Gardening my life
It is now evident the plan is not moving forward. When I dug up my overgrown garden last fall I intended to hire a landscaper and design something less random, plan for the future, make it amazing. But now, half way through June, mostly I have weeds and volunteers.
This summer my garden is a moment, not a project, as I had hoped it would be.
Oh, it needs to be a project, for sure. When I tore out all the overgrown bushes and over seeded annuals and wheel barrowed piles of fresh compost and soil into the bed my mind ran wild with images of the flowers and bushes and butterflies that would be my summer. But turns out, it isn’t that kind of summer.
So instead of making the garden a project, I am making it a moment. I arrive home from work, kick off my shoes and walk around looking for a moment’s worth of soil, a glimpse of a flower, the joy of a surprise popping up. Today there are pulled weeds in little piles along the front walk, fruit of a moment. Tomorrow they may make it to the compost pile.
What surprises me every day is that the moments are so rich. There is the moment I find an amazing fuscia flower, probably grown from a seed carried in a bird dropping. I pick the flower and put it in a little vase by my kitchen sink. And the moment I take to pop the dead roses off my bush giving room for a second bloom. It is enough. In fact, this gathering of moments is making my summer feel quite beautiful.
Although it may not be our first choice way to live, I think we can experience life as beautiful by making it about moments and not projects. Even the craziest life has tiny spaces and pauses. Some of them are imposed upon us while we are trying to make life a project: waiting, traffic lights, laying awake when we would rather sleep, walking to the bus stop because our car is broken down. Life goes ‘pear shaped’ and we are left with a moment.
Think about capturing beautiful moments. Make the spaces sacred by using them for love and beauty and breath. The whole garden of your life may not be all you hoped it would be, but you haven’t been cheated. Like the greeting card says, “It’s not the days we remember, it’s the moments.”
Last night after eating rather too much at a happy dinner I find myself awake in the middle of the night with a tummy ache. I get up and walk outside. The moon is HUGE and the air magic with fragrance. I sit on the cement porch step a calm descends on me. When I return to bed I don’t notice falling asleep. Next thing it is morning. But the moment in the middle of the night remains within me.