Letting the garden be

There is a great deal to be said for sitting at a window every day. My laptop is positioned so that I can look out on my front lawn, bisected as it is by a stone wall that creates an embankment for my neighbors' driveway. Currently, the lawn, with semicircular garden, narrow strip of grass and lichen-covered bench fronting the wall, is a mass of weeds and wildflowers of many different kinds, some of which I recognize; for example, there are many violets abloom. Who knew that they could spread like this? They do not seem to deserve the sobriquet "shrinking violet", they are quite assertive.

The garden is a profusion of weeds due to the fact that it has been raining pretty much every day for a week. I have watched the weeds celebrate their existence by spreading over just about every inch of soil, unchecked by the violence I would have wrought upon them if it weren't so darn wet. So, I have been watching the rise of a garden populated by weeds, and wildflowers. The tulips I planted last fall, those that survived midnight raids by squirrels and deer, have been reduced to headless stalks. Gladioli and phlox, French lavender, and coneflowers have yet to make their appearance. And yet the garden is lush and green, and birds come and root through the motley vegetation  for last year's seeds, and bits of dried grass for nests. The birds see no problem at all with what is growing there. Sometimes a mockingbird will hop from the yew bush next to the window up to my window sill, and engage with me in mutual regard.

Mindfulness has taught me to look at the weeds, and grass, and birds, and appreciate them for what they are - examples of nature renewing itself, of life going about its daily routine. The scenery changes every day, if ever so slightly. I am grateful that I have such beauty to look at.  Of course, one of these days it will stop raining, and I will go out there and pull some of the ground-cover that is spreading, and dig up the violets, and plant pansies, or petunias, or zinnias. But for this week, I have been enjoying what is there, noticing and letting be the beauty that is there to be seen, every day, every day.