A Place to Rest, Contemplate, Lose Oneself
The ultimate place of peace and beauty? Out of doors, in a garden. Out of doors in any green space, for that matter. But in a garden there is a special kind of structure, texture, beauty and peace. All the more so if that garden is one you have created with Nature's patient assistance.
Need a break from the pressures of the day? Out into the garden with you. There you have a choice of seating yourself on any available surface that appears sufficiently inviting, to relax. Alternatively, looking about the garden you will invariably espie one thing or another that is calling out for your attention.
Even so, attending to little matters of the garden, a clean-up here or there, removal of spent blossoms to encourage other emerging flower heads to bloom. Tying up a perennial the weight of whose flowers have bent it perpendicular to the ground. Cutting some fresh kitchen herbs to use in cooking or salads. Making certain one doesn't overlook those ripe tomatoes ready to be eaten and appreciated like no store-bought produce will ever be. Oops, have to remember to take in those ripe plums, they'll make an excellent plum pie.
Sit and contemplate what Nature has wrought. Sit and lose yourself in delightfully aberrant thought: what are those squirrels, rabbits, birds, butterflies up to among your roses, your nasturtions, delphiniums, poppies? And those rather less welcome visitors - the insect pests that love to flood any garden; they too preoccupied with Nature's imperative to perpetuate their species, and in the process aid and assist the flora among which those fauna gather, scattering seeds far and wide.
If you're quiet and patient you will see butterflies flitting about here and there, bees busily seeking flowerheads, a toad jumping out from the undergrowth, your neighbour's black cat nestling deep in the interior of one of the garden borders beside the back fence. You may see, as I did this morning, a ruby-throated hummingbird with iridescent-green body hovering above the arbour where the honeysuckle vine entwines itself, then see him again later, as you happen to look through the sliding doors to the same vine growing around the lattice surrounding the deck.
You can see small flocks of goldfinches resting on the branches of your apple tree, then swoop down to dabble and wash in the birdbath below. You can surprise yourself by how much can be seen, the number of birds passing through and enjoying your garden just as you do. You may even scare up a small rabbit from the sanctuary he sought behind one of the peonies, and then find yourself talking gently in reassurance to the tiny creature. Aha! you may see one of your little dogs giving chase to a tiny brown mouse; no contest.
Even if temporarily, cares do have a habit of slipping off the horizon of thought as you move your head slowly, taking mental photographs of all that is revealed to the carefully tender eye of the gardener. But why stop just at the gardener? It doesn't take the aesthetic of a gardener for someone to enjoy the beauty laid out before one in a garden of virtually any description.
Just exhibit the good sense to visit, to sit awhile, to enjoy.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 24, 2006
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