exceptional people,” beautiful works of art designed to remind a wearer of someone beautiful in their lives.

True Meaning Jewelry is custom-made and skillfully handcrafted in a workshop in Hanson. Sterling silver and Swarovski beads are strung together one by one into bracelets representing a cause: autism, breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Special Olympics, Down syndrome. And anything else a customer might request.

The company is just a year old, and small, with fewer than a dozen workers. But awareness jewelry is a big seller these days, bracelets the new bumper sticker, people wanting other people to know what they care about. So if you Google awareness jewelry, hundreds of causes come up.

This is good news for True Meaning Jewelry and great potential for growth, because who they are and what they do is unique. The artisans who create every custom-made piece aren’t just artists, but the very people they’re creating the jewelry to honor. All of them have some intellectual and physical challenges. One is visually impaired and needs a magnifying glass to see. Some have Down syndrome and have trouble with fine motor skills. All need direction and accommodations, yet here they are working diligently and earnestly because they know what they’re doing is important. And they take pride in this.

Here’s what usually happens in such a workplace: An artist designs and makes a piece of jewelry, sells it, donates a percentage of the sale to the cause the jewelry represents. And the rest is profit.

Here’s what happens at True Meaning Jewelry: Bleakney designs the jewelry and the artisans make it. They sell it and donate a percentage of the sale to the cause the jewelry represents. But the rest is their collective salary, their personal pride and their independence.

“Last year at this time, we were making jewelry for another company,” said Bleakney, a resident of Kingston. “And I thought, ‘Why can’t we make our own jewelry and do it for awareness? Who better to do this than these men and women? Why can’t we start our own little business?’ ”

Bleakney went to her bosses at New England Village, a nonprofit residential community in Pembroke, which also runs the workshop in Hanson, and presented her plan. The village’s stated mission is to help “adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities . . . lead dignified and enriching lives filled with opportunities for growth and friendship.” This was definitely an opportunity for growth and friendship. They gave Bleakney the thumbs up.

Bleakney painted a vacant room, made country cottage curtains, and created a cozy, artistic, comfortable environment for the new artists.

And so it began.

The goal now, she said, is to create more work. “We have 10 young people working. I would like to see 20. I have to advocate. I have to get the word out. Because I really have to keep these guys working.”

They’re home grown. They love making jewelry. They’re involved and engaged and not easily distracted, even when a visitor is looking over their shoulders. They stick to the task.

Their jewelry comes packaged in a silky pouch with silver stars and a thank-you card from the artisans.

“Who better to benefit from awareness jewelry?” Bleakney asks.