Jack and The Beanstalk

I feel like my garden is such a visual representation of my life right now. There are tonnes of weeds everywhere, nettles growing all over the place, the rose bush is massive and as prickly as can be, there are legitimate beanstalks ( ok they are giant thistles with thick stalks ... sue me ... I am a creative ) flooding my garden ... AND ... it is the most fertile and lush I have ever seen it.

Patricia the Pear tree has fruited and, though her pears are currently tiny and unripe, she is growing and strong regardless of the wild storm she was hit with a few days ago out of nowhere.

Rosie the Rose bush, 2 years after being planted, has 6 of the most beautiful cerise pink buds about to bloom, and she had one flower, which hung on for dear life, and which I gave all the love you can imagne, before she was ripped from her stem in that wild wild wind.

My Yucca trees, where there were only 2, now there are 5 because they have gone ahead and had babies somehow, without any input from me, look like something out of the movie South Pacific, all huge and spikey, bendy and thick.

The crazy green bushes that grow outside my fence are thick and lush with the most incredible orange flowers on them and they look mighty and majestic.

There are bees everywhere, white butterflies injoying all the places to land, and in amongst it all, there are daisys and buttercups, and the prerequesite 'pissy beds', aka dandelions, everywhere the eye can see.

The juxtaposition of it all makes my heart smile, and I ponder on the monent my awesome gardener will come and cut everything down, make it all neat and tidy, put everything back in its ordered place, and how sad that will be. But my garden, like life, has seasons. Usually my gardener, Dermot, comes every 2 weeks and sorts it all out. This time, as he prepares for his wedding and is exceptionally busy with work, I have to wait until he makes his way to me, and this ... my garden jungle, is my treat for that wait.

It probably looks unsightly to some people, my sister nearly had a conniption when she saw it yesterday, but she, and everyone else, don't get to see it out my big window every day like I do. See the comings and goings of all the different tiny life. See the incredible life cycles of creation. See the growth and blooming of everything that lives in that space.

Much like very few people get to see what goes on in my life space. People who may see chaos, too muchness, busy-ness, and wonder how I do it all, how I fit so much in, how I have so much energy, how I ...

Well, just like the garden, my life, under the surface, everything has a time and place, everything has a birth and death moment, everything ebbs and flows, and everything comes and goes. There are seasons of wild, and seasons of tidy, and both are as beautiful, valid, relevant, and timely as each other.

The only real constants in life are birth and death ... and once you realise that, once you let that sink into your bones in the most comforting way, it becomes a liberation you never knew you needed in your own messy and clean, wild and tidy, buzzy and still world.

Whatever season your garden is in right now, watch it. pay attention to what's happening in nature so you can see how it reflects your own nature. You might be very surpsied what you learn.

I always am!

xoxo

Ciara

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