One thing about this time of year, there is always a buzz of activity in the garden. Looking up momentarily from my latest project, a flash of colour in the garden catches my eye and it calls for a mindful pause. It is extremely rare properly to delight in flowers when one is young. There are so many larger, grander things to be concerned about than these small delicately-sculpted fragile and evanescent manifestations of nature, for example, romantic love, career fulfilment and political change.
However, it is rare to be left entirely indifferent by flowers after the age of fifty. By then, almost all one’s earlier, larger aspirations will have taken a hit, perhaps a very large hit. One will have encountered some of the intractable problems of intimate relationships. One will have suffered the gap between one’s professional hopes and the available realities. One will have had a chance to observe how slowly and fitfully the world ever alters in a positive direction. One will have been fully inducted to the extent of human wickedness and folly – and to one’s own eccentricity, selfishness and madness.
And so, by then, flowers will have started to seem somewhat different; no longer a petty distraction from a mighty destiny, no longer an insult to ambition, but a genuine pleasure amidst a litany of troubles, an invitation to bracket anxieties and keep self-criticism at bay, a small resting place for hope in a sea of disappointment.
An opportunity to pause and truly look at the sweetness and beauty that tree or plant is producing – quietly, purposefully and with considerable attention to detail. The tree, in its usual appearances, gives no hint of its incredible abilities to produce such sweetness and beauty. It too no doubt has its challenges – the nasty storms that blow in at this time of year or the long periods of hot and dry days, the ever-persistent attack of hungry insects…
But it quietly expresses itself – not for my benefit, but as a beautiful expression of being alive right now.
What a wonderful privilege it is to witness this exquisite expression! We learn to garden, and grow satisfied with our bounded lot, when we have learnt the perils of the wide pitiless fields. When we turn to express ourselves through our vital life energies… just like these trees, then a far different panorama opens before us... one that has always been there but for lack of looking, not always in clear view…
Turning back to my project, this brief pause brings with it a new and fresh context. One aimed at producing sweetness and beauty from something very ordinary looking.
How is your flowering process?
