Simply Being

Gardening, unlike so much in our modern world, is not instant gratification; it requires patience for a satisfying result. In the fall, we plant tulips, daffodils and other spring bulbs and must use our imaginations to envision what it may look like when they bloom. When we plant a small tree or a shrub, we must visualize what it will shade when it’s full grown. Unfortunately, that’s too much for many of us. We want to go to the garden center and spend on annuals that mostly bloom all summer and die with the frost. Philosophically speaking, what’s wrong with this picture?

Maybe this concept of “instant gardening” has its roots in the belief that it’s desirable to live in a one-season world. Could it be related to our inability to accept life as it truly is, complete with all the seasons? We’re born, we flower and reproduce, we age and finally, we die? The commercial world is certainly ready to help promote this concept, especially in women, ready as it is with cosmetic surgery and anti-wrinkle creams. In fact, little girls are forced to mature early and enter a long period of bloom, resisting Nature’s normal progression. There is a price to be paid for this type of resistance, and it’s not just in the pocketbook.  

Not being able to accept physical aging leaves women with faces frozen in time, unreal and freakish. How much time does it really take in front of the mirror painting a face considered to be acceptable? No, I’d much rather throw my hair into a ponytail, climb into my bibs and grab my hoe. That is a true adventure in contentment; quality time spent gazing into the face of a peony or an iris. I have time to and contemplate who and what I really am and how I fit into the scheme of things.

I am in the autumn of my life, living moment-to-moment in whatever reality presents itself. The future has not manifested and the past, with all its wrong turns and detours is behind me. All I have is this moment. I have relaxed into the perfection of my own rumpled skin.